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May 14, 2008

Where tax delinquent properties in Roanoke are

Today, the city of Roanoke is once again auctioning off properties on which there are unpaid local real estate taxes, assessments for weed and trash abatement, and demolition or board up costs. They do this once or twice a year. More than 30 properties are on the auction block this time, a number of which are vacant lots.

You can see the list on the city's department of billings and collections website, and there are photos on the Woltz and Associates site.

But I wondered where they were, so I tossed the list onto a map:




No surprises here, really. It's the more depressed parts of town where the pinpoints fall. But part of the story might be in where there aren't any pinpoints.

As Roanoke blogger and neighborhood activist Chris Muse points out, the presence of delinquent properties "a fairly good sign of the progression or regression of a neighborhood."

Chris is rightly proud that there's a single delinquent property on the list this time in his part of Old Southwest. I know that property, and while I haven't asked Chris, I wonder if some aren't glad to see that vacant property seeing some action and the potential for a new owner to make it a credit to the neighborhood, and not a blight on it.

That, after all, is what the city says it's up to with these tax sales. It might be a bad sign when your neighborhood is host to landowners who can't or won't pay their taxes or maintain their properties. But everytime one of those properties is turned over to a new owners, it's a new chance for the land, the house, and the neighborhood.

November 27, 2007

More on GIS

Few governments in our area don't have a GIS (geographic information system) mapping function on their website these days.

But Roanoke Times business writer Jeff Sturgeon just turned me onto a local GIS site that's offers some stuff others don't.

The Western Virginia Water Authority has a GIS that will, among other things, show you where buried utility pipes are and the topography of the land.

Just another friendly data offering from the DataSphere.

November 12, 2007

Happy National GIS Day!

Yeah, I know. Pretty geeky. I didn't know there was such a thing as National GIS Day until a news release from Roanoke City landed in my in box. It's part of the National Geographic Society's Geography Awareness Week to promote geographic literacy. The city and the Western Virginia Water Authority are offering a GIS seminar with demonstrations today from 10 a.m. until noon today in the Noel C. Taylor Municipal Building. (Sorry for the late notice.)

What's GIS? It stands for geographic information system. Basically, it's a way to access information using a map as the basis for it. What it means for you is, lots of good stuff you need to know about your locality (or one you might move to) is available now on almost every local government website. At least around here.

You can see real estate sales info, tax assessments, where schools are, where fire hydrants are, where the flood plain is, and on and on and on.

So, in honor of National GIS Day, I'm posting links to area government GIS sites in the real estate section of the DataSphere. You'll see some are better than others. Roanoke's has the most to offer. Roanoke County's offers surprisingly little by comparison, but it's still there for you. Others fall in between.

So, dive in, click around the map and see what GIS can do for you.

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Data Delivery Editor Matt Chittum dishes on the freshest, juiciest, hottest and oddest data available in the Datasphere, roanoke.com’s home for search-it-yourself databases. Read more about Matt and this blog

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