Transcript of Bas Webinar Feb 20 2019
NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 1
NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE
Moderator: Gregory Pewett February 20, 2019 12:00 pm CT
Coordinator: Welcome and thank you for standing by. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode until the question-and-answer session. Today’s call is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I will now turn the call over to your conference host Miss (Emily Day). You may begin.
(Emily Day): Hello everyone and welcome to our Boundary and Annexation Survey Webinar. I would like to begin first by thanking everyone for your interest in our programs and for taking time out of your schedule to attend the webinar today. Just a quick note our offices are closed today due to weather so we’re going to be conducting the webinar remotely today. We do apologize for any extraneous noise or unexpected technical difficulties we may encounter.
My name is (Emily Day) and I’m a geographer in our Partnership Communications and Outreach branch. I’ll begin our webinar by discussing some of the geographic partnership programs and providing an introduction to the Boundary and Annexation Survey (BAS). Later on my colleagues (Jonathan) and (Allison) will provide demonstrations of our digital response method showing you how to submit updates using both our Geographic Update Partnership Software and using ArcGIS. During the webinar we will open the phone lines twice for question and answer sessions - once in the middle of the webinar and once at the end.
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So I’d like to go ahead and begin by talking about our Geographic Partnership Program. The U.S. Census Bureau offers Geographic Partnership Programs in support of the Decennial Census. These programs focus on the different levels of geographies used to tabulate and disseminate data collected through various censuses and surveys.
Accurate geography is a starting point for accurate data and each of the programs I’ll discuss help to ensure that the geographies within the Census Bureau’s databases are accurate. Accurate addresses and boundaries provide the foundation for good decision making, for tribal, state and local governments. We will provide a high-level overview of the programs occurring right now at the Census Bureau including the Local Update of Census Addresses (LUCA) feedback, the Participant Statistical Areas Program (PSAP) and the New Construction program. And then we’ll finish up with the programs’ influence on the American Community Survey and the Population Estimates Program.
I will begin by touching on the importance of the Decennial Census itself as it is central to the operations here at the U.S. Census Bureau. Every 10 years as mandated by the U.S. Constitution, the entire population is counted in the location where each person usually lives. The Census Bureau counts individuals within households and typically collects information about the housing structure and the housing unit as well. The primary purpose for this is to determine the number of seats each state gets in the House of Representatives but there are numerous benefits for this data that affect communities across the nation.
Businesses use Census Bureau data when deciding where to build infrastructure such as factories, offices and stores. Developers use this data to build new homes and revitalize old neighborhoods. Local governments use NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 3 this data for emergency preparedness and public safety efforts. And even individual residents can use this data to support community initiatives involving legislation, quality of life and consumer advocacy. Census Bureau data helps to allocate more than $675 billion per year in federal funds. These are spent on schools, hospitals, roads, public works and other vital programs.
The goal of the decennial census is to count everyone once, only once, and in the right place. This slide here shows an illustration of the 2020 census design. We will start from the bottom left of the slide. The Census Bureau first establishes where to count by identifying all the addresses where people could live. For example, the LUCA and New Construction programs provide updates to the Census Bureau’s address list and spatial database, which contain the residential addresses and legal and statistical boundaries that form the “where to count.”
Next the Census Bureau must motivate people to respond by conducting a nationwide communication and partnership campaign. This campaign utilizes the Census Address List to send materials that invite and encourage households to respond.
Next, the Census Bureau counts the population by collecting data from all households including group quarters and unique living arrangements. The Census Bureau uses the address list and map to send enumerators to collect interview data from non-responding households.
And finally, the Census Bureau then releases the census results by using the address list and geographic boundaries to process, tabulate and disseminate apportionment counts to the president by December 31, 2020, redistricting data to the states by April 1, 2021, and high-quality data to the public.
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Census Bureau Geographic Partnership Programs offer eligible entities the opportunity to provide their input into the list of legal boundaries, statistical boundaries and addresses that serves as a foundation of the entire 2020 Census process. Participants in the Census Bureau’s Geographic Partnership Programs have a direct influence on the quality and completeness of the census-derived data.
Conducting a nationwide count is no small task. In order to collect accurate data, you must first have accurate data. The Census Bureau conducts numerous programs, some annually and some decennially, in order to provide the foundation. We’re going to talk about a few of them today. The Local Updated Census Address (LUCA) feedback process, the 2020 Participant Statistical Areas Program (PSAP), and the New Construction Program. And then we’ll cover a couple of our annual programs including the American Community Survey, the Population Estimates Program, and the Boundary and Annexation Survey (BAS).
Additional programs include the Redistricting Data Program and the School District Review Program. We won’t cover these today but we do encourage you to visit our website for more information on these programs.
It’s important to note the Census Bureau operates under Title 13 United States Code (U.S.C) which protects information provided to and from all partnership programs. It requires the Census Bureau to ensure the confidential treatment of census related information including individual addresses and structure points and to maintain confidentiality of all information it collects. Violating the law is a serious federal crime and anyone who violates this law will face severe penalties including a federal prison sentence of up to five years, a fine of $250,000 or both.
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Title 13 provides the following protections to individuals and businesses. The Census Bureau collects information only to produce statistics. No government agency or court can use personal information against respondents. The U.S. Census Bureau never publishes private information. It is against the law to disclose or publish any private information that identifies an individual or business including names, addresses (including GPS coordinates), social security numbers, and telephone numbers.
The Census Bureau staff is legally required to maintain the confidentiality of your data. Every person with access to your data is sworn to protect Title 13 data and the data you share for life. They understand that the penalties for violating this law are applicable for a lifetime.
With that out of the way we’ll go ahead and start by providing an update on the 2020 Local Update of Census Addresses Operation (LUCA). As you may know LUCA is a decennial opportunity for tribal, state and local governments to review Census Bureau address lists and both provide new addresses and correct existing ones. LUCA was authorized by the Census Address List Improvement Act of 1994, implemented in support of the 2000 census, and refined for the 2010 census.
Overall, 11,550 governments registered to participate and as of January 28, 2019, 8,411 governments responded. This includes 95% of housing and 95.5% of population coverage. So if you guys were part of this number we do thank you for participating in our LUCA Program. And here’s just a map so you can see visually what the respondents look like. Labeled in green you’ll find tribal respondents. Orange (I don’t think there are any on the map) are Alaska Native Region respondents. The blue are county respondents and the yellow are state respondents.
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In August 2019, 2020 LUCA participants will begin to receive feedback materials from the Census Bureau. The feedback will include an updated address list, address count list, and maps in the same format as the original 2020 LUCA materials. The Census Bureau will also provide a detailed feedback list that summarizes the actions taken by the Census Bureau for each address submitted by your government as part of its 2020 LUCA submission. Title 13 U.S. code protection applies to all feedback materials.
The Census Bureau mailed 2020 LUCA materials to participants from March through November 2018. Address submission completed in the fall of 2018 and as of today participants should have submitted their updates. The Census Bureau has processed all 2020 LUCA submissions and is currently in the process of validating the 2020 LUCA addresses. Future submission processing and LUCA address validation will continue through April 2019. In August 2019 the Census Bureau will begin to deliver LUCA feedback to participants.
Next we’ll cover the 2020 Participant Statistical Area’s Program (PSAP). This program focuses on working with our geographic partners. PSAP allows invited participants to review and update selected statistical boundaries for 2020 census data tabulation including Census Bureau guidelines and criteria. The Census Bureau will also use the statistical areas defined for the 2020 census and to tabulate data for the annual American Community Survey estimates and economic census.
Participating in the 2020 PSAP will allow governments the opportunity to review the Census Bureau’s 2010 statistical areas and the 2020 census proposed statistical areas, and either accept or update these areas. If participants disagree with the 2020 proposed statistical areas they will be able to use the 2010 census statistical area geography as a base to make updates. NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 7
Participants can respond using our GUPS software and tribal governments will have the opportunity to respond via paper map or using GUPS.
There are two types of statistical geographies available for review under the PSAP. The first is standard statistical geography, including Census Tracts, Block Groups, Census Designated Places, and Census County Divisions. Tribal statistical geography includes Tribal Census Tracts, Tribal Block Groups, Census Designated Places, Tribal Designated Statistical Areas, State Designated Tribal Statistical Areas, Alaskan Native Village Statistical Areas, Oklahoma Tribal Statistical Areas, and Statistical Tribal Subdivisions.
Keeping the schedule in mind will prepare you for upcoming tasks and actions. The PSAP invitation phase ended in October 2018. January 2019 marks the beginning of the PSAP delineation phase. The Census Bureau is currently in the process of distributing materials to registered participants. Participants will have 120 calendar days to review and submit their updates to the Census Bureau. January also marked the beginning of PSAP webinar training to ensure participants have the necessary information to complete their PSAP delineation phase updates. We encourage everyone to check our website regularly for webinar information and to see who their program contacts are.
In July 2019 participants will be notified of the close out of the delineation phase and then from July 2019 to January 2020 the Census Bureau will process PSAP delineation submissions. In January 2020 the PSAP verification phase begins and participants have 90 calendar days to review and submit their updates to the Census Bureau.
