Version 2024 | May 8, 2024

Standard  

Updates  

• 5/8/2024 - Approved by the EGC
• 3/29/2024 - Released for public comment
• 4/12/2023 - Approved by the EGC
• 3/6/2023 - Release for public comment
• 7/13/2022 - Approved by the EGC
• 6/8/2022 - Released for public comment
• 10/14/2020 - Approved by the EGC
• 8/19/2020 - Released for public comment
• 9/13/2017 - Approved by the EGC
• 4/26/2017 - Release for public comment

History  

• March 2024 - Village of Lyndonville disincorporated (merged with the Town of Lyndon.
• March 2023 - Minor update: City of Essex Junction GEOID is assigned by the Census. Updated in the County Subdivision table to 5000724400.
• June 2022 - The following minor changes reflected:
  • Creation of the City of Essex Junction (formerly the Village of Essex Junction).
  • Moved Village of Essex Junction from active to "historical".
  • Inclusion of four new fields in “commcode” database:
    • CENSUS2020 – flags if geographic entity was recognized in 2020 Census
    • AOE_CODE – code denoting municipalities within Agency of Education data
    • LAT – latitude of town clerk’s office for municipality (E911 Landmark location used in absence of town office)
    • LONG - longitude of town clerk’s office for municipality (E911 Landmark location used in absence of town office)
  • Changed name of Standard from “VT Geographic Area Codes Standard” to “VT Geographic Area Names and Codes Standard”
• August 2020 - The following minor changes are reflected:
  • Village of Waterbury disincorporated
  • Village of Perkinsville disincorporated
  • All abbreviations of Saint as ‘St.’ replaced with the full spelling of ‘Saint’
• July 2017 - Second version of standard developed, replacing the former codes with new codes and concatenations. Non-incorporated Census Designated Places are excluded from the new standard (villages remain, as they are incorporated), and the Path Code field is deprecated. The following minor changes are also reflected:
  • Town of “Enosburg” changed to “Enosburgh” to reflect revised GNIS spelling (note: Enosburg Village remains the same)
  • "Bradford Village” disincorporated
• July 2006 - Standard revised to change ‘Alburg’ to ‘Alburgh’ based on adoption by the Vermont Board of Libraries in April 2006.
• July 2004 - Standard revised to reflect allocation of Upper Valley-Lake Sunapee Commission (UV) towns to Two Rivers (TR). Also added three missing villages (Groton, S. Ryegate, Townshend) and moved Northfield Village from “historical” to active (the removal of Northfield in the 2003 update was an error).
• December 2003 - Standard revised to reflect changes in CDP and village designations. Changes based on the following sources:
  • 2000 U.S. Census CDP and Village designations.
  • VT State Archives - Secretary of State's Office. Legislative acts which have merged towns/villages.
• June 2000 - Minor update. Sherburne renamed to Killington, which resulted in a change to the towns FIPS6 code. Also changed references to Franklin/Grand Isle RPC (FG) to Northwest RPC (NW).
• 1993 - Original Standard endorsed by VCGI Technical Advisory Committee.

Statutory Authority and Standard Review  

The Vermont Center for Geographic Information (VCGI) has the statutory authority to craft and adopt VT GIS standards and guidelines. VCGI works with the VT GIS community to carefully craft these standards and guidelines, helping to ensure that Vermont GIS (VGIS) data “is compatible with, useful to” others in the VT GIS community.

The State’s Enterprise GIS Consortium (EGC) is established as the organization responsible for reviewing and approving Vermont GIS standards crafted by VCGI (in collaboration with the Vermont GIS Community).

Purpose  

This standard defines codes for various incorporated and widely-used geographic areas in Vermont. Existing federal standards are leveraged by this standard to ensure maximum compatibility with state and federal data.

A primary use of these standard codes is to store and link data related to these geographies. One capability of GIS is the creation of thematic maps (maps in which towns or other areas are shaded in based on the values for the different areas). An example would be a thematic map of population density for Vermont's towns. Thematic maps will be easier to produce from various data sources if users adhere to these standard geographic codes.

The inclusion of these codes within state data at both the local and statewide level will also enable the linking of data from different sources and regions to perform analyses across municipalities, statewide, and at the national level.

Scope  

Standard codes and computer field names and formats are described for the following geographic areas:

• State
• Counties
• Cities, Towns, Gores, and Grants
• Villages
• Regional Planning Commissions

Applicability, Compliance, and Implementation  

This standard applies to all Vermont State agencies and departments and their contractors that collect and manage data, including, but not limited to, geospatial data. It is recognized that there are specific use cases that this standard may not support. The intention of this standard is to provide a base encoding standard for geographic entities that are commonly utilized across Vermont agencies and organizations, to be consistently applied across state government. This being the case, certain geographic areas may be absent. Those wishing to enumerate such areas are still encouraged to use the standard wherever possible, and adopt existing federal standards that refer to geographies outside the scope of this standard if necessary.

