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Okaloosa County unveils public road-management web tool to show who maintains local streets
Summary
County IT launched a GIS-based web tool on the Okaloosa County GIS portal that lets residents enter an address and see which agency maintains each nearby road, with contact links and phone numbers.
Okaloosa County commissioners on Jan. 7 unveiled a new web-based road management tool that lets residents type an address, zoom in on nearby streets and see which agency—county, municipal or state—maintains each road and how to contact that agency. The tool is available from the Okaloosa County GIS portal.
The county developed the interface by packaging existing GIS and public-works data into an easy-to-use front end, Dan Sambadadero, head of the county IT department, told commissioners. “What we did is we took existing GIS data that we had in public works OMS, and we merged it with other existing GIS data that we had throughout the county,” Sambadadero said.
The tool shows road ownership and maintenance responsibility for the selected segment and provides a phone number and a link to the maintaining agency’s website, Sambadadero said. He used an example address in Niceville during the demonstration and said the map identifies whether a road is maintained by the city, the county or the Florida Department of Transportation and supplies contact details for each.
Vice Chair Kechel, who requested the tool, said the map should reduce confusion about ownership for streets that cross multiple municipalities. Kechel noted that roads in places like Hollywood, Fort Walton Beach and Mary Esther sometimes change jurisdiction within short distances and that citizens frequently call commissioners with questions about which agency to contact.
Sambadadero and the GIS team credited Eddie Quinlan, the county’s GIS manager, with pulling the layers together and said the data will require ongoing quality control. Sambadadero asked residents to report any errors they find in the tool’s help tab so the county can correct the information.
The tool joins other map-based resources on the county GIS portal, including park maps, FEMA flood zones and mapping of artificial reefs. County staff said no vote was required to publish the tool because it is already live on the county website.