The next program I’ll introduce is the 2020 New Construction Program. This program focuses on working with our geographic partners to collect updates NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 8 to the residential address list the Census Bureau maintains. The New Construction Program provides a voluntary opportunity for designated representatives of tribal, state and local governments to update the Census Bureau’s residential address list with new city style addresses. This program helps to ensure that the Census Bureau’s address list is as compete and accurate as possible on census day.
Construction of the new living quarters must be in progress during or after March 1, 2018, and the new residents must be completed -- in other words closing the structure to the elements - by April 1, 2020. Participation in LUCA is not a prerequisite for participation in the New Construction Program. For the 2020 New Construction Program, group quarters and transitory locations are considered eligible addresses.
The types of governments eligible for the New Construction Program include federally recognized tribes of the reservation and/or off-reservation trust land, states, counties, cities, and townships. It’s important to note that the 2020 New Construction Program, unlike PSAP, does not have an option to make updates via paper maps. There’s only one participation method and that is digital.
There are, however, two digital options available for participants. There’s a basic digital option and an advanced digital option. The basic digital option is the preferred method and allows users to make updates using our GUPS software. For more experienced GIS users, we also offer the opportunity to download our partnership files and digital address list with templates. Users who opt for either method will need a SWIM token which will offer a secure method to send their updates. Please note that participants will have 45 calendar days to complete their review. There will be no extensions.
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Looking at the schedule, the program will begin in April 2019. Invitation letters and registration forms will be mailed to Highest Elected Officials, Tribal Chairs, and Governors. The registration deadline is June 14, 2019. Registered participants should expect to receive their program materials in September 2019. At this time, webinars will be conducted to aid in completion of the New Construction Program. Email reminders will be sent to participants in October 2019 just before the submission deadline in November 2019. And the program will close in December 2019.
As with all of our programs we encourage those interested to check our website regularly for updates. The website provides general program information, response options, schedule, and contact information.
So now that we’ve covered some of our geographic programs we’ll now cover some of the programs that use this geographic data. The American Community Survey is an annual survey that includes information about demographics, housing and social economic characteristics and shows changes within a community. Each survey includes five-year data estimates for allocation of federal funds. Some of the key information collected includes age, education, language, race, and income data. There are also housing characteristics collected including number of bedrooms, whether the occupant rents or owns the dwelling and if plumbing is available.
The Population Estimate’s Program produces estimates of the population for the U.S., states, counties, cities and towns as well as the commonwealth of Puerto Rico and its municipios. The program uses current data on births, deaths and migrations to calculate population change since the most recent Decennial Census. This program also produces time periods of estimates of population, demographic change, and housing units.
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If at any time you have specific questions regarding one of the partnership programs mentioned in this presentation, please do not hesitate to contact us. Each program has an email address and a phone number you can contact. Additionally, I have included the website hyperlink for all our surveys and programs.
We’ll now provide an introduction to another annual program, the Boundary and Annexation Survey before beginning our demonstrations.
We will now provide a detailed presentation on the BAS Program. This will be followed by two demonstrations. The first demonstration is for those interested in using the Geographic Update Partnership Software (GUPS) and the second demonstration will detail how to download and update U.S. Census Bureau shape files using ArcMap.
The Boundary and Annexation Survey (BAS) is an annual survey to collect information about the updated legal status, boundary changes, and names for tribal, state and local governments. During the BAS governments will submit name changes, incorporations, disincorporations, annexations and the annexations that occurred and were legally in effect on or before January 1 of the BAS year. We are currently conducting the 2019 BAS.
These legal boundaries determine governmental unit population counts and are used for the American Community Survey and Population Estimate’s Program. Boundary updates must be reported by participants by March 1st to be reflected in the American Community Survey and Population Estimate data. However, we accept boundary changes to be submitted through May 31st. Data received between March 2nd and May 31st will be reflected in the following year’s BAS materials.
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In compliance with the office of management and budget circular A-16 the BAS supports the spatial data steward responsibilities of various federal agencies by updating the inventory of boundaries for governmental units. The BAS information also provides the framework for both the results of the decennial censuses and programs such as the LUCA and PSAP discussed earlier, as well as annual programs such as the Population Estimates Program and the American Community Survey.
As we mentioned in the Geographic Partnership Program presentation the data disseminated by the U.S. Census Bureau helps the Federal Government allocate $675 billion to communities. The data from our programs and surveys provides important information for community planning and decision making and education, housing and healthcare opportunities and services for the elderly just to name a few.
So how do you participate in BAS? You must first determine your BAS contact. It’s usually provided by a local or state government through the BAS Annual Response Form. In some instances, the State Data Center will provide this information during the telephone follow up phase of BAS. For federally recognized tribes the BAS materials are mailed to the Tribal Chair unless another contact is identified. If we are unable to establish a contact, we’ll reach out to the local planning or GIS Department.
And if we’re still unable to establish a contact after that, we’ll mail the materials to the Highest Elected Official which is also provided by the local or state government. In January of each year the BAS response letters are emailed to the BAS contacts, Highest Elected Official or Tribal Chair for all governmental units.
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Every January, the Census Bureau sends an annual response letter to all participating governments. Once the government receives the BAS annual response letter they should review their boundaries and report any updates to the BAS contact, Highest Elected Official or Tribal Chair. If the government indicates they have boundary changes to report, they should decide how they wish to report the changes, whether digitally or via paper maps.
The BAS contact, Highest Elected Official or Tribal Chair should then complete the Annual Response Form, provide updates to the contact information if applicable and notify the Census Bureau whether their entity has boundary changes to report. And we will provide you an overview of the Annual Response Form at the end of the presentation.
So this slide illustrates the importance of reviewing boundaries annually and submitting updates to the Census Bureau through the BAS. The red boundary displayed on the slide shows the local government’s representation of their boundary. The purple boundary shows the U.S Census Bureau’s representation of that same boundary. One possible reason why these boundaries may differ is that annexations were never reported to the Census Bureau through the BAS. As you see at the top of the image a housing development is included in this area. If the Census Bureau does not include that populated area in the local government’s boundary, the data estimates that the Census Bureau tabulates and disseminates through the decennial census, American Community Survey and Population Estimates Program will be inaccurate.
As mentioned earlier the data disseminated from the U.S. Census Bureau affects the distribution of approximately $675 billion in federal funds. This discrepancy could affect the distribution of those federal funds within this community. So what happened here is that in the 2015 BAS and the 2016 NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 13
BAS there was no response. And then in the 2017 BAS the government reported no changes. So this is why it’s really important to review your boundaries before you complete the annual response one. And we’ll show you how to do that when we give you a demonstration of the website.
As mentioned earlier there are three participation methods for BAS. For those of you with a basic understanding of GIS we offer our Geographic Update Partnership Software or GUPS. It’s a QDIS-based open source platform software so it’s free to use. You can download it from our website or you can request a disk with the software and the Census Bureau will send it to you.
For more experienced GIS users, we also offer the ability to download GIS shape files from our website and make updates to them using ArcGIS software or any other GIS software you may use. And for those who really are not comfortable with either of those options we also offer the option to make annotations on paper maps that the Census Bureau will provide.
The schedule for BAS is the same each year. We send out notifications in January and ask for responses by March 1st. Boundary updates submitted by March 1st are reflected in the American Community Survey and the Population Estimates, which may impact funding distributions. If this is too cumbersome we do provide a second deadline of May 31st where the data will be integrated but not part of the ACS or population estimates for that year. In January and February, the Census Bureau provides workshop and webinar training to interested participants. As you can see on the slide we’re trying to sync all of our programs to the December-May schedule in response to requests for ease of participation.
I’ll talk about some of the programs that go along with BAS the first of which being State Agreements. There are states that have the option to enforce laws NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 14 that require local governments to report all boundary changes to a state level agency. These State Agreements reduce burden and costs to local governments, improve completeness of boundary data collected and improve the efficiency of data collection.
The Census Bureau currently maintains BAS State Agreements with 11 states and is working to establish new agreements with interested state governments. There are two types of BAS State Agreements. Under the first type of agreement the state reports boundary changes for all incorporated places, minor civil divisions (if applicable) and counties within jurisdiction to the annual BAS. The Census Bureau currently maintains this type of state agreement with Alaska, Arkansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Tennessee, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin. So all the states you see in green there are covered by this type of state agreement.
Under the second type of agreement the state provides the Census Bureau with a list of local governments that reported boundary changes to the state The Census Bureau then uses this list to target those local governments for the BAS. And the Census Bureau currently maintains this type of agreement with Georgia shown here in red.
So here are two graphics. The graphic on the left shows a state with a state agreement. I’m sorry the left shows a state without a state agreement. Each participating government reports legal boundary changes directly to the Census Bureau in addition to their county and state governments. And then on the right is a graphic that represents a state agreement. The state collects legal boundary changes from local and county governments and the state level agency then reports directly to the Census Bureau.
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We also offer a consolidated BAS or CBAS agreements where county governments can report boundary changes for governmental units within their jurisdiction. It doesn’t require every government to sign up so if some of the governments within your county boundary want to be part of the CBAS agreement they can; not every government is obligated to sign up.
Once a local government does agree to the consolidation the local government will no longer receive BAS materials and instead the county BAS respondent will be responsible for providing the Census Bureau with all boundary updates. As with the State Agreement, this reduces burden and costs to local governments, encourages completeness of boundary data collected and improves efficiency of data collection. And as of now we currently maintain CBAS agreements with 347 counties.
