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Working without a map By Randy A. Salas
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | (MCT) Web Search's answer to a recent reader question about finding the coordinates of a property online led to a good follow-up clarification by a county official in the know.When readers Betty and Gary Dagen wrote to ask how they could find the coordinates to their township property in Otter Tail County, Minn., to enter into their GPS system, I turned to Google Maps Mania (googlemapsmania. blogspot.com). Its owner, Mike Pegg, suggested using ACME Mapper 2.0 (mapper.acme.com) to obtain a satellite view of the property and click on its corners to get the coordinates -- something the Dagens said they had been unable to get from the county.That answer didn't sit well with Thomas Veenker, land survey coordinator for Aitkin County, Minn. A registered land surveyor, he criticized the information as being misleading to the general public."You cannot get accurate coordinates for your property corners from the mapping database quoted," he said in an e-mail.He said he gets the same question -- "Can you give me the coordinates (latitude/longitude) of my property corners so I can take my handheld GPS receiver and find them?" -- from property owners every day. His answer is always no."By giving your readers the impression they can do this is probably going to cause many property-line disputes," he continued. "It would take a lengthy response to explain exactly why this is the case, but basically there are too many 'built-in' inaccuracies in a 'mapping' database and the fact that one's handheld GPS unit is not accurate enough."I asked Jef Poskanzer, who created ACME Mapper, what he thought about the issue. He replied that Veenker makes a good point but that the reason he alludes to is wrong."Property boundaries are not defined in terms of longitude and latitude," Poskanzer said. "In general, property boundaries are defined by a distance and direction from a landmark such as a surveying monument."It is certainly possible to take these legal definitions from your deed, do some trigonometry and come up with longitude/latitude coordinates. However, that still won't be the legal property boundary."So, the lesson here is not to use online mapping tools as legally binding applications but as the helpful aids they are intended to be, a sentiment echoed by Google Map Mania's Pegg in a follow-up e-mail."I suppose I should have suggested that people use this data as anecdotal and not to use the data provided as 100 percent accurate," Pegg said.But he also admitted that he likes the fact that government agencies are concerned with the use of online mapping, especially if some people are turning to such websites out of frustration with bureaucratic channels."If there's something these mapping applications are doing, it's pushing the envelope for government-provided services," he said. "If it wakes them up a bit, good!" Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Randy A. Salas is a columnist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Do you have a favorite Web site or a question about how to find something on the Internet? Send a note by clicking here.
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