News & Information

Changes in Municipal Boundary Layer Updates

Jurisdictional Changes Will Appear Much Sooner

As announced at the last San Diego Regional GIS Council meeting, SanGIS and the Assessor's Office have come to realize that the current process of annual updates of the municipal boundary layer does not satisfy the needs of the region. The current process updates the municipal boundary layer only once per year and only for those changes in which the tax rate areas (TRA) have been approved by the state. As the state provides the TRA approvals only once per year it may be months after the jurisdictional changes are in effect before they appear in the municipal boundary layer.

A number of agencies have told us that they would like to see the municipal boundary layer updated as soon as possible after the annexation and/or detachment is official and the jurisdictional control is transferred. We understand that the jurisdictional control changes are in effect once the documents are recorded by LAFCO.

To that end SanGIS and the Assessor's Office have met with LAFCO and other interested parties to develop a plan to provide updates to the municipal boundary layer to reflect annexations and detachments as they are completed throughout the year. The updates will be made once the recorded Certificate of Completion has been received from LAFCO.

SanGIS' proposed maintenance plan is as follows:

NAME
SanGIS will retain the current name for the layer – MUNICIPAL_BOUNDARIES – in the SanGIS/SANDAG Regional Data Warehouse (RDW). The layer maintained by the Assessor Office will also be included in the RDW under the name MUNICIPAL_BOUNDARIES_ASR. Metadata for both layers will clearly indicate the origin, ownership, differences, and purpose of each layer.
ATTRIBUTES
The current layer contains only two attributes: SanGIS will add four additional fields as shown below:
Attribute Name Attribute Type Attribute Description Note/Comment
CODE Text Two letter code for jurisdiction (e.g. VS) Existing attribute
NAME Text Jurisdiction name (e.g. Vista) Existing attribute
DOCYR Text Document year as shown on recorded document New attribute
DOCNO Text Document number as shown on recorded document New attribute
DOCDATE Date Date document was recorded as shown on recorded document provided by LAFCO New attribute
SUBJECT Text LAFCO Certificate of Completion subject (e.g. Hillside Meadows Reorganization") New attribute
FEATURES
SanGIS will add individual polygons for annexations to a municipal jurisdiction but will not maintain a separate polygon for the agency losing territory. That is, a polygon will be created for the "gain" but the "loss" will be reflected only by modifying the existing boundary.
UPDATES
SanGIS is on the LAFCO distribution list for annexations/detachments affecting municipal boundaries. SanGIS will update the layer when notified by LAFCO of a recorded annexation or detachment. The revised layer will be published once the new changes are made and verified in our edit environment. Data is published to the Regional Data Warehouse on a monthly basis.
RECONCILIATION
On an annual basis, SanGIS will reconcile the MUNICIPAL_BOUNDARIES layer with the MUNICIPAL_BOUNDARIES_ASR layer developed by the Assessor. This will happen when the Assessor publishes the annual TRA updates. SanGIS will accept the Assessor layer as is and use it as the basis for new annexations/detachments going forward. Individual polygons that have been created in the past year will be incorporated into the municipal boundary as shown on the Assessor's TRA updates. Annexations or detachments that have been recorded by LAFCO but not included in the Assessor layer will carry over to the next year.

SanGIS will not maintain a historical layer or archive of annexations/detachment that have been incorporated into the Assessor's TRA municipal boundary layer.

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