Castanet by Rachael Kimola - Story: 25733Jan. 11, 2007
Navigating the information highway has gotten a little easier for Penticton residents. The City of Penticton's website has unveiled a new “web-map” feature designed to help people learn more about the Peach City. City information technology manager, Wayne Klamut, says the new Webmap will help people find out things such as bus routes, property assessments and water main locations.
“We’re offering this as a service to improve information flow to residents, so they can use it on their own schedule,” said Klamut. He says this new feature is intended as a time saver. “It will save people a call to City Hall, it lets people do a quick site survey of properties,” says Klamut. He says while Webmap does show the location of gas lines and other utility services, anyone wanting to undertake digging on their property still needs to call the utility company before proceeding.
“Webmap is also a handy tool for residents looking for a convenient way to find out, for example, how long the fence at the back of their property is or the legal description of their lot,” says Klamut. The Webmap has received over 600 hits since arriving on the City's website on December 18 even though it hasn't yet been officially launched. The new feature can be accessed by clicking on the icon located on the right hand side of City's website. http://www.penticton.ca/main.asp
1 comment:
This is great for Penticton...but I think an even more important question would be to ask why it took the City of Penticton 3-years to create a web mapping system that took most other cities and towns 3-months to create? It's probably only a case of not having the appropriate technical expertise or skilled and knowledgeable managers who understand the technology to be able create such a project. However, wouldn't the Penticton tax-payer be somewhat angered at the thought of paying so much more for their web mapping system than what other local governments have paid for theirs? Wouldn't the Penticton tax-payer want to understand why there was so much waste during this project?
I would ask to see the costs associated with this project, and then ask why Penticton paid so much more money for their system before I start shaking hands in a symbolic gesture of "congratulations".
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