An Innovative Plan for the City of Granbury, Texas
City Information
The City of Granbury, TX is a growing community that is uniquely Texan. The City mixes a rich heritage with strong Western values, and Southern Living magazine recently honored Granbury as a top-five “Small Town Getaway.” In 2019, a USA Today poll ranked Granbury as the number one historic small town in the United States. Granbury is a rapidly growing community, which puts unique pressures on the local government staff. The City’s Comprehensive Plan prioritizes responsible growth, economic development, infrastructure, quality of life, environmental concerns, communication with the public, and preserving the City’s history and heritage.
A Growing City
To meet the goals detailed in the City’s Comprehensive Plan, staff require visualization and management tools. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is the perfect software platform to enable staff to achieve city-wide goals. The City has been using GIS for a few years and soon realized that GIS should become a primary data management and decision-making tool. To that end, they decided they needed a plan for implementation.
Michael Ross, Deputy City Manager, points out, “We have been using and implementing GIS for a few years. However, City leaders understood that a much more structured and comprehensive approach was merited. 95% of data collected by local government ties back to the location (address, asset, parcel). So it makes sense to use mapping/GIS technology to view all of our data in a geographic context.” The City contracted with Geographic Technologies Group (GTG), the world leader in GIS strategic planning, to create a 5-year GIS Strategic Plan. Curt Hinton, President of GTG, worked extensively on this project and states, “Granbury is the perfect size for GIS. The City isn’t so large that implementing GIS is onerous, and the perfect time to implement GIS is as a City is growing. This allows for the creation of the data as the City expands. After a City has grown, it becomes very expensive to go back and try to recreate information about that growth.”
An Innovative Plan
The GIS Strategic Plan, produced by GTG in collaboration with the City of Granbury, identifies how each department will use GIS. The public will have many ways to view data geographically and interact with the City. Mr. Hinton points out, “GIS is a must for any city. Residents will be able to view information about locations and programs that are important to them. Public and internal portals will display infrastructure, parks and events, history of the city, projects, crime incidents, economic development, and planning projects.”
Truly, without GIS, achieving the goals outlined in the Comprehensive Plan would be very difficult. The City of Granbury is now able to systematically expand GIS responsibly by implementing the recommendations in their GIS Strategic Plan. As Granbury continues to grow, the City will be providing insightful services that will continue Granbury’s traditions of excellence for the citizens they serve.
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For more information about Granbury’s plan contact Michael Ross at mross@granbury.org or Curt Hinton at chinton@geotg.com. You can also reach the GTG team by calling 888-757-4222.