And we also offer the BAS State Certification program. The Census Bureau is responsible for collecting and maintaining correct legal boundary information. And the BAS State Certification program allows state governments to verify that legal boundary changes and governmental unit status changes reported to the BAS are in fact legal. A governor appointed State Certifying Official can review the accuracy and completion of the boundary and attribute information.
The extent of state certification varies depending on each states’ laws for incorporation, disincorporations and boundary changes. In some states the State Certifying Official has the authority to request the Census Bureau edit or delete changes submitted during BAS. In states without such provisions the Census Bureau will not edit or revert changes without conferring with the local government. In strong law states the SCO may notify the Census Bureau of any missing or illegal boundary information.
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In states without such provisions the Census Bureau will not edit or revert changes without conferring with the local government. In strong law states the state certifying official may notify the Census Bureau of any missing or illegal boundary changes. The Census Bureau sends a discrepancy letter to the local entity describing the issue and encourages them to work with the proper state authorities to resolve the discrepancy. After resolving the issue, the entity may submit the valid boundary change to the BAS. If there are any boundary changes missing from the Census Bureau file the entity may simply report the missing boundary change to the BAS.
It’s important to note that in the event an area of land is in dispute between two or more jurisdictions we will not make boundary changes until the parties come to a written agreement or there’s a documented final court decision regarding the matter or dispute.
Next up we’ll talk about the Boundary Validation Program or BVP which is a decennial opportunity for Highest Elected Officials and Tribal Chairs to ensure the accuracy of the legal boundaries for their jurisdiction prior to the 2020 Census. This program will take place next year and will coincide with the 2020 BAS.
The 2020 BVP will cover all federally recognized tribes with reservations and/or off-reservation trust land, all actively functioning counties or county equivalents, incorporated places, all functioning minor civil divisions, and municipios, barrios, barrio pueblos and sub-barrios in Puerto Rico.
The 2020 Boundary Validation Program is conducted in two stages. The BVP initial and the BVP final stage. Approximately two weeks after we send the regular BAS annual response letters we will mail the BVP initial materials to all Highest Elected Officials and Tribal Chairs who will then have 10 days to NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 17 respond. We instruct Highest Elected Officials and Tribal Chairs to work with their BAS contact to update their boundaries. The BAS contact will be provided on the BVP form.
The second stage is the BVP final stage. In late May and early June, we will mail the BVP final materials to the Highest Elected Officials and Tribal Chairs of governments that reported changes either to the BVP initial stage or the 2020 BAS by March 1. Highest Elected Officials and Tribal Chairs of governments use boundaries on one paper map sheet will be mailed a paper map on which to review their boundaries. Governments that are on two or more map sheets will receive their maps as PDFs on CD or DVD. During the BVP final stage participants will also have the opportunity to use GUPS to compete their review.
Now on our BAS website which we encourage everyone to visit you can find our respondent guides, webinar training, maps and shape files, forms, program information and schedules. And we will take you to that website right after this presentation. But in the meantime for any further questions please contact the geographic program support desk and for specific BAS support please contact 1-800-972-5651 or you can email
So now we’re going to show you a demonstration of our BAS websites and we’ll start from the beginning. You can open up a web browser. It can be any web browser and go to a search engine. This is usually how I get to the website. I just type in Census Bureau BAS. And it’s usually the first option here that pops up. Now on this website you’ll find any amount of information that you need in order to compete the BAS. But I’m going to highlight the “How to Get Started” tool because it’s the most useful.
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So if I’m a government and I’m going to submit to the BAS, I must first review the boundary using one of the following options – TIGER web partnership shape files, GUPS download, or 2019 paper maps. Right now I’m going to give you an overview of our TIGER web because that is the recommended tool to review your boundaries.
Now when you open TIGER web you have the option here to select many different map layers. For BAS, I suggest selecting the places and county subdivisions. Now it’s also important to note we don’t recommend the use of this search bar. Sometimes it gets you where you need to be, sometimes it doesn’t. So we recommend using this query tool instead. So we’re going to select - now we want place and county subdivisions. I usually just select all of these. And I am from Frederick, Maryland, so we’ll just type in that. I’m sorry I think we just type in Frederick, hit submit, give it a few seconds to think and we were successful.
So here you’ll find an overlay of Frederick. You’ll see Frederick’s boundaries. We’ll go back to our legend or layers. Now here’s where you would take the opportunity to review your boundaries. And you can do that by comparing the Frederick boundary with these places and subdivisions. Also important to note that you can switch from the satellite to land mass. And this is really useful because it gives you a better chance to see how your community may have changed and where you might need to make changes to your legal boundary.
For example, I’m trying to find a good one. Here’s a good one here. So this here looks, like, a new subdivision. So this might be a good pool for somebody to say, you know, let’s review this boundary to make sure that the legal boundary doesn’t change to include this new subdivision in here.
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So that’s TIGER web. We’ll go back to our Website. So let’s say I reviewed my boundaries. I determined they’re all correct or that they need changes and if you do need more instructions on reviewing boundaries you do have a PDF document here. You’ll also want to review the legal boundary change and annexation data that was submitted previously through the BAS just to confirm that the Census Bureau correctly recorded it. And once you’ve done that you’ll complete the Annual Response Form.
So I’ll go ahead and click respond now. The form will populate. Ordinarily I would stick my BAS I.D. and my entity name in here. However, to protect the privacy of the Highest Elected Official and BAS contact information, I’m not going to do that. But once you enter that information you’ll either select your boundaries; do not have boundary changes to report; or the government does have boundary changes and you’ll select which response method you want to use. It’s important to note even if you do not have boundary changes: please select and complete the Annual Response Form anyway as we won’t have to do any non-response follow up with your government.
Once you selected those options you will then review the Highest Elected Official or Tribal Chair contact information and the BAS contact information. If any of this information has changed from previous years you can go ahead and make the changes in this Annual Response Form and then once you’re done you will click submit. Now after you’ve responded and let’s say that you do have changes to report, you can look at the BAS response methods if you’re not really sure how you want to submit.
You can look in here. You’ll find a lot of information. You’ll find respondent guides. You’ll find information on the specific response method. You can look through GUPS. We have GUPS respondent guides. For paper BAS we offer the opportunity to view the paper BAS respondent guide. You NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 20
can print out any 2019 maps that we have. And then the last thing I want to show you on this page is the YouTube videos that we have. We do offer videos for digital BAS, GUPS and paper. They’re all on YouTube. And they will show you step by step how to submit your boundary changes using those methods.
And you go back here that you responded or once you’ve completed your review and completed your updates in QGIS or GUPS you can use this tool to access SWIM. If you don’t already have a SWIM token please email the go.bas@census gov and we can give you a registration token. But this is where you’ll enter your email, password.
Once you login, you’ll use the secure Web incoming module to submit your updates to the BAS. You can also find information on paper - I’m sorry, state agreements, consolidated or CBAS agreements. As I said we’ve got respondent guides. We have response letters, response methods. If you look at geographies we have reference maps, mapping files, mapping tools, and reference files.
So the Website is a wealth of information. We do encourage you all to visit. The respondent guides especially are very helpful and then you can also look for the BAS schedule and any sort of information on the main page as well.
So with that I will go ahead and open up the phones for any Q&A sessions or for any questions and answers that you guys have.
Coordinator: We will now begin our formal question and answer session. If you would like to ask your question please unmute your phone, press Star 1. Only record your first and last name. To withdraw your question, you may press Star 2. Once again to ask your question please press Star 1 on your touchtone phone. NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 21
One moment for the first question. Once again to ask your question by phone please press Star 1. We have no questions at this time.
(Emily Day): Okay well with that I think we will go ahead and take a five minute break and we’ll get started again at 1:50. And (Allison) and (Jonathan) will give us some demonstrations on how to submit to BAS.
(Allison Schaeffer): Good afternoon and welcome back from the break. My name is (Allison Schaeffer) and I’m a geographer at the U.S. Census Bureau. I’ll be providing you some further information about two of our BAS response methods - our digital methods with include using the Geographic Update Partnership Software or GUPS or your own commercial GIS software such as QGIS. And then my colleague (Jonathan) and I will provide technical demonstrations on how to create your digital BAS submissions using those methods.
So in order to participate in the BAS using one of our digital methods you should have a little bit of experience - just some rough experience using GIS software. You should have the ability to use our Geographic Update Partnership Software or GUPS or other GIS software that can open shape files that you can view. You’ll also want to make sure you have contact information available for your BAS context as well as your Highest Elected Officials and any other contact. If you’re not specifically the BAS contact but you’re the one filling out for completing the BAS we’d also want you to provide that information as well.
And then additionally if you want to submit - if you’re submitting boundary changes such as annexations or de-annexations or of course new incorporation or just incorporation, we’ll need the legal documentation information for those. And we’ll get a little further into that as we go along.
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So first I want to touch base on what your submissions are impacting. So when you send the Census Bureau back your Boundary Annexation Survey submission, we then take your submission and include it into our master address file topologically integrated geographic and coding referencing system or what you may know as MAF/TIGER. The MAF/TIGER database automates the mapping and related geographic activities that are required to support the U.S. Census Bureau’s survey programs.
