St. Charles, IL – Delaware County, Indiana has selected The Sidwell Company to provide professional GIS services and a software application for agricultural land assessment. Sidwell’s GIS-based solution, Farmland Assessment and Report Management System (FARMS™) will aid the jurisdiction’s assessment officials in the task of efficiently calculating valuations on agricultural land use for agricultural tax parcels. The company will utilize existing soils files and create the agricultural land use file for use in performing countywide computations on agricultural parcels. The data and the software assist Delaware County in arriving at fair and equitable valuations. . One distinctive advantage of this ArcGIS®-compliant software solution for agricultural tax assessment is the ease with which the generated data can be exported to various formats for the purpose of complete system integration. Additional features of the software module include the ability to set up user-defined tolerances for easily identifying discrepancies between assessed and measured acreages, the ability to then “normalize” these acreage discrepancies, and the capabilities to create customized thematic maps for presentation, set spot symbol placements, and record related comments for each parcel.

Sidwell will also provide Delaware County with on-site, specialized training that focuses on the use of the FARMS™ software, covering basic operations for processing agricultural parcels, all processing tools and reporting features of the system, and the different user customizations that are available within the reporting application. This project will streamline the process of agricultural property assessment and future land records updates for Delaware County.

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About Sidwell
For over 80 years, The Sidwell Company has provided outstanding products and services, evolving and innovating every step of the way. Sidwell is an employee-owned firm providing integrated land records management solutions and GIS mapping and software development to local government and private-sector organizations across the United States. Sidwell’s premier parcel mapping solution, Parcel Builder™, is currently used by over 140 customers nationwide. Sidwell also offers a full range of aerial photography and photogrammetric services, and is the Midwest Distributor for Magellan™ GPS products and solutions. For more information about Sidwell services and products, call 877.SIDWELL (877.743.9355) or visit www.sidwellco.com.