Hello All,
Hope Santa was good to all, he brought me many
"new" lines of code and 2 new projects.
OK,
Those that may/may not know me - I'm with 9-1-1 in
the area of Corpus Christi, TX USA
12 Counties, with "highway" miles
totalling 1250 mile (from CC TX to SanDiego CA, Detroit MI, Tampa
FL)
then all the "farm" roads, county roads,
named roads, cities and don't forget the "Cow Trails"
1) when I got in this mess in 1993 we purchased MI3
and StreetWorks
2) there was as contractor doing the addressing
project for several counties and to get the addressing
from him we had to cough up $10k.....for AtlasGIS
exported to MID....what a joke!
3) all went good until 1995 when the State of Texas
Legislature passed the "Open Records Act"
stating that ALL work done by government was the
property of the citizens and therefore ONLY charged for the
"COST OF DUPLICATION".
COST OF DUPLICATION = $6.25US including US Postage
per 1.44meg Floppy
[1 disk = $1, plus 0.25 hr labor, plus postage] and we couldn't
"inflate" the labor rate........
we can't even help recover any of that
cost.......The Act says we intended to do it anyway, without consideration of
Return On Investment.....
You won't believe how many "mapping"
companies have gotten this work for "free" just to turn around and
sell
the same data back to the counties.
If anyone has some "free time" surf the
net for "Open Records Act" [something like that]......you'd be
suprised
the results you might get. Then target the
"government" agencies. The trick being an "Open Records
Request" for what you want [can't get court/criminal/etc] and be
specific.
POLITICS..........POUHY ! !
Trey Pattillo