So this MAF/TIGER database includes features of our data that represent roads, rivers, our statistical geographies, like, census tracts and blocks that (Emily) mentioned get updated through PSAP as well as your legal boundaries that you’re updating through the BAS. It’s very important to understand that the information stored in the MAF/TIGER database is stored in one integrated layer as opposed to multiple individual data layers.
So if you’re using GIS software in your day to day functions you might have a layer that represents your roads and then a separate shape file layer that represents your reverse or one that represents your boundaries and multiple different types of boundaries.
So at the Census Bureau we have one integrated layer that represents all of our line features which we call our edges layer. That’ll represent our rivers or linear features such as your roads or maybe non-visible boundaries. We have bases which make up, our - are made up from the edges and are treated as polygons that hold your information for each geography. And then we also have points which might include where certain landmarks are.
So it’s important when you’re making your update to realize that one change of an edge could be representing or is representing in the Census Bureau’s NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 23 database multiple geographies. So it’s good to be a little careful when you’re modifying to take into account the effect that one small change might have.
So this slide here shows a good illustration of how our MAF/TIGER database topological relationship is within the database. So you see as I mentioned here that we have our edges altogether which might represent a river with the boundary of your governments and the boundary of a census tract. And then those edges create a polygon which creates a face would go inside that polygon. And that face would have all of the information from the tract. And then you see that they all kind of integrate together into one-layer housing all of this geographic information.
So back to what you’ll receive when you’re participating in the BAS using a digital method. So for the Geographic Update Partnership Software or GUPS you will receive either the GUPS software on DVD or you can download it directly from our BAS Website. You’ll be able to determine which type of material you’d like to receive one that Annual Response Form that (Emily) went over. So you can determine whether you’d like to receive the shape files and the DVD or if you plan to download.
You can also report if you are planning to use paper that way. Or for our QGIS version we’re using your own GIS author. You can also note that you plan to download the shape file which we have available on the Website. Or if you’d like the states’ files on a disk.
Also available as far as materials for all of our response methods are the respondent guide. You’ll find those on the BAS Website. And then additionally which isn’t on the slide here we have one other material that’s very helpful to our participants in relation to the QGIS or your own commercial GIS software submission. And that is our new BAS partnership NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 24 toolbox which can also be downloaded from the BAS Website. Then we’ll go into a demonstration on how to use that toolbox here this afternoon.
And then for all digital BAS participants you will need to use the secure web incoming module or SWIM to submit your return. So you’ll receive a SWIM token through email if you haven’t already - if you don’t already have one. You can use your SWIM account that you’ve set up for other programs for all of the Census Bureau’s programs. So you won’t receive another SWIM token if you already have a SWIM account.
The SWIM tokens come out if you’ve filled out the online form and selected one of our digital methods you’ll receive your SWIM token within five days of submitting the online response form. Additionally, you can email
So a little bit more information about GUPS. So GUPS is a free user friendly tool that the Census Bureau offers. It’s based off of QGIS and its free. So you can download it and use it without having to sign contracts or having to pay a lot of money. Also GUPS doesn’t require a whole lot of GIS experience. The current version that we’re using is 9.0.5-2 and that’ll make sure it has all the - if you’re using GUPS you’ll want to make sure to download it off of the BAS Website so that you have the most current version because it has changes available.
So if you’ve used GUPS for another program such as maybe you’ve used it for LUCA, you’ll want to make sure you download the current version of the BAS Website for BAS because it’ll house that updated data. Then again for all of our response methods we do have the digital GUPS respondent guide NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 25 and quick start guide online that you can download or if you receive the software via DVD it’ll come on the DVD.
So the second way to participate digitally is through the use of your own GIS software and using the Census Bureau’s GIS partnership shape files. So with trading a response using your own software you’ll download the Census Bureau’s shape files and compare them to your own. We now have a tool that does this for you and then you provide the proper attribution. So basically in order to use the digital BAS response method using our GIS, you would need to be able to run geoprocessing tools and you would need to be able to update attribute information and attribute tables.
So all of the shape files are available for download on the BAS Website. When we’re looking for when you are using RTIS if we’re not looking for your entire shape files for your government that you may have, what we’re looking is these change polygons that are created when you run geoprocessing tools. And we will get into that during the RTIS demo.
So when you are preparing your BAS submission in your attribute table for your GIS shape files, you’ll want to make sure that you include the required attributes. So what we’re looking for is the name of your government, the type of change. So if it’s an annexation, BNX station, a new incorporation or if it’s just a boundary correction, we’re looking for the effective date that the change went in place. We’re also looking for the authorization type. So what authorizer change to occur whether it was a resolution or ordinance. And then we’re looking for the documentation number of the legal action that took place that allowed this change to go into effect.
So we also do ask for area or the acreage of the change. However, it’s optional except if you’re in the State of Georgia. And then we look for a NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 26 relation field which tells us whether you’re acquiring land or if the land’s leaving your government. And again this is all outlined on the digital BAS quick start guide and in the digital BAS respondent guide. That quick start guide’s a really good place to start so you know all of the attribution you need as well as it kind of walks you through getting started with your submission.
So we’ve kind of touched base a little bit on this. But some of the eligible updates that are available when you are reviewing your boundaries and submitting your BAS submission we are looking for of course boundary updates. These include annexations, de-annexations, new incorporations, disincorporations, boundary corrections and if need be geographic offsets and corridors.
Also through the BAS you are able to update for other different features to make sure that the Census Bureau has the information that you would like us to have for the government. So we do offer updates to linear features such as roads. You’re able to add roads, remove roads and then modify them so if an attribute is incorrect, the name’s incorrect or the feature classification code is incorrect, you’re able to address that through the BAS. We also do allow you to submit point landmark features such as cul-de-sac and traffic circles and also area landmark features such as water bodies, airports, parks and cemeteries. And all of this is outlined in the respondent guide. So it does tell you which types of different features we do accept for BAS. There are some we don’t.
So for legal boundary updates these include your annexation, de-annexation, incorporations and disincorporations. We do require that you provide some information in order for us to process these. So again we need for a legal boundary change we need the entity name, your change type so the annexation or de-annexation, the legal documentation number of this change, the NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 27 authorization type and the effective date. We don’t require you to submit the documentation paperwork but sometimes it does help when we are going through so that we don’t have to when we’re reviewing the changes reach back out to you in case, you know, you might have forgot to put the date or something, like, that.
And then we do also allow participants to submit boundary corrections. So what we consider a boundary correction is something that follows the shape to a certain extent. So it’s not significantly changing what the shape of the current boundary looks like. It might be off a couple of feet. It might be off, like, 50 feet. But as long as it follows that same shape of what the current boundary is in the Census Bureau’s boundary shape file, we will basically call that a boundary correction. Now if it affects housing and it looks more, like, an annexation we would require that annexation paperwork.
But these corrections are minor adjustments to boundaries. They are probably from years of maybe paper maps being used as opposed to digital submissions or people not responding in the past. And these boundary corrections don’t require any legal documentation.
And then finally you can also update linear features as I mentioned through the BAS. What we are looking for though is not your entire road centerline file. We can’t process that unfortunately. So what you’d want to do is you’d want to kind of compare your shape file to ours using geoprocessing tools that are in your QGIS software or commercial software or you could use the GUPS software which (Jonathan) will go over how to manually enter in and add and delete features. And again there is specific information we’re looking for when collecting additional features. So if it’s a road we need the name of the road. If it’s a linear feature that’s non-visible we would just need the MFCC or the MAF/TIGER feature classification code. NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 28
And now without further ado, we’ll go ahead and get started on providing you with the technical demonstrations. I’m going to switch it over to my colleague (Jonathan) and he’s going to give you a great demonstration on using the Geographic Update Partnership Software for preparing your BAS submission.
(Jonathan): Hello everyone. Just one minute until we get us switched over. So I’m (Jonathan) and I’m here to show you intricacies of BAS. So just in case your computer scared the GUPS software is as easy to use as the Google Maps or Google Earth. So if you know how to use those you should be able to use this just fine.
So the first thing you want to do is you want to go to the BAS Website as described by my colleagues. And then you could click on how to get started or you can scroll down to the GUPS download installation instruction. So I’m going to click on the how to get started. And then how to participate in Step 1A you click on download and install instruction. And it’ll then go to the download install instruction page.
And you will then download the GUPS software. It will download into a zip file. I downloaded it just an hour ago. And it will have three files and a folder. You’ll unzip this easily by just clicking the unzip using WinZip for this demonstration. And then you will once it’s unzipped you’ll click on that folder - the GUPS folder that will be probably in your temporary drive and click on the setup.datfile. And then it will take about two, three minutes. It will install and create a lovely GUPS software onto your machine.
Again if you’re having any issues or problems with this installation, first I would go to your I.T. department. Usually they lockdown computers. So you NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 29 want to make sure you have administrative rights for your machine. And then if you’re still having issues you can email us at
So once you’ve installed your software you will then go to your start program menu and then under all programs you’ll see a QGIS folder. Mine says QGIS VDI just because we’re using a special VDI software for this. So you’re going to see a number of different programs that got installed. And you don’t want to choose the browser. You don’t want to choose OSGEO or grass. You want to choose QGIS desktop2_18_15. Not with the grass just plain and simple QGIS desktop.