State data that includes the names of geographic entities described in these standard (i.e. a column including “Bellows Falls,” “Burlington,” etc.) falls within the purview of this standard, and thus is expected to include the accompanying geographic codes. This will enable thematic mapping and better data federation, as well as reduce the many problems currently caused by the misspelling of Vermont’s geographic names (i.e. St. George Saint George, St George). At the very least, data with a geographic component is expected to include a field with the appropriate codes, even if the associated (but auxiliary) names are not present.

Upon adoption of this standard, per 10 V.S.A. § 123 c.5, all new datasets are expected to comply with the standard. Legacy datasets to which this standard applies are urged to adopt the standard within 24 months, during which period VCGI will be available for assistance in making such transitions.

Definitions  

• State - A constituent political entity of the United States of America.
• County - An administrative division of the state in which their boundaries are drawn.
• City, Town, Gore, and Grant - The primary sub-county governmental or administrative units in Vermont. These are legally incorporated entities with boundaries and names as established by state law. Cities, towns, gores, and grants are often collectively referred to as "municipalities" or "county subdivision".
• Village - A named, incorporated community located within the boundaries of an incorporated town.
• Regional Planning Commission - Regional Planning Commissions (RPCs) were established by the Vermont state legislature to assist with municipal and regional planning in Vermont.

Referenced Standards  

• American National Standards Institute
  • The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) currently encompasses two encoding schemas: the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) and the Federal Information Processing Series (FIPS). GNIS represents the official standard, and is based on place names that are linked to unique numeric identifiers. For the purposes of this standard, FIPS, a widely-used census code standard also encompassed by ANSI, will be used instead. Since GNIS represents the standard for place names, FIPS codes were joined to GNIS names to ensure that naming is up-to-date and in conformance with the federal standard. A shorter version of the official GNIS name was added to increase the relevance and usability of these names.
• VGIS Geographic Area Codes Standard (v1)
  • The codes used to encode RPC areas within the first version of the VGIS Geographic Area Codes Standard are carried over into this updated standard.

Coded Domains  

• State
• Counties
• Cities and Towns
• Villages (selected from Incorporated Places as villages are not enumerated with their own codes within the FIPS)
• Regional Planning Commissions

Specifications  

This standard describes and contains the FIPS enumerations adopted for standardizing the encoding of geographic areas in Vermont. FIPS has been selected due to its practicality for census data and other commonly used data products. The official spellings of place names as determined by the U.S. Board of Geographic Names have been retained alongside these codes. The most recent FIPS codes are published along official spellings by GNIS. GNIS also possesses its own system of encoding geographies, however GNIS codes are not adopted by this standard because they lack the concatenation structure present in the FIPS series, which improves visibility and allows for easier data reorganization. FIPS codes are also obtainable through the website of the U.S. Census, although such codes may contain deprecated spellings or codes since they represent 10-year snapshots of the codes corresponding to census years. For this reason, GNIS remains the best available source for all non-Vermont specific encodings.

FIPS represents public encodings developed by the federal government for use in data and computing. They encompass a range of geographic area types, four of which are used within this standard: State, County, County Subdivision, and Incorporated Place. The revised standard retains the Regional Planning Commission codes (abbreviations) present in earlier versions, which refer to geographic entities established by the Vermont State Legislature that serve the function of assisting with regional planning and development.

Earlier versions of this standard appended the 3-digit “Census Codes” for Minor Civil Divisions to 3-digit FIPS codes for counties. These “Census Codes” are no longer in use, and have been superseded by FIPS codes representing the same geographic areas (“County Subdivision” replacing “Minor Civil Division”). “Path Codes” have also phased out of this standard, as they originated to address the needs of legacy technology.

These codes may be joined to geographic data to assist with the joining of geographic data to tabular census data. When possible, to preserve the integrity of encoded domains, leading zeroes should be preserved within all codes. This means that for a 5-number standard, 5 numbers should be present for all entries. The following hierarchical geographic subdivisions and associated geographic FIPS codes are defined in this standard:

• State
  • County
    • County Subdivision (town, city, grant, or gore)
      • Incorporated Place (village)

Another geographic subdivision is defined in this standard that does not fall easily within the above hierarchy, since it subdivides the state but contains subdivisions that straddle county borders. This geographic area is encoded using its own State of Vermont governmental standard:

• Regional Planning Commission

Figure 1. (Left) Diagram depicting hierarchy of Census-defined geographic areas. (Right) Example geographic boundaries (Village, Town, County, and State) containing Manchester Village, with corresponding GEOID codes as enumerated in this standard.

Standard Codes  

ANSI FIPS codes are used by the census for certain geographic areas. The following table describes codes to be used in Vermont for the census divisions listed above. It also describes codes developed by the State of Vermont for identifying RPCs.

