Purchasing and installing a Geographic Information System was the major topic of discussion at the Lowhill Township Board of Supervisors Jan. 5 meeting.

In an email to The Press after the meeting, Mike Siegel, township manager, said a Geographic Information System is a technology that captures, stores, analyzes and displays information tied to locations on a map. It lets a municipality see what is happening, where it is happening, and how different things relate spatially—all in one place. Think of GIS as a smart digital map layered with data, rather than a paper map.

“In Lowhill Township, GIS would serve as a central planning, operations, and decision-support system for staff, officials, and—where appropriate—the public,” he said. “GIS gives Lowhill Township one trusted, map-based system where land, zoning, infrastructure, and public safety information all come together—making planning smarter, operations more efficient, and decisions clearer.”

At the meeting Siegel began the discussion and said he recently met with Ryan Christman, engineer, and Heather Willever, GIS coordinator, both from Keystone Consulting Engineers, to discuss installing a GIS System.

“Mike asked us to meet up and go over pretty much all our capabilities with the GIS system,” Christman said. “Heather is our GIS analyst, our GIS manager, and I brought her in here two weeks ago to meet with Mike and she provided him with a letter about the GIS System and the cost.

He added the GIS System is going to tie in with the township’s Act 537 update.

“We will have the ability to put all this information into the GIS system,” he said. “I do not know enough about the details but the general gist of it is that all that information can be put into a map. All these maps will be in there.”

Christman explained to the board they will be able to click on a property and initially all that Act 537 information will come up with what type of sewage system, the condition and all that will generate for a report.

“In the future you can put any type of layer in that you desire. You can put your sign maintenance inventory on there, you can put any road conditions, anything can be entered onto those maps and that information can be brought up for each property, for each road, however you want to break it down,” Christman said. “So, there are a lot of details and many types of ways of going about it and what information you want to put on it. Our total initial setup cost is like $4,700.”

Vice Chairman Mike Divers asked Christman who would be responsible for upkeep.

Christman responded, “We would be responsible for the upkeep. We would be responsible for updating it, keeping all licenses that include all the licensing that you need for the GIS online.

Siegel said going with Keystone, the township can save a ton of money with licensing fees. He will be maintaining the system, and he wanted Christman to speak about how this would be integrated with the Act 537 update.

“Once they have that information in there, I will have 25 different layers that will go behind that everything from floodplains to steep slopes to Woodlands,” he said. “All that information is free and will be incorporated in there.”

He said some of the information will be available for the residents and some of it will not be for security reasons, but that information will be placed in house on the township’s system and property maintenance system.

“All those property records will be digitized and will be brought up on top of that,” he added. “When it is all said and done, there will be like 20 layers of information.”

Chairman Curtis Dietrich then asked Christman, “So, you said this is useful for the Act 537 update.”

“Yes, that will be the start of it, that would be the basis of it. It will be set up with that, and all that information will get put in there,” Christman said.

“Because I have two other consultants plus our website designer behind this trying to coordinate it, it is going to take Scan Tech, Keystone and our website designer a couple of months to make sure we put certain layers on the website available to the public and which ones we do not and how they get coordinated in house,” Siegel said. “My goal is to have it done by Easter, maybe sooner. I am providing this service for the residents not for the public in general.”

After further discussion, the board unanimously approved spending the $4,700 for the GIS System.

During monthly reports, Christman provided the board with an update on the Act 537 update.

“We did receive the grant from the Commonwealth Financing Authority. It was in the amount of $52,000 and some change towards the Act 537 update,” he said. “Once we get the contract back from them and signed, we can start putting some work together for the update for our portion of the report, go out and do some field surveys, send letters out first to the residents and get that going sooner than later. So, hopefully we see that in a couple of weeks if not before.”

Christman was asked if he had any sense as to what the total cost is going to be as opposed to the $52,000.

“We have done a project estimate to perform the whole plan update. I think it was $120,000 and some change. So, it was a 50/50 match. Actually it is 10 grand shorter than they’re 50percent,” he said. “We tried to get an explanation but the analyst that we are working with was not able to give us a real breakdown.”

Before the regular meeting, the board held its reorganization meeting reappointing Dietrich as chairman, Divers as vice chairman and Jack Iannantuono as board member.

Jill Seymour was named township secretary, Siegel as township manager and attorney Tom H. Dinkelacker with Norris McLaughlin, PA as general solicitor.

Other appointments included Dave Alban with Keystone Consulting Engineers as township engineer as Christman is retiring and Joe Kalusky as road foreman and Jamie Shelton as assistant road foreman.