So take a few minutes. QGIS I should mention too if you go onto the QGIS Website there’s an option to install QGIS 3 because we’re a government entity we haven’t gotten that far. Hopefully next year we’ll have GUPS ready for QGIS 3. So right now we’re using QGIS 2.18. The first thing you’ll see is QGIS tips. You can press okay. And then if it’s installed correctly you should see the map management window come up.
Now this will allow you to look at any program that’s the census uses such as PSAP or LUCA. And we’re going to choose the boundary and annexation survey. If you’re a tribal entity you’re going to choose the tribal boundary and annexation survey. Then you’re going to choose a subprogram. For our purposes we’re going to use the boundary and annexation survey. You also have the option of other subprograms such as school districts. Then you’re going to choose your state. I’m just selecting a random state and then a county.
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And once you do that that map management screen will close and another map management screen will open which will ask you which location you would like to install the software, the data from. If you ask for a DVD then you’re going to choose CD/DVD. If you have already downloaded the zip file you’re going to use the - my computer. But for primary purposes everyone is normally going to use census web. I clicked on DVD by accident. Let’s try again. So you’re going to choose census web. And it’s going to download all your shape files and all of your data and populate a map for you.
Now it’s going to ask you what type of entity you are. If you’re a county you would choose county. And if you’re a place you would choose place. And then it’s going to ask you which city in this Fayette, Indiana, you are. So I’ll choose Burlington Town. And now it’s going to name all your files and then it’s going to ask you if you’d like to download any of the counties surrounding the county that you currently selected. For the BAS program you could change just within each county.
So if your city is - you’re going to select one county first, do the change submissions for that county and then open another project and do that county. But this will allow you to download surrounding counties but you will not be able to edit them in this current project.
So now it’s going to populate data some more. And now you can see a fully functional GIS software project. Now I should mention too that this software is completely free. And after you’re done with the census you can use this to do other projects that your city may have such as trying to find out where to plant new trees or a new water main. So it’s a very useful resource to have.
So continuing on you’re going to see a number of different buttons just, like, Google Earth that you can use. There’s the save button. This is the critical NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 31 button to use. You want to save early and often so that whatever you do gets saved. You can click on the map management button. This will open the map management window again. The next button over is the GUPS data setting tool. This is in case you deleted your edges or you completely messed up or some type of error happened. You could go ahead and clean your project and start fresh and new.
Now some of the QGIS buttons that are useful are the zoom in button. You could zoom in onto an area, and you could also zoom out with the zoom out button.
And then you could use the hand tool to move around. And then you know what’s really useful is, you could use the mouse scroll wheel to zoom in and out. So, that’s primarily what I use.
So along with that there’s also a ruler tool where you could go in and see how far your boundary is from a road.
Now since we’re in a North American data project, it first used meters. So you could change that to feet. So you could see this road is 76 feet away from your boundary.
Another option - the second row of tools to use is the add tool. This allows you to add a vector layer such as if you have your own county shapefile, which I’ll show you later. Or if you have your own imagery.
Now if you don’t like this tool bar, you can move it. You feel free to move any of these tools bars. You can move the map, make it smaller, make it bigger.
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Over on the left here is the layer’s panel. The layers show the different layers of your map such as the roads, your points, census tracts, census blocks, school districts and so forth. It goes on and on.
Now if you wanted your roads instead of yellow, you wanted them to be green, you’d double click on the roads, and then you could change the road color to a green. I’m going to click, okay, and now the roads are green.
And if you wanted to see the imagery, go ahead and turn on the imagery. And if this imagery wasn’t clear, you could go ahead and click on, a point on the map. And you could then open up an Internet map service such as Google Maps or Bing Maps, and see what this area looks like in Google Maps, which may be helpful.
So now I’m going to switch over to a sample map that I already have open that I’ve downloaded data from their Website for. So this is in Idaho, Eagle Creek, I believe, Idaho.
So I’m going to add their boundaries. So I’m going to click on this, add vector layer, it kind of looks like a V. And I’m going to bit, browse, and I’m going to find the shapefile, the .SHP. A shapefile has lots of different files that get added to it so, you’re going to add the .SHP and click, open. And then it shows me where Eagle Creek is.
So I’m going to zoom in to Eagle Creek. I could also right click on Eagle Creek and zoom to layer. So I’ll zoom to the (unintelligible). Now since I can’t see anything underneath it, I’m going to double click on Eagle Creek city limit. And I’m going to change the transparency. I’m going to make it 50%. So now I can see underneath Eagle City. You could do this with any of the links. NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 33
Now since I want to see the imagery, I could also add imagery behind it. So I’m going to go ahead, and I found my imagery on my local machine and, I’m going to click, open. And it downloaded a local imagery file that I have.
Now since imagery looks like it’s on the top most layer, I could drag it all the way down to - so that it’s the bottom layer. Very easy to select other layers here.
So I went ahead and - let me put it up one - there we go. Now, Eagle City aerial imagery is on and off. So I can check the box and uncheck the box so it will turn on and off.
So now we can go ahead and look at the specific GUPS tools. Now if you’re using this software you could also use it to do PSAP or LUCA. And there will be slightly different tools but, they have the same sort of concept.
So the first three tools are the linear feature tools. This will allow you to add a road, delete a road, or also split a road or an edge. Or it could also be a river or a fence line or a statistical boundary mark.
So I went ahead and I looked at the aerial imagery. And I saw that this area right here, if I turn on my aerial imagery, let’s turn off - that the road is slightly off here. And it looks like it’s off by 200 meters or 600 feet. So I want to move this road.
So in order to do that first, I need to split the road into two sections here. And then I’m going to delete this area, and I also want to delete another area up here.
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So when you mark delete, it will show up as a number of black X’s. And this will just display that you wanted the Census to delete this road. It won’t delete it entirely from the database.
So then I’m going to draw in the new road. And then when I’m finished, I left click on where I want my points to be. And I right click to finish. And then I’m going - it’s going to ask me what the MTFCC code is. And that’s just what type of edge it is.
And I’m going to scroll down until I get to the S’s, and it’s going to be a local neighborhood road. And then it’s going to be whatever the road name is. And it’s going to process it, and now it’s created that new road.
Now if I wanted to see what the other road name was, you could click on this A, tool which will show the name. Or you could use the Excel table. This is just to modify linear feature attribute table, which will allow you to change the road name.
So it was a vehicular trail. But say we paved it. It now becomes a primary road. And it will require a name, and now it’s a primary road.
There’s another example of a road change. This is a continuation of a road. You could also add this line in. And obviously I’m not getting it true to the aerial imagery. But for the purposes of this demonstration, I think this is adequate. So, I’ve added two new lines. And you could delete lines and also change the lines.
So, there’s a mailbox button right here. And this will allow you to add addresses. For the purpose of this demonstration, we’re not going to - I’m not going to show you this tool. NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 35
So I’m going to turn off the imagery. And the primary tool you’ll be using for the BAS is the modify area feature tool. This modify area feature tool, when you click on it, will create a pop-up window. You could then move it to the side if you want. And it will then get anchored over into the side here.
So you will select the city that you’re going to be using. So for instance I’m going to be playing with Edge City. So when you double click on it, it will zoom to the extent of Edge City.
So the first thing you want to do when you start your BAS software - project, is you’re going to zoom around and look to see if there’s any changes.
So I know there is an annexation that’s going to happen here. I know it’s an annexation and not a boundary change because there is a - looks like a house here.
I’m going to turn off this and I noticed that there are no linear features that I could select. So you select by hitting this yellow select feature. There’s also a different other types. And when I hit the select button and zoom out, this shows up. Because of course I couldn’t select just that tiny little section. So, I need to cut this area out of this face.
So in order to do that, I use my linear feature tool. And I, as close as possible, add that area. And since it looks like it’s just a statistical boundary, I’m going to use a P001 and hit okay. So, now we’ll add the Edge.
And then I could select - well I could select the area. Normally, in order to - for it to show up as a yellow square to show it was selected, you’re going to have to zoom in and out to refresh the screen. NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 36
And then since I selected that area I’m going to hit the add sign -- the add button -- and it will ask me if it’s a boundary change or a legal change. And since it has population in it, and it changes the look of your city boundary, I’m going to choose a legal change.
And then it’s going to ask me for a number of fields. It already populates the state and the county and the place SP and the name. And it’s going to ask me when this occurred. I’m going to select the date. I’m going to select the authoritative type. And then if I have the PDF file of the ordinance or the legal change, I would select that.
It will also include that to use for the Census purposes. So you could type in the document name and then the change type. And you hit okay and it will change to a different color.
Now let’s go to this annexation. So we could see here that this is the larger annexation, so we have to do the same thing. We’re going to add in a line. And since we have Dry Creek, we don’t need to add a line in that area. We’re going to call this a P001. Sometimes it takes a minute for the process because it changes the face under layers and a whole bunch of shapefiles and files that you normally don’t see.
And then I’m going to need to also draw in the line up here, just to the right of Dry Creek, so it doesn’t add in that section up there. Usually it has finished so, just give it another minute here. Okay, so it’s created.
So now I’m going to zoom in to this area. And I noticed that here it’s not exactly lined up to Dry Creek. And so when I look at the imagery - map data NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 37 not available. Oh, here we go. It’s just the difference between where our Dry Creek is and your Dry Creek is, it looks like.
So I’m going to not worry about that since it’s a minor difference. I’m going to add in this line. Let me add this in.