Concatenated Fields for the Encoding of Data  

For a given Vermont town, city or village, the above fields must be joined together to form a unique code within the state. The following field schemas should be used when encoding data at the county, town, or village level. Schemas for state and RPC are also described, despite these being non-concatenated strings.

Listing of Codes  

• Vermont state, county, RPC, town, and village codes are given in the following tables. The origins of geographic name fields are given below. Geographic code fields are populated according to the geographic code standards elaborated above.
  • GNIS NAME: Official geographic name according to the Board of Geographic Names
  • SHORT NAME: Shortened version of official name according to the naming convention established by the previous standard

State  

• FIELDNAME = STATEGEOID
• Vermont possesses one unique two-digit FIPS integer that is used to refer to the state. This encoding is useful when working with federal or multistate datasets. The state code can be concatenated onto the beginning of other geographic division codes to render state subdivisions unique (for example, county codes are only unique within the state).

County  

• FIELDNAME = CNTYGEOID

Regional Planning Commission  

• FIELDNAME = RPC

Incorporated Place (Village)  

• FIELDNAME = VILLGEOID
• Vermont contains incorporated villages, some of which are unrecognized by the Census Bureau. Villages are not officially encoded as their own geographic designation within the Census and FIPS, and are not represented within County Subdivision codes. They are represented by Incorporated Place codes, which contain codes identifying incorporated villages. Other Place codes (i.e., Census Designated Places) are not included.
  • Groton village
    • Though the town of Groton voted to assume all functions of Groton village in 1965 and 1967 (Deborah L. Markowitz, “Population and Local Government,” State of Vermont, 2000), Vermont law stipulates that a merger between town and village is the only way for a village to be decommissioned. For this reason, it is enumerated here, though the Census Bureau no longer recognizes it as a village. Village name was not derived from GNIS, but instead is based on the spelling provided by the Vermont Secretary of State’s website. Unique VILLGEOID does not represent true Census code as this village is not recognized as an “Incorporated Place,” but was instead created by VCGI in conformance with VILLGEOID schema.
  • South Ryegate village lighting district
    • This municipality acts functionally as a village; however, the date of its organization is vague, and the Census Bureau does not count its population separately from the surrounding town (Deborah L. Markowitz, “Population and Local Government,” State of Vermont, 2000). Village name was not derived from GNIS, but instead is based on the spelling within the act to incorporate (S. 136, Vermont General Assembly, 1908). Unique VILLGEOID does not represent true Census code as this village is not recognized as a “Incorporated Place,” but was instead created by VCGI to be unique within VILLGEOID schema.
  • Townshend village
    • Townshend village represents a case like Groton village, in that the village is functionally inactive but has not merged with the surrounding town. Village name was not derived from GNIS, but instead is based on the spelling provided by the Vermont Secretary of State’s website. Unique VILLGEOID does not represent true Census code as this village is not recognized as a “Incorporated Place,” but was instead created by VCGI in conformance with VILLGEOID schema.
  • Non-standard enumerations
    • Since the Census Bureau does not recognize three villages though they remain incorporated, they lack Incorporated Place FIPS codes. For this reason, VCGI has created three “placeholder” FIPS codes that are not duplicative of currently existing Vermont Incorporated Place codes (however, they may be duplicative with respect to other Incorporated Places nationwide, so care should be taken to concatenate with State codes if using Place data from multiple states or nationwide) according to the following convention: “9999*” (fifth digit assigned as a sequential unique number from 0-9).

County Subdivision  

• FIELDNAME = TOWNGEOID
• In Vermont, cities and most towns are incorporated; gores, grants, and some towns are unincorporated.

Crosswalks and Lookup Tables  

Geographic Names and Codes Data Table

Crosswalks are available to enable the linking of codes within this standard with other geographic codes used in Vermont. These were created to encourage wider adoption of this standard, as well as prompt organizations using alternate codes for the geographies encoded in this standard to switch over to the new codes, when possible. Organizations that use geographic areas that differ significantly from Vermont incorporated boundaries may continue use of an alternate encoding format, or use other federal series when possible, to support specific use cases. However, those using alternate codes should be aware that such codes may not interface successfully with other data, given that alternate coding schemas may not be held to a public standard or update cycle.

The following codes are supported in the crosswalks:

• CT_CODE (Agency of Transportation)
• MCODE (Ehanced 911 Board)
• PT_COUNTY (Department of Taxes)
• PT_TOWN (Department of Taxes)
• AOE_CODE (Agency of Education)

Additional codes may be added to the crosswalks at the request of Agencies and Departments without needing to change the standard.

Legacy codes within the previous standard, as well as historical spellings and geographies that are no longer supported, are available within lookup tables published through the VT Geodata Portal. The purpose of these lookup tables is to support migration to these codes from the codes contained within the previous version of this standard. They also include GNIS codes to support use of the official names.