ST. CLAIRSVILLE — Verdantas Geospatial Production Leader Dustin Reed and Associate Vice President A.J. Smith addressed St. Clairsville City Council on Monday evening.

The duo gave a presentation on what Verdantas has done for the city since partnering together in 2020. Verdantas performs geographic information system services that has helped the city with various engineering and environmental consulting as well as providing the city with data management.

According to the National Geographic website, “A geographic information system (GIS) is a computer system for capturing, storing, checking, and displaying data related to positions on Earth’s surface. GIS can show many different kinds of data on one map, such as streets, buildings, and vegetation. This enables people to more easily see, analyze, and understand patterns and relationships.”

Reed said, “Since 2020 we have been providing GIS services to the city under a yearly contract. Under that contract, I am doing updates and maintenance with Annette (St. Clairsville Finance Director Annette Nichols) and Tom (Planning and Zoning Administrator Tom Murphy) as well as offering an online mapping application that the city uses internally.”

He added that another part of the contract between the city and Verdantas required Verdantas to perform two aerial flights over the city by an unmanned aerial craft to be used as field verification when updating the GIS maps.

Reed added that another reason for the flights is if construction is done on or near a resident’s property who complains that when completing a construction project something wasn’t put back properly, the city employees are able to easily look at the aerial view of that specific location to better decide if a mistake was made.

“In conjunction with surveying we’ve been able to update the mapping per request,” Reed said.

He added that he also takes care of all of the application’s licensing as well as administrative duties for the application.

Service Director Scott Harvey added that he’s seen the mapping play a vital role in finding waterlines quickly and safely.

“As we go through this construction now we have a clear flyover picture of everything. And when the construction is done, if somebody complains that we didn’t put their driveway back together the way it was before we’ve got two views of it so we can compare and say yeah we did mess that up and we need to fix it or no that’s how it was before.” he said. “It’s been invaluable to us.”

Smith added that Verdantas attended a state of Ohio conference for GIS companies and said that the application that the company does for St. Clairsville was its key project that he showed at the conference.

“For the population that you guys have there’s not a lot of cities that are really in comparison, and that goes back to the city. Many years ago the city had a vision that you guys maintained and that’s valuable. It’s getting to the point that when the EPA wants information they no longer want paper copies they want a digital copy,” he added. ” We work with about eight different cities in Ohio and through the northeast and everyone keeps coming back asking what we did for St. Clairsville because there are just so many things that are being done that you just don’t really see being done, especially for a city at this size.”

Reed added that he believes that most of the cities the size of St. Clairsville still rely on paper copies or just the knowledge of long time city staff members.

Council member Don Vincenzo asked Smith and Reed when they first started working with the city what they planned to achieve. Reed responded that the initial goal was to first find a starting point.

“The city had some data electronically, but it wasn’t in an easy to manage format. So for the first year or two we got the software, set up the system, converted all of the data to a format that everyone could use and correct any of the data that was wrong.” Reed said. “We’re locating water valves, curb boxes, fire hydrants, manholes, catch basins and electric poles both overhead and underground.”

Vincenzo asked Reed if everything currently on the application is 100% up to date with Reed replying yes, and adding that he just updated the application this past Friday.

Mayor Kathryn Thalman added that she’s proud of council for acknowledging that the city needed the GIS system.

“A couple of times before you had this done someone would be like ‘where’s that pipe’ and somebody would say, ‘I’m pretty sure it was by that tree over there.’ Well that tree is gone and another one’s been planted. So that was not a good way to get information and I’m really proud of all of us for saying that this is what needed to happen.”

Reed said that Murphy and Nichols gives him updates from surveying roughly once every month or two which allows him to keep the application constantly up to date.

Vincenzo replied, “I don’t know if everybody else is impressed at what we’re seeing, but this is a lot more detailed and a lot more information imputed than we have ever had.”