And if you notice to the right here, our road and your road is off by it looks like a few feet. And that’s probably the difference between the middle - the center line of the road versus one of the sides of the road.
Now the Census tries to snap all the boundaries to the center line of a road. So if you submitted this change to us with the boundary being 10 or 15 feet to the right of the road, up to 30 feet, we will snap it back to the center line of the road.
So, you have to wait for the GUPS software to respond. Sometimes it takes some time. And so now that I’ve drawn my two edges, I can then select this feature. I selected yellow. And I’m going to hit the, add, line. And it’s going to be a legal change. And again ask me for the effective dates, authoritative type.
If I don’t have a file, I can just type in the ordinance number. There’s also the corridor and offset. We’re not going to go into that as well as those are for special cases.
So let’s now look at boundary corrections. So this right here is an example of a boundary correction that we would not do. If we zoom out a little bit, the imagery is not showing up. But we could use our measure tool to see that our difference and your difference - our boundary versus your boundary is one and a half feet. NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 38
And so we will not change the road boundary - will not move the road or change the boundary a foot and a half, just because the difference is just a slight miscalculation, probably due to the different projections that your data versus our data is using.
But this right here for instance, is another boundary correction that’s 16 feet. Let’s hope our imagery works this time. It does not, but some of this area is quite large. So you could add this in as a boundary correction.
So this would actually be a boundary correction that we’re removing this area from our place. So since this line is not added, we are going to add this line. Zoom in here.
Another reason it’s a boundary correction is there’s no places in this area. So it yelled at me because right here, this is probably only a foot. And for our databases you have to have an area that’s at least five feet away from a current line.
So it won’t let me add that section because it’s already there. Let’s try to add again. And it let me add it. So since it’s just a statistical boundary I’m going to click okay. And it’s a - I’m going to select this area. I’m going to select this area, I’m going to turn off that shapefile, and you’ll see that that area is selected.
And since I want to deselect it from the area, I’m going to remove the area and it will be a boundary correction. So I’m going to hit, okay. And now it shows up as a boundary correction.
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One last area that I want to change before I submit is a de-annexation. So if we look at the Eagle City limits, we notice that this area right here is not part of our city. So you see there’s a house here, so that has to be a de-annexation since it changes the population.
So I want to make sure I’m going to have to add some lines here. So let’s add some edges. And it will snap to the existing edges. One more edge here. Let’s see if we can do it. And I’m going to right click. It’s yelling at me. Let’s try again.
My computer seems to have frozen a little bit so, give it ten seconds. Sometimes this happens when you’re doing multiple things. So it’s sharing the screen with you guys and it’s also trying to use QGIS. Okay, looks like it’s on.
So went ahead and added. Now it will allow me to add that area or add that edge. So it added that edge and now I’m going to deselect this area. And I also need to deselect this area as well.
So I can hit the Control key or the Shift key. Also select, bulk polygons or both faces. Now I’m going to hit the minus button and it’s going to be a legal change. And I’m going to select - I’m going to give it a de-annexation. It’s going to be a resolution. I’ll give it an ordinance instead, and hit okay.
So now that I’ve finished with what the changes I’ve made, there’s also an option I forgot to mention, to add a point landmark, edit a point landmark, and delete a point landmark. So I could go ahead and add a point.
If it’s a new cul-de-sac I could modify it or I could remove it entirely. You could do that with existing points. NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 40
So now that I’ve finished, I could go ahead and hit the, review, change polygon tool. First I want to click the save button. And it usually takes a minute or two to save. And now I’m going to click the, review, change polygon tool. And that’s also - you need that if you were to make a mistake and add an area that you didn’t want to add.
So you have to give it another minute. Sometimes it takes a little bit of time to save. It’s giving me a warning but, I’m going to ignore the warning since I’m not worried about the landmark tool.
So I’m going to click on the geography review tool and, it’s going to ask me what I want to review. So since we only changed the places, we’re going to choose, place. And it’s not showing up because I have to click on - I have to select the city that I want to review. It looks like I’m having some technical difficulties here.
So it should populate with the changes that I have just created. And it doesn’t seem to be doing that for me at this current moment. One second here. Let me go ahead and use my backup county. Let me add some linear features here.
And then if I look at the, review change polygon and select, place, it will show up with the, review change polygon. Now if this was my submission and it wasn’t showing up, I would push the save button, I would close out of QGIS and open it again. And it will usually show up. Nine out of ten times it will show up.
So, in this case, moving on, if these were the two changes that I have made, and I didn’t like this change, I messed up, I could go ahead and delete that NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 41 change polygon. And it should delete the change polygon and now I’ll only have one change.
And then before you submit it will require you to click on the small area check in the, find holes too. And this will try to find any of the small, little areas that you may have missed. And if those pop up, it will show up.
But I didn’t see any of those areas. So it didn’t see any areas so, we’re good to go. So now I’ll hit save one more time and then I’m ready to submit my file. So you want to select the zipper tool which is the export to zip.
You could also print out the file and you could import accounting zip file. But click on export to zip. It will make sure that you created the find holes in the small area check tool. And you also save and you click okay.
And then if you just want to share with another participant and you’re not finished yet, you can share with another participant. Or you could click on export for Census. And then it will ask you to type in your name. So I’m just going to type in some dummy data here. And this will be so that other people could contact you if there’s a problem with your submission. And if you are the BAS contact, you would check, I am the BAS contact.
You hit okay and it will create a zip file for you and, it’s right here. And then from here you could then submit to the SWIM Website. The SWIM Website is very easy to find. You just go down to, access SWIM, or you could - they’ll show you other methods in order to access the SWIM.
You click on access SWIM and you’ll then type in your email and password. If you signed up for the BAS Survey, your token will be received within five business days. NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 42
And again, as mentioned before, if you have not received your SWIM token, you can email or call us and we’ll set that up for you.
Now I guess moving on to (Allison)’s part of the demonstration on the Digital BAS.
(Allison Schaeffer): Thanks (Jonathan). We’ll just do our quick little swap here so, bear with us for a second.
All righty, so I’m going to get started with providing you with the Digital BAS demonstration which uses a commercial GIS software. In this case we’re going to use ArcGIS. This demonstration is going to overview that new partnership tool that I mentioned whenever I was saying what materials were available for the ArcGIS responses.
So essentially, previously if you prepared BAS using an ArcGIS or your own GIS software, you would have had to do - allowed to download your own data, and then run your own geo processing tool, and then set up your file in a way that you could easily determine which polygons are supposed to be in your geography or, which polygons are supposed to be out.
And of course then you’d have to make sure you had all the correct attribute features, and providing us all with the correct information. And then you’d have to zip it up and make sure the naming conventions were correct.
So we’ve created a tool that will do all of this for you. So in order to find this BAS partnership tool, which is what we call it, you can find it on the BAS Website. So you can just open up a search engine -- I choose Google -- and NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 43 you can Google, Census Bureau BAS, similar to what (Emily) did. And usually the first response is the BAS Website.
And from the BAS Website you can go to, information for respondents and go to response methods. You can find it from the :How to Get Started” page. Basically what you’re looking for is the response methods.
I’m going to go to the, Response Methods page. And under Digital BAS there is a link here that says, Learn More About the BAS Partnership Toolbox. So you’ll click on this link and it will take you to the BAS Partnership Tools page.
So this page will help you. It gives you some background information about how the tool is developed and what models of QGIS it was developed for. Also you can download the tool. And then it helps you get started with your installation.
So if I go ahead and download my - the tool, I would double click this and it will download. And when I open the download I’ll have to unzip it. So once you unzip the download you should see the BAS Partnership Toolbox overview documentation which will give you all of the instructions, step-by- step, for each of the tools in the toolbox. And then you’ll see the other two folders that are associated with the tool, that you will need.
We do recommend that you save off the tool into the working folder that you’re going to use. So for instance I’m going to be demonstrating for Ohio. So I want to make sure I’m within my Ohio folder so, you’ll see here I have my partnership tool folder here.
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And that just helps us so when you’re running a tool, all the data is going to the same location. You don’t have to worry about running into any issues with relative tests or making sure the data is being stored in the same area.
So once you download your tool, you’ll see that within the tool - within your folder you’ll have two folders that are created when you download the tool. One, you’re going to have a project folder which is going to be empty for now. And then two, you’re going to have a setup folder.
Now this setup folder contains the BAS Partnership Tools Toolbox. We do suggest to run the first couple of tools in ArcCatalog. So that’s why you see me working in ArcCatalog.
So, I’m going to go ahead and open up the toolbox here so you can see. So within this toolbox you’ll see that there are six individual tools. Each you’ll run separately and, each do their own specific thing. But instead of you having to go down and chase the data and trade your polygons through geoprocessing, this tool you can run them all throughout ArcCatalog.
And then once you have - these are all done without even using - having to open ArcGIS or ArcMap. Then once you get to the format working MIC, that’s when you’ll be able - you’ll want to open up the map.
So, you see these six tools. So I’m just going to give you a brief overview of what each of these six tools does. And they’re pretty self-explanatory. And just so you know, when you get to them, we do recommend that you run them in order.
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So the first tool we have is our Census Data Download tool. That will go out to the Census Bureau’s Website and pull your shapefiles for you so you don’t have to download them.
We do also have an option for you to download the partnership shapefiles and keep them in their zipped format. And then you can use this tool to bring them in that way as well.
