The internship has been going pretty well. I am in the Planning and Development Department with Chris Martin and Zoe Monahan. So far Zoe and I have written a staff report for two rezoning requests and have been to the meetings that the reports have been used in. We also have converted Comprehensive Planning Project reports of every town in the county to power points for public presentations. We are also attending performance budget meetings to help the county get ready for the big switch. Boppel
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My project consists of converting the old paper formats into GIS so it is on a hardcopy digital format. I also am updating the E 911 services data bank, by going into the field and GPSing the new or updated address within Eau Claire County. I’m also working with a new intern to show him the ropes with the GPS and showing him how to locate them on the paper maps. All of this is going to take me the whole summer. Martin
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Kris Boppel and I work together in the Planning Development Department at Eau Claire County. Under the supervision of Todd Andrews (Senior Planner) we have completed individual and team projects. The first project was an individual staff report. The applicant wanted to change the zoning of his property from a C-3 commercial business district to an I-1 nonsewered industrial district in order to lease the property to a woodworking manufacturer. I recommended approval and the county planning board agreed with my recommendation.
The rest of our projects have been a team effort. We prepared a special event checklist that will be used with a conditional use permit in order to regulate events that happen in the county. We are currently attending Performance Budgeting meetings because we will be proposing a PR campaign for the administration to use. It will be targeted at staff and the public. We have also been working on presentations for the county’s Comprehensive Planning project. They just completed phase two of the project. The presentations will be used to show the towns and villages what they learned before moving on to the next step. Monahan
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In the middle part of this internship, I am pleasantly surprised. I am busy at work all of the time and the people that are there, are a huge help. This is helpful because if I did not have a friendly boss, I would be stuck in a rut with my project. What is better than the work, is the fact that the other students here are great. It is good to have people to talk to after work, because it lowers the stress level by a lot.
The only thing I have a few qualms about is the slowness that my project is goin. I want to keep pushing and pushing, but the process to get all of the pictures, surveys, etc is very time consuming. I hope that as I get into the bulk part of the project that I am able to move faster and I don’t have as many stopping points.
I am excited to see what the second half of the internship has to bring. Owens
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My project is going well so far. I am working on a special assessments program that allows the departments to make sure the citizens of the City of Chippewa Falls are paying for the projects done. The cards go back to the 1960’s and all the history needs to be inserted into the computer program. I am now into the 800 parcel numbers which will allow the engineering department to begin putting in borders such as front, side, and back to figure out which assessment went onto which street. The program has been working well although sometimes we do find a glitch here and there that we have to correct. Also some parcel numbers are not yet into the system and we are looking into if they exist anymore or not. I think if I continue to work at the same pace I have been working on I will be able to successfully get through most of the cards. Having the beginning master schedules into the system will help a lot of employees in the City such as the engineering department, the clerkâs office and the planning and zoning office. The staff continues to be great although Dan will be greatly missed. I wish him well in his new choice of careers!
Wendt