Washington County considers going public with aerial photos

Washington County will be joining a trend toward "free and open" public access to aerial photographs that can be downloaded at no charge from a link on the county's website.

The metrowide drive to make Geographic Information System (GIS) data widely available — most of it aerial photographs — already has been approved in Anoka, Carver, Dakota, Hennepin, and Ramsey counties. The Washington County Board will vote on the proposal Nov. 18, but none of the five commissioners at a workshop last week appeared to oppose it.

"I'm supportive. This type of information is going to move us forward as a county," said Commissioner Fran Miron. "We ought to wrap our arms around this as part of our effort to promote economic development in Washington County."

Increasingly sharp in detail, GIS data helps people determine property boundaries and road alignments.

Such data is public under Minnesota's open records law, although Washington County won't post anything the law considers "nonpublic," such as photos of safe houses that shelter victims of domestic abuse. Aerial photos will show properties from above and not from the sides, as various commercial websites do.

"There's a handful of people out there who are concerned about their security," said Commissioner Gary Kriesel, citing an example of street-level photographs that sometimes show the contents of residents' garages.

But Mjyke Nelson, who manages the county's Information Technology division, said the county's data doesn't reveal such details.

The data also will be free — reflecting the county's acknowledgment that when it was offered for sale it never generated much revenue.

Current practice, until the County Board votes to the contrary, requires anyone who wants GIS data to ask the county for it. That's requiring a great deal of staff time to comply with individual requests, Nelson said.

"You used to have to pay to get this data set from the local governments and that won't be an obstacle anymore," he said.

Among the advantages to publishing current GIS data and making it available around the clock, he said, is that people will find the most current information in their Internet searches rather than older data that differs from the county uses.

Earlier this year, the county signed a two-year contract with Pictometry International Corp. for about $102,000 to produce images taken at angles rather than the more traditional straight-down aerial photography.

"We know there is some additional sensitivity around those," said Nelson, who also licensing wouldn't allow it.

Since 1945, the county has gone skyward at least nine times to photograph land and buildings, from Scandia to St. Paul Park and elsewhere.

Some county commissioners in past years stiffened at the prospect of online publication of GIS data, but current board members acknowledged last week that times have changed.

"I really support increasing access to some of the things we do here," said Commissioner Autumn Lehrke.