We did know that some users were experiencing issues when trying to just use the tool to get the data from the Website. So if you do experience an issue with that, you can download the partnership shapefile, and this tool can also pull it in from your computer.
So the second tool is called our Create Changes too. So that will actually run a comparison against your partnership shapefile that the Census Bureau provides, in your own locally sources shapefile that represents your boundary.
We have a Sliver Blaster which will - I’ll show you what it does. But it basically removes any of those little tiny changes that the Census Bureau may not be able to process.
You in (Jonathan)’s demonstration, sometimes when changes are too small to other edges, we aren’t able to make the changes when we’re digitizing in the MAF/TIGER database. So the Sliver Blaster kind of helps us with - and helps you with getting rid of some of those that you don’t have to waste your time on reviewing, since we wouldn’t be able to process them.
This fourth tool here, the Format Working MIC Tool that will go ahead and compile all the layers that you need. And it will format a working MIC with NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 46 very easy to use symbolization. It will make your attributer tables have the proper attributes. And it gets you started for your review.
So once you complete your review, we then have an Attribute Check Tool, which will make sure any of that necessary information that we require for your legal boundary changes is included in the attribute table so that we can easily process your submission.
And then just like in GUPS, we have an Export Submission File Tool which will package up your shapefile and get it into the proper naming convention so that you can submit it easily using SWIM. And you would be completing your submission.
So, just a few things to mention. When you are using ArcGIS to do your BAS submissions, there’s a couple pieces of information you’ll want to have handy when you’re completing your review.
So first, you’re going to want to make sure you either have your partnership shapefiles from the Census Bureau on your computer. Or if you’ve decided you’ll just pull them straight from the Website, so you might want the partnership shapefiles.
You’ll also want to make sure you have your own shapefile layer. And within that layer for your boundary, you do want to have a name column. And you’ll see why in just a bit. But that name column is what we need to make sure that create changes tool scripts correctly.
You also want to have handy your BAS ID. And then you’ll want to have handy, any information for your legal boundary changes. So you’ll want to NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 47 have those authorization numbers and types of authorizations, and your effective dates and what types of changes you’re submitting.
And once you have that information you can get started. So first I’m going to - I’m not actually going to run the tools but, I will show you what the input it and then what output will come out.
So, so far we’ve downloaded the tool. We have our six tools. I can go ahead and start using the tool. So for the first tool I want to get my partnership data. And I’m going to go ahead, and for this example I’m going to use, Eagle City, Idaho.
So I’m going to enter my BAS ID under the, User’s BAS ID field. And then when you’re using a Census data download, you’re either going to select whether you want the tool to go to the Census Bureau’s Website and pull in those (unintelligible) files.
Or if you downloaded the shapefile already, if you don’t want to have to go to the Website to get it, you can pull it directly from your files. So in this case I’m going to go ahead and let the tool go to the Census shapefile - partnership shapefile repository and download the data for me. So, I would click, yes.
If you already had your data on your computer, you would maybe - you would click no, for use data downloader. And then you define - you use the file explorer to go to the path of where the shapefiles that you downloaded, are. And you’d want to make sure to keep those zipped up. You don’t need to unzip them.
So, I’d go ahead and click okay and I’d run it. And depending how large your government is, it may take a little longer. So once I click the data download NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 48 or I run the data download tool, I now have still two folders. But now you’ll see here, within that project folder there’s a folder with my BAS ID on it; an archive folder underneath that, and then a geo database, which it contains two feature classes.
Now currently the submission feature class is (unintelligible). You see here there’s data within the reference feature class. And this reference feature class contains the Census Bureau data that the download - the data download tool went and grabbed. And then it formats it so that it gets rid of any extraneous layers that you wouldn’t necessarily need for your review.
So then now that I have the partnership file, I want to make - I’m ready to make my changes and compare it to my own layer. So I’m ready to create my change polygon.
So in order to create my change polygon, I’ll run this, create changes tool in the BAS toolbox. And what you need here is you’ll need your local file. And I’ll pull in my local data and then you’ll need your BAS ID again. And then you’ll want to select the changes that are being processed.
So in this case Eagle City is an incorporated place so, I’ll select, Inc. Place. If I was with a county government or submitting changes for a county, I would select, County. If I was with the Minor Civil Division, I would select, Co Sub, and so on.
So, I’ll go ahead and click, Inc. Place. And then here’s where I mentioned, you’ll need to make sure to identify a field within your partner shapefile, within your local shapefile, that you’ve made that has the name of your government.
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So in this case I can go ahead and go to preview and preview my table. And I see here that the name of my government is under the City field. And you will want to make sure that the data within the table is in proper case, not in all caps. The field names can be in all caps, but this field, the data within the field, has to be proper case. So starting with a capital letter and then lower case throughout.
So I’ll go ahead, set it up again. Doing my (unintelligible) place changes. And then we confirm that the field name is City. I would click, okay, and then the tool would do all of its work for me. And what it will do is create within my geodatabase. I’ll now have, still the reference feature class, but I’ll also now have a submission feature class.
Within that submission feature class, you’ll see there are two shapefiles. One that’s named, Whole Entity. That’s representing the local resource data that you’ve provided. And then one that’s called, Changes in Place. And that layer features all of the change polygons or differences between your local data and the Census Bureau’s partnership shapefile.
So one thing I want to let you take note of is, if we preview the Inc. Places table. You’ll notice right now, see this number down at the bottom, 885, that’s how many changes were created when I ran that, create changes, tool. That’s a lot of changes to have to go one-by-one to review.
So we have available this Sliver Blaster tool which is the fourth tool in this toolbox. So we’ll go ahead and open up our Sliver Blaster tool. So what you need - the information you need for the Sliver Blaster tool can be found within that geodatabase under the submission feature class.
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What you’re looking for is that changes layer I mentioned, that was created. And you’re looking for the Census Edges layer. So that will be found under the reference feature class which represents the Census Bureau’s Edge feature layer. So you can go ahead and pull that in.
You’ll see here that we have a buffer distance of 30 feet. That means that changes that are within - that are less than 30 feet away from an existing edge, won’t be added. The Census Bureau has this threshold so that we don’t run into errors while digitizing into the MAF/TIGER database.
So we’ll click okay. And now you see here the Sliver Blaster tool, after you run the Sliver Blaster tool you still have your geodatabase. You still have your reference shapefile. You still have your submission shapefile, your feature class.
But now if you take a look at the Inc. Place changes layer, if you preview that table, you will see now that there’s only 281 changes. That’s because that Sliver Blaster removed about 500, 600 changes that the Census Bureau wouldn’t be able to process due to their size.
So it kind of helps you out with not having to review all of those little features that we wouldn’t really be able to use anyhow. And we obviously don’t want you to have to take any more of your time than needed, so that we can get that meaningful data.
So now I’ve run the Census Data Download tool. I got the Census Bureau’s data. I ran the Create Changes tool, so I have a change layer that reflect all of the differences between my data and the Census Bureau’s data.
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And then I ran the Sliver Blaster which removes a lot of little tiny changes that the Census Bureau wouldn’t be able to use. I’m now ready to get my MSD ready to begin my review.
So to do that you’ll click on this fourth tool here called, Format Working MSD. And for this tool what you’ll do is, that folder with your BAS ID, under projects, that is your working folder. You’ll want to pull that working folder over. And this is the only input you need for this tool, and you click, okay.
And Arc will do its magic behind the scenes. And once you run the tool you’ll see here now, within this project shape - project folder, you now have not only your geodatabase but, a MSD.
That MSD is going to be the map that you work through that contains all of the data that you’ve acquired, and the data that’s necessary for your BAS review.
So I’m going to go ahead and open my map. And when you open your map you’ll see here what looks to be like a lot of different layers as well as, a lot of different geographies. So, I’m going to go through and let you know which layers are important.
So you’ll have your point landmark layer which will have your cul-de-sacs, your airport points, your school points, mountain peaks. You’ll also have your BAS edges layer which includes the linear hydrology so, creeks, and streams. You’ll have non-visible boundaries. You’ll have your roads. You also have a American Indian areas.
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You can turn on and turn off the area landmarks if you want to review those. Those will have your military installations, airports. It will also have our place layer which represents the place that the Census Bureau has on file.
And I would suggest to maybe symbolize the place layer so that when you’re reviewing the data and your change polygons, you can see the difference. So to do that you would go to properties. And you see we can map it - we can categorize our places by unique value.
So I’m going to add the name of my city which is, Eagle and I’m going to change it so it’s a different color than all the other incorporated places, so I can easily tell the difference. And now you can see my place now stands out pretty well.
I’m going to turn off some of these edges for the time being. And then you’ll have your Changes Inc. Place layer. This is the layer you’re going to be doing all of your review on. This is that, change polygons that were created during that change tool.
And you also have the county boundaries, and county designated places, So Subs, and water features. So we’ll go ahead and open up the attribute table for your Inc. Place layer. And basically what you’ll want to do is kind of zoom around your map to different change polygons.
When you look at the attribute table, you’ll notice that the tool pulled in quite a few different fields. So the most important field to keep your eye on are the State SP and County SP, also your Place SP field. You’ll want to make sure you have a name alpha. And then as far as changes, you’ll want to make sure you have your change type. C, is boundary corrections and B, is what is populated automatically. NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 53
You’ll also see the off type, your document number, and then you’ll see the relate field which will determine whether the change goes into your place or out of your place.
