[Talk-us] Is there any value at all in tiger:MTFCC and tiger:FUNCSTAT tags?

[Kevin Kenny]

On Mon, Mar 25, 2019 at 11:58 AM Mateusz Konieczny
<matkoniecz at tutanota.com> wrote:
> Any info about meaning or use of https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:tiger:FUNCSTAT
> would be useful.

https://www.census.gov/geo/reference/funcstat.html

What those phrases mean is not immediately clear.
https://www.census.gov/geo/reference/gtc/gtc_area_attr.html is another
treatement of functional status and indicates: "Functional status
describes whether a geographic entity is a functioning governmental
unit, has an inactive government, is an administrative area without a
functioning government, or is a statistical area identified and
defined solely for tabulation and presentation of statistical data." -
the observation that A and S predominate is in keeping with the
definition that 'A' is a functioning governmental unit, and 'S' is a
statistical entry only.  I'm not sure what areas would have an
'inactive' government or be 'nonfunctioning' legal entities, and I
suspect that they're weird.

'Special-purpose functions' are so that TIGER can represent boundaries
such as school, library, water, sewer, sanitation, fire protection,
police, ... districts - whose boundaries may not match other
administrative hierarchies.  'Partially consolidated' refers to
situations like the boroughs of New York City, which have largely
ceded the executive and legislative functions of counties to the city,
but retain an independent judiciary.