Beginning Is Half The Battle
Take one small step toward something big and watch it bloom
Initium est dimidium facti. Horace's words, this Latin phase translates to "Once you've started, you're halfway there."
Who else knows how true these words are???
To me it speaks volumes to the power of not just deciding to do something, nor saying that you are doing to do something, but taking actual action toward a big goal or dream. Every step forward, every concrete action, even the small ones, are valuable.
When I was hired by the St. Tammany Parish Assessor’s Office in 2013 and tasked with mapping all of the parcels in St. Tammany Parish, the journey started at ground zero. As in, there were ZERO parcels mapped previously. There were ZERO other geospatial hires on the team. And ZERO technology in-house to handle such an undertaking.
It was a blank slate, an empty canvas, that required an incredible investment by Assessor Louis Fitzmorris and the office at large. It required a dedication of intention and focus, deciding on a goal and taking action toward it. It became something much bigger than any one individual.
What started as a task for one quickly grew into a team of skilled geospatial professionals, researchers, and technology supporters aligned with the mission to map all of the ownership parcels in the jurisdiction. Our team took it one parcel at a time as we developed processes, documented guidance, scaled our GIS infrastructure, and upskilled along the way.
I was recently asked to update one of our progress reports for a print publication, and the timing was perfect to capture this incredible milestone: 134,000+ parcels now are mapped in St. Tammany Parish thanks to the outstanding actions of the mapping team at the Assessor's Office these past 12 years.
If you are interested in interacting with our parcel data, please see our public parcel map.
Kudos to our current mapping team of Bryan Bushnell, Karen Key, Fernando Cundin, Rusty Waldrup, Zane White, and Brandon Pearson for the quality work. The present and future of the parcel map is in good hands with this crew.
We are certainly much more than halfway there now.