Where to get Lattitude/Longitude

[christober72304]

As a Stake Clerk, I'm working to create a visual of a set of ward boundaries in the Stake so I can recommend a realignment. I used to grab lat/long data for households from the maps on lds.org, but apparently that's been removed. Any place where this data can be pulled from now? MLS, other?

[eblood66]

Are you aware of the boundary proposal tool as described in this post? I don't have access to it but it sounds like it provides a map based tool to try out different proposals.

[christober72304]

Thanks eblood66; yes, I'm aware of that tool and sorely wish I could use it. Unfortunately it doesn't work with overlaid wards. We have Spanish and English wards that overlap boundaries, so the tool will let me work with the English wards, but not the Spanish wards. In this case, I need to work with both English and Spanish over a geographic area.

I have a tool we created in our stake that will do this overlap for us, but I need the lat/long for the members. If there's no way to get this data, does anyone know how people proposed boundary changes before technology?

[eblood66]

Ah, yes. That has come up before. As was recommended in that instance I'd suggest calling Local Unit Support and see if they can do anything for you. There isn't anywhere to download lat/long anymore and the tools to use geocodes are gone from MLS. But maybe LUS can provide a lat/long (and associated membership data) download for this kind of situation. If they can do something, please report back so that others will know what to do.

If they can't help then I'd say it's time for your stake president to bug his area authority and up the line in order to get some sort of support for reorganizing overlay units. But I'd guess they do have a plan and it just hasn't been completed yet. But there should be an interim plan since MLS support was turned off.

[lajackson]

If there's no way to get this data, does anyone know how people proposed boundary changes before technology?

Pushpins on maps. It was a Halloween nightmare.

Is there any way you can do the English boundaries and then the Spanish boundaries separately? Or do you need totals from both at the same time?

[christober72304]

If I understand your suggestion correctly, no...we're looking at combining the english/spanish wards into geographical boundaries instead of by language. So I need both at the same time.

[christober72304]

So here's what I ended up doing: I pulled the split address information with head of house name from MLS (only place to get this specific in the column data). Then Texas A&M (tamu.edu) has a geocoding program that will take your input file and process the associated addresses and provide you the lat/long for everyone (I assume it's all correct). It was all free, the only way I could get to this data now

p.s. what's LUS?

[russellhltn]

Then Texas A&M (tamu.edu) has a geocoding program that will take your input file and process the associated addresses and provide you the lat/long for everyone (I assume it's all correct). It was all free, the only way I could get to this data now

One minor detail - you're providing an outside entity a list of member's addresses. Some might consider that against policy.

4.9.3 The use of MLS data and membership information in third party software is prohibited, whether obtained from within or outside of a meetinghouse.

p.s. what's LUS?

Local Unit Support Support Contact Information for U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico

[rontilby]

It seems to me that the original poster has a legitimate real-world need for analysis capability that apparently doesn't exist in the new boundary analysis tool. Could the tool experts (or developers) post here regarding whether they currently or will in the future be able to support the original posters needs?

[jonesrk]

It seems to me that the original poster has a legitimate real-world need for analysis capability that apparently doesn't exist in the new boundary analysis tool. Could the tool experts (or developers) post here regarding whether they currently or will in the future be able to support the original posters needs?

They have discussed how to handle proposals with the different kinds of units. It gets tricky in making it clear which kinds of units you are working on and what you have changed for each kind and handling areas where those overlay units don't cover the whole area.
I don't know if they have considered this exact scenario of converting the language units to regular units.