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County engineer to take over tax‑map drafting, vows GIS/AI overhaul to speed survey reviews

Trumbull County Board of Commissioners · January 6, 2026

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Summary

The county engineer asked commissioners to transfer tax‑map drafting from the auditor to his office, hire two drafting/GIS technicians, and deploy GIS and AI tools to cut survey review times from weeks to hours or minutes; commissioners pressed for details on staffing, benefits and IT costs.

The Trumbull County engineer told the commissioners Wednesday he is ready to move the county's tax‑map drafting function from the auditor to the engineer's office and to modernize the process with GIS and artificial‑intelligence tools.

David Christopher, county engineer, said state law assigns tax‑map responsibility to the county engineer and described a plan to hire two drafting technicians from the auditor's office while two other positions would remain with the auditor. Christopher said the change will ensure survey reviews are performed by professionally licensed surveyors and help reduce a backlog that the auditor had reported at "6 to 8 weeks." He said staff will coordinate with the auditor, IT, recorder and planning to make the transition.

Christopher and GIS lead Gary Tenere described recent technology tools that can parse legal descriptions and check boundary closure in seconds. "AI is doing that in literally a few seconds," Christopher said when summarizing the software capability; Gary Tenere said the office believes it can get surveying reviews "down to a day or 2" once the digital process is in place. Commissioners set a target operational date for the transition of Feb. 2.

Commissioners raised labor and benefit questions. Christopher said two employees will transfer to the engineer's office and requested they retain their current richer health‑care benefits until they retire; commissioners and HR staff said they would coordinate with union representatives, HR and the prosecutor's office to confirm pay, benefit costs and legal processes. Gary Tenere provided an initial hardware and furniture estimate for new workstations of about $6,000 and said software will be leased and billed back to the operating office.

Next steps: staff will finalize transition agreements with the auditor, confirm the budgetary transfers needed (engineer will request a general‑fund allocation offset by auditor budget reductions), complete IT and GIS integration, and present final details to the board before Feb. 2.