Lapeer County Drain Commission Office
A tool that turns copy-and-pasted land descriptions into clean, map-ready data, so a rural Michigan government office can do in seconds what used to take dozens of manual steps.
IMPACT AREA
Civic Technology
CLIENT
Lapeer County Drain Commission
YEAR
2024 - 2025
BUILT WITH
Python + RegEx
OVERVIEW
The Lapeer County Drain Commission is a local government office in rural Lapeer County, Michigan that maps parcels of land and drainage districts. To draw a single map, staff copy a legal description out of their assessing software, paste it into Word, manually pick it apart call by call, and retype it into a separate Metes and Bounds program. Because the descriptions come from many different assessors, the formatting is never consistent. Tech for Social Good partnered with the office to automate that work and make mapping dramatically faster.
T4SG PROJECT TEAM
Project Managers · Data Science Analysts · Web Developers
CHALLENGE
One land split can contain ten or more parcels, and every one has to be reformatted by hand before it can be mapped, a slow, error-prone process with firm assessment deadlines attached. The legal descriptions arrive in inconsistent formats, the free mapping software can't draw curved boundaries, and the office has no budget to spend. So how might we let staff turn a pasted legal description into clean, map-ready data in seconds, without replacing the tools they already use?
WHAT WE DID
We built a Python tool that reads a pasted legal description and reformats it automatically. Using regular expressions, it strips out the inconsistent text and rewrites each bearing, angle, and distance into the exact format the office's Metes and Bounds program expects, replacing the manual "paste into Word and pick it apart" step entirely. We validated it against real Lapeer County parcels, pairing sample legal descriptions with their correct outputs, and laid the groundwork for the next phase: rendering the parcels, curves and all, on an interactive map that staff can print and save.
OUTCOME
A working tool that collapses a 20-step manual workflow into a single copy, paste, and generate, delivered to the office with the code on GitHub so it can keep serving Lapeer County, and a clear path toward full interactive mapping.
Lapeer County Drain Commission Office
A tool that turns copy-and-pasted land descriptions into clean, map-ready data, so a rural Michigan government office can do in seconds what used to take dozens of manual steps.
IMPACT AREA
Civic Technology
CLIENT
Lapeer County Drain Commission
YEAR
2024 - 2025
BUILT WITH
Python + RegEx
OVERVIEW
The Lapeer County Drain Commission is a local government office in rural Lapeer County, Michigan that maps parcels of land and drainage districts. To draw a single map, staff copy a legal description out of their assessing software, paste it into Word, manually pick it apart call by call, and retype it into a separate Metes and Bounds program. Because the descriptions come from many different assessors, the formatting is never consistent. Tech for Social Good partnered with the office to automate that work and make mapping dramatically faster.
T4SG PROJECT TEAM
Project Managers · Data Science Analysts · Web Developers
Project Managers · Data Science Analysts
Web Developers
CHALLENGE
One land split can contain ten or more parcels, and every one has to be reformatted by hand before it can be mapped, a slow, error-prone process with firm assessment deadlines attached. The legal descriptions arrive in inconsistent formats, the free mapping software can't draw curved boundaries, and the office has no budget to spend. So how might we let staff turn a pasted legal description into clean, map-ready data in seconds, without replacing the tools they already use?
WHAT WE DID
We built a Python tool that reads a pasted legal description and reformats it automatically. Using regular expressions, it strips out the inconsistent text and rewrites each bearing, angle, and distance into the exact format the office's Metes and Bounds program expects, replacing the manual "paste into Word and pick it apart" step entirely. We validated it against real Lapeer County parcels, pairing sample legal descriptions with their correct outputs, and laid the groundwork for the next phase: rendering the parcels, curves and all, on an interactive map that staff can print and save.
OUTCOME
A working tool that collapses a 20-step manual workflow into a single copy, paste, and generate, delivered to the office with the code on GitHub so it can keep serving Lapeer County, and a clear path toward full interactive mapping.