County looks to new provider for property info website

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

Floyd County will likely change the company that hosts a variety of online information for the County Assessor’s Office early next year.

The result should be an increase in the information available to people and businesses, and an end to the extra charge for those that want more than what had been available free to the public.

The Board of Supervisors and staff from the Assessor’s Office have discussed the topic a couple of times before Monday’s planning session.

Brandi Schmidt, deputy county assessor, has said that moving to Vanguard Appraisals Inc. to host the county property, property tax and GIS information would provide more information, would make that information easier to use, and would be less expensive than the current provider.

On Monday, Schmidt said she had talked with a representative of Schneider Geospatial, the current provider, who indicated that company could not offer the additional services that would be available through Vanguard.

Schmidt said the Assessor’s Office would like to begin working with Vanguard to get the new website up and running, and then offer it for a time along with the Schneider site while the office makes training on using the new website available to those who are interested.

Currently Floyd County is one of the few counties in the state that charges for access to some of this information, and the Assessor’s Office and county supervisors have said they would like to make it available without charge.

The supervisors sent a copy of the Vanguard contract to the County Attorney’s Office for review, but Vanguard has said it can begin work on the new site with a “handshake” agreement before the contract is signed.

Supervisor Linda Tjaden said she felt better about the change since the talk with the Schneider representative.

“Schneider has not been pro-active,” she said.

Also at the workshop meeting Monday morning, the supervisors:

• Discussed a change order for MPC Enterprises Inc. of Mount Pleasant for a reduction in charges of $233,400 for changes in specifications for precast wall panels and related materials for the new county law enforcement center project. The board could approve the change order at its regular meeting today (Tuesday).

• Received an update from county Information Technology (IT) Director Bernie Solomon on recent activities.

Solomon, who began in the newly created position in April, said he continues to work on an IT disaster recovery plan, and at a future meeting he will be asking the board for guidance on what its expectations are in an emergency.

For example, if the courthouse was destroyed by a tornado, how soon would the county expect its computer systems to be up and running, and how many people would need access to it?

He has been considering other county property such as county engineering department sites in Rockford or Nora Springs for offsite replication of the computer network — “miles away and possibly not on the same path of destruction,” he said.