Everyone,

First I would like to thank Maine’s geospatial community for their outreach efforts to contact Maine’s elected officials and their staffs. This proved instrumental in directing attention to the budget issues described in Joe Young’s email yesterday. It sounds like efforts to find a solution to the budget issue(s) are being explored. I will endeavor to let the geospatial community know once we have more information in the coming days. Be sure to thank those you contacted for their help in looking into this budget question.

 

Also, I would like to address several concerns I heard in the last week about the future of MEGIS and the GeoLibrary. Some of the emails received indicated that some believed the enabling legislation establishing both the Maine Office of GIS (MEGIS) and the Maine Library of Geographic Information (Maine’s GeoLibrary) was in danger. This was never our understanding of the issue, nor was there any apparent deliberate effort to shut down MEGIS and its services.

 

Keep your fingers crossed that a solution is found to the question of MEGIS funding and everyone can continue to make gains in using geospatial data to Maine’s benefit.

 

 

Jon Giles, PLS, GISP

Chair, Maine Library of Geographic Information

GIS Coordinator, Sebago Technics, Inc.