Parcel mapping in the Windham Region

Introduction
Vermont is one of only a few states in the country where property records are maintained at the town level. Each individual town is responsible for these property records, which may include parcel, or "tax" maps. This page attempts to correlate information on the parcel maps of the 27 towns in southeastern Vermont that comprise the Windham Region.

Parcel mapping in Vermont
The level to which a town's parcels are mapped varies from town to town. Some towns have up-to-date parcel data in GIS format, while other towns have no parcel mapping of any kind. The State of Vermont, through the Vermont Center for Geographic Information, has created Municipal Property Mapping Guidelines. You can access these guidelines, as well as find out more information on parcel mapping in Vermont, by visiting VCGI's Parcel Mapping FAQ page.

Towns, and their parcel mapping contractors, are encouraged, but not required, to conform to the Municipal Property Mapping Guidelines for both paper and digital map products. As a result, the format, scale, accuracy, and content of parcel maps in the Windham Region varies widely. For more information on parcel mapping in Vermont, visit VCGI's property mapping page.

In 1991, the State of Vermont offered towns the opportunity to have their parcel maps digitized into an Arc/Info GIS coverage at no cost to the towns. Ten out of the 27 towns in the Windham Region took advantage of this, and the result was the VGIS data layers PARCEL and TAXMAPZ. For many of these ten towns, these are still the only available digital parcel data. Some of these towns, and others, however have updated their data since 1991.

Digital Data File Formats
Digital parcel data that fully meets VGIS Municipal Mapping Standards will generally contain two Arc/Info coverages, PARCEL and TAXMAPZ.

PARCEL contains parcel boundaries; polygon attributes include the parcel number, while arc attributes include the type of arc (e.g. parcel boundary, town line, etc.) and whether or not the arc corresponds to a surface water feature. TAXMAPZ contains lines on tax maps that do not correspond to parcel boundaries, mainly land hooks (those Z-shaped thingees falling in two separate polygons that denote a common parcel) and rights-of-way. It also often contains annotation (tax map text) depicting parcel numbers and acreages.

Many digital parcel data do not fully conform to the VGIS Standards, but these data are still extremely useful. Many contractors are developing data in either a CAD or shapefile format. Again, digital data vary greatly from town to town.

Obtaining Digital Parcel Data
The WRC will distribute digital parcel data upon request. Because every town's data tends to differ in format, we have attempted to standardize what we distribute be creating a series of similar data distribution files. We have now converted all our distribution files to ESRI shapefile format, Vermont State Plane coordinate system, meters, NAD 1983. Only shapefiles representing parcel polygons, and (if available) land hook and ROW lines (lines from TAXMAPZ) are typically distributed. For towns whose original data have features like text annotation and parcel lines with arc attributes, these data can be distributed upon special request.

Map and GIS data status
The following chart describes the status of paper and digital parcel mapping for each town in the Windham Region. The town's paper and digital mapping contractors are listed, along with notes on the currency and format of the GIS data. Below that chart is a list providing more detail on the parcel mapping contractors, and another list providing more detail on the format of the GIS data.

Town	Paper maps	Contractor	Digital data	tax- mapz?	Contractor	Current to:	Notes:
Athens	yes	Dibo	no	-	-	-
Brattleboro	yes	Cart. Assoc.	yes	yes	Cart. Assoc.	2007
Brookline	yes	Dibo	yes	yes	WRC	2003
Dover	yes	CTI	yes	no	CTI	2007
Dummerston	yes	Frank Rafferty	yes	yes	CTI	2005
Grafton	yes	Dibo	yes	yes	SS/OGIS	1991
Guilford	yes	town lister/F.R.	yes	yes	WRC	2001
Halifax	yes	Diana Todd	yes	yes	Diana Todd	2008
Jamaica	yes	Dauchy	no	no	-		digital data expected ?
Londonderry	yes	WRC	yes	yes	WRC	2006
Marlboro	yes	CTI	yes	yes	CTI	2006
Newfane	yes	town lister/T.S.	no	-	-		paper maps not on rectified base
Putney	yes	CTI	yes	yes	CTI	2006
Readsboro	yes	Terra-Map	yes	no	Terra-Map	2004
Rockingham	yes	Dibo	yes	no	-	1997	digital data is linework only, no poly attributes
Searsburg	yes	Dean Russell	no	-	-
Somerset	no	-	no	-	-	-
Stratton	yes	CTI	yes	yes	CTI	2007
Townshend	yes	Dauchy	yes	yes	SS/OGIS	1991
Vernon	yes	Cart. Assoc.	no	-	-	-
Wardsboro	yes	Dauchy	yes	yes	CTI	1998
Westminster	yes	Dibo	yes	yes	WRC	2005
Weston	yes	Cart. Assoc.	yes	no	Cart. Assoc.	2008
Whitingham	yes	CTI	yes	yes	CTI	2006
Wilmington	yes	CTI	yes	yes	CTI	2006
Windham	yes	Cart. Assoc.	yes	no	WRC/NHTC	2005
Winhall	yes	Cart. Assoc.	yes	yes	Cart. Assoc.	2005

Contractor abbreviations:

• Cart. Assoc. - Cartographic Associates, Inc., Littleton, N.H.
  
• Dibo - Dibernardo Associates, surveyors, Bellows Falls, Vt.
  
• Frank Rafferty - property mapper, Guilford, Vt.
  
• town lister/F.R. - Frank Rafferty, lister, Town of Guilford
  
• town lister/D.M. - Dan Menary, lister, Town of Halifax
  
• Dauchy - Dauchy Associates, surveyors, Jamaica, Vt.
  
• WRC - Windham Regional Commission, Brattleboro, Vt.
  
• town lister/T.S. - Ted Schreyer, lister, Town of Newfane
  
• Terra-Map - Terra-Map, Roger Arend, Lebenon, N.H.
  
• Dean Russell - Russell Graphics, Corning, N.Y.
  
• CTI - Cartographic Technologies, Inc., Brattleboro, Vt.
  
• SS/OGIS - Smart Scan and Vermont's Office of Geographic Information Services
  
• UVM - University of Vermont, School of Natural Resources, Burlington, Vt.
  
• NHTC - New Hampshire Technical College, Berlin, N.H.
  

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last updated 10/16/08