I’m just going to refresh this a second. I’m having a few technical difficulties here. So then you’re just going to basically go through each one of these changes. And instead of having to pan around like you would using GUPS, you can just zoom to each different change.
So I’m going to do a couple of examples of showing annexations, changes we maybe wouldn’t make or wouldn’t accept. And a few other different examples of what you’re looking for during your submission.
So we mentioned that we typically like to snap our boundaries to a center line feature. We do this because historically, depending on how the data was collected for address points, people may have - some people might have actually done it the correct and went to your door stoop and made sure they collected the data for your address the proper way.
Or some people might have just driven down the road and collected the points as they went along. So that should make the address features that we have in our database mislocated, not exactly right on the house.
And sometimes they might be located within that right-of-way. So when we receive right-of-ways such as this example here, which would actually remove this land so that your boundary would be on the right-of-way, we typically will snap so that we can keep that relationship with the roads and ensure that no point features would be mislocated.
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So in this case if you were reviewing this, you would potentially delete this as a change. So you’ll want to do as you’re reviewing your boundaries is, you’ll want to make sure to start an editing session, so I have. And it helps if you make your changes layer the only selectable feature.
And you’ll select it, and in this case, because it’s just asking to remove area from my government so that the boundary is on the right-of-way, and I know that the Census Bureau would prefer it to stay on the street centerline, I’m going to delete this change so that we don’t have to make it.
I’ll keep zooming around. So here’s a good example of some boundary corrections. These would not require any legal documentation. As you can see, it’s kind of just changing slightly, the boundary. And you could see that how it could have maybe, historically gotten digitized incorrectly if we received a paper map. Or just historically it was not caught in the past.
Another good indication here is; you see on this change polygon that the change kind of goes with that curvature in the land. So it’s following the shape of the government - of the boundary. It’s not changing the shape of the boundary. So we would consider that as a boundary change.
So as I’m going through, it might be a good idea to kind of note to yourself somewhere within the table that you’ve reviewed it, so you don’t keep revealing different changes. So I’ll just put an X under justify, notifying that looks good. And same for this change as well.
And I don’t have to change any attribution on this one. And the reasons being, because as I mentioned, the tool will automatically populate the change type to be for boundary correction. And boundary corrections do not require any legal documentation. NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 55
But as I’m reviewing, I come across this guy. Now this change looks like it’s definitely changing the shape of the boundary. And I would need to consider that as an annexation.
So ideally, I’ll already have my documentation ready. And I can select this change so that it comes up in my table. And I’ll go ahead and review it and you know, make sure that it definitely belongs. And since this looks like an annexation, it’s going into my place. I’ll change the, change type, to A. And also let the authorization type within my documentation, I see that it was an ordinance and the document number was A01.
And the area, I’m going to put in as ten acres, because that’s what the documentation says. This change is going into Eagle, so the relationship is in. And you’ll see here, once I change that change type, that polygon will symbolize as an annexation.
So as with anything, it’s always to save often. So once I make this change I’m going to save so I don’t lose that. And then I can make my way along and keep reviewing the rest of my boundaries.
So we find this annexation here in my review. And I’m making my changes. And like the work with (Jonathan) needs help with something, so I only get as far as adding it as an annexation. Aggregate to add the authorization type, document number, what have you.
And I save it and it symbolizes like an annexation. I know it’s an annexation, but the Census Bureau will require that other information. So I keep making more changes. I come across this guy. This would be - this one is an in, but the Census Bureau already has my boundary walking to the street center line. NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 56
So knowing that information, I would probably delete this change because I know that they prefer changes to snap. And I’ll go ahead and delete that. So now I’ve reviewed ever change in my attribute table and I’m ready to submit.
But first I should make sure that I haven’t forgotten any information that the Census Bureau will need when they’re reviewing. I’m going to go ahead and take my MSD, scan all my changes -- you don’t want to forget that -- and I’ll go back into my ArcCatalog so that I can run the final tool, or the second to final tool after I’ve done my review, the QC attribute check.
So I’ll go back to my partnership toolbox and I’ll go to Tool 5, Attribute Check. And I’ll find my change file again, which again was in the geodatabase under submission, changes Inc. Place. And then I’ll select my geography type again so, I was working on my Inc. Places.
Now if I did any linear feature updates, I’d want to make sure to run this tool on those as well. And I would select, LM for linear features. If I was doing hydro areas, I would select Hydro A, and so on.
So, I’ll select Inc. Place, and I’ll click okay, and that’s where we’ll go ahead and check my change place layer to make sure I have all the correct attribution.
So once that tool is done running I’ll go into my project folder again, and I’ll see that there’s text file called, Attribute Check In. Place. And it tells me a few things. So it tells me that all of the necessary fields are present. So that state SP I mentioned, Place SP the name, it tells me that I have all these fields here. They didn’t accidentally get deleted. But it also tells me that I forgot legal documentation information. NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 57
And now what I’ll need to do is go back into my MXD and update the attribution to make sure I don’t forget that legal documentation. So you’ll want to note here the FID number and then what issue you have.
So I’ll go back into my MXD. My ArcMap is opening. It’s just taking a little bit.
(Emily Day): While our ArcMap is loading - this is (Emily). I just wanted to point out that we do have a few users who are experiencing some technical difficulties like their screen freezing. If you are missing anything, all of the Webinar, like if your screen froze, feel free to outreach to us by email from that geo.bas email.
Or my calling 301-763-1099, and we can make sure that you have the information you need. We’re also going to attempt to record the Webinar so we can send you that as well.
(Allison Schaeffer): So, you should be seeing my ArcMap. If you’re not, I apologize. It is up on my right screen and the one I’m sharing. So I’m not sure if maybe it’s just a lot for the Webinar or WebEx to handle, like too many things overloading it at once. I’m not sure.
But anyhow, I’m going to refer back. So my QC attribute check told me that FID 178 had an issue. So I’m going to scroll over, find my field that’s FID 178, so I can easily find that record. I’m going to double click it so I can zoom to it, and sure enough, I forgot to put in my authorization type and my document number.
So I’m going to start an editing session again. And then I’m going to fill out the information that’s needed. So I noticed from my records, this off type is NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 58 an organization - or is an ordinance. So change type is indeed an annexation, which I already had pulled out.
The document number is A012, and the area is five acres. I’m going to go ahead and save my changes. And now my review should be complete. So I can go ahead and get ready to package and send this.
So now that I have run the attribute check and my file is ready, I’ll go back to the BAS toolbox and I’m going to select the export submission file tool. So what the tool is going to do is, it’s asking me for my BAS ID so, I’ll enter it. And it’s requesting that I provide my BAS contact information.
And the reason we’re looking for this information is, in case we have any questions about your submission, in case maybe the tool didn’t pick up one of the changes that was requested or a change didn’t save and, some of the information didn’t save. So, we just want to make sure we can get in contact with the right point of contact, the person, as easy as possible so we can make sure we can get any questions answered and get your files processed.
So I’m going to type in my name and my entity name, my contact name, my contact title, my address, my email, and my phone number. And I’ll click okay. And then you should see in that working folder where you have on your files being pointed to for your project, you’ll now see within that working folder with your last name, is a file called, BAS 19, your BAS ID, and the return.
This is the file you’re going to submit through SWIM. So like (Jonathan) said, within five days of submitting the BAS online response form, you should receive a SWIM token.
NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 59
If you don’t already have a SWIM account, you’ll go to the SWIM Website which can be found linked off of the “How to Get Started” page. I’ll go in here. I’ll enter my credentials. If I have received a SWIM token and I’m going to SWIM for the first time, you want to make sure you click, Register Account.
And from there you’ll type in your registration token, the number that’s provided to you, and then all of the other information. Once you do that you’ll be able to log into SWIM. And then you will be - it will walk you through a series of questions.
So it will ask you like what type of government, what program you’re reporting to which will be, Boundary and Annexation Survey. What type of government you are reporting? So like if you’re in Inc. Place you would pick, place. And then it will ask you to use the file explorer to go out to where your file was just saved.
So you’ll go to your working folder and you’ll select that return file, that zip file. And once you click submit it will confirm that we’ve received it and, you’re done with the BAS.
So that’s a quick rundown of how to use the Partnership Toolbox and ArcGIS to complete your BAS submission. So, does anyone have any questions about BAS or the GUPS or ArcGIS or just any of the Census Bureau programs in general? We can take those questions now.
Coordinator: Once again, if you do have a question by phone, please unmute your phone, press star 1, record your first and last name. One moment for the first question. Once again, in order to ask your question please press star 1 on your touchtone phone. At this time, we have no questions in queue. NWX-US DEPT OF COMMERCE Moderator: Gregory Pewett 2-20-19/12:00 pm CT Confirmation #8771382 Page 60
(Alice): Okay, (Emily) do you want to get back on and take it away?
(Emily Day): Sounds good. So if there are no questions at this time, if you do have a question that you think of later, once again, please feel free to reach out to us. We can be reached at 301-763-1099. Or you can email us at the
Once again I just want to thank everyone for tuning in today. And apologize for the technical difficulties. But I hope you guys have a wonderful day.
Coordinator: This will conclude today’s conference. All parties may disconnect at this time.
END