To a 'furriner' this seems like a good idea to preserve the cadastral boundary base:
Howcumizzit that the county surveyor Joe Nelsen was not too warm to the idea ?
Did I miss something in the transmission ?
YOS
Derek
Several thoughts leap to the front of my brain on this item. First, who or what the heck is a Land Information Council? Are they self-appointed busy bodies with nothing better to do with their time or are they some ad hoc committee created by the Buffalo County Commission, or whatever the ruling county elected officials are called. Second, what is a County Finance Committee? That function is normally entirely within the realm of responsibility of the elected county commissioners (or whatever title they have in that State). Third, no one but the officially elected Commission has any authority to seek proposals of that magnitude on behalf of the County.
I understand part of why the County Surveyor might not be terribly impressed with this thought. The maintenance of the monuments is his responsibility. He should be in a position to be the utmost authority on what is known to exist, what might exist and what is known to not exist in its original form. There is no way he can possibly be in adequate control of the process and determination of each location if hundreds or thousands are to be located or reset in a short period of time by people who are employed by others. And those others are the "low bidder". NO. NO. NO.
The proper solution is to fund the County Surveyor's office adequately such that he can direct efforts nearly every day of the year to do what really needs to be done. There is no inexpensive solution to the problem that may exist. There is no good way to do the job speedily.
Holy Cow, post: 385669, member: 50 wrote: ....There is no good way to do the job speedily.
Can't the local Junior College get their landscaping class to do that pretty cheap? They could play Pok̩mon while they work also!
[USER=321]@J. Penry[/USER]
Please offer some comments on this thread.
20 or so townships. So how much does that mean each corner cost?
http://buffalocowi.wgxtreme.com/
makerofmaps, post: 385679, member: 9079 wrote: 20 or so townships. So how much does that mean each corner cost?
http://buffalocowi.wgxtreme.com/
Doing the math in my head and using 700 sections, it comes to about $1700 per section ... $212.50 per section corner.
That's for every PLSS corner.
This would be a Pandoras Box for the local boundaries. I see the new RTK folks wreaking havoc on this and a late Wisconsin surveyor named Richard screaming obscenities from his grave.
Also it is very weird that it is a 10 yr project. Something is not right about that. I guess spreading out the fat over 10 years was thought to be more digestible to the public.
To be the cynic, I imagine someone took someone that was part of the local political power structure on a fishing, hunting or golfing trip where they wined and dined and this monumentation project was brought to the politico's attention.
20 PLSS townships, 1.2 m, that's a bargin
Bargains worry me. The process needs to be done correctly and only by a team lead by someone incredibly familiar with that specific county. In my county, that would narrow the search to a grand total of two people. The next closest alternative has a fellow on board who seems to believe that quarter corners are midway between section corners and on a straight line between them. Maybe in some other county, but not here. All the fancy technology in the world ain't worth a hoot if you don't do the research and learn what the old timers really did. That takes time. Lots of time.
Those most familiar with surveying in Buffalo County need to be at the top of the ladder for this project to ever work. When this was started in Lancaster County in 1988, the initial thought was to just get a position on every corner as quickly as possible. It was soon realized that positions were being obtained on junk. There were multiple corners. Some were PK nails in asphalt. Many were missing. Corners at the surface were not over the original stones buried below. Things came to a halt with the realization that before positions could be obtained, the proper research had to be done. Any good surveyor knows that your time spent researching is often double or triple the time you spend in the field. People don't want to pay for research because it is not visible. You have to have seasoned people doing the research. Then you need to go to the field, spend many hours documenting what you found, properly remonument the corner, and lastly, and I mean lastly, get the position on the monument after you are 99.9% sure that is where it should be. They you need to make records for each monument. I haven't even touched on projection issues. This is the short response.
Bad idea....very bad idea. No one surveyor should be determining where every corner falls in a huge retracement survey. There are local surveyors who probably know more about the history and placement of a lot of corners out there and if you come through and override their professional determinations you will probably have heck to pay.
😉
Holy Cow, post: 385799, member: 50 wrote: Bargains worry me. The process needs to be done correctly and only by a team lead by someone incredibly familiar with that specific county. In my county, that would narrow the search to a grand total of two people.
I thought you were going to say 3 people: me, myself and I.;)
DEREK G. GRAHAM OLS OLIP, post: 385659, member: 285 wrote: To a 'furriner' this seems like a good idea to preserve the cadastral boundary base:
Howcumizzit that the county surveyor Joe Nelsen was not too warm to the idea ?
Did I miss something in the transmission ?
YOS
Derek
Strange. As I read it they are going ahead with the project but without an RFP process. That means it's just a low bid process. Qualifications based selection not part of a project estimated at over one million dollars. Of course QBS is often political and results in low quality as well, but chances are better under QBS for an on time and quality service. Maybe the county surveyor will bid it and use it as a retirement job.
I would say the county surveyor knows that they would be paying $1.2 million to overwhelm their court system with boundary suits. There's no way a surveyor could establish all those corners for $200 each and get them to agree with the information that has been relied upon through the years. Right or wrong, they would be opening a huge can of worms.
May as well contract with BLM to do a dependent resurvey. Let me know how that works out.
Duane Frymire, post: 385865, member: 110 wrote: Strange. As I read it they are going ahead with the project but without an RFP process. That means it's just a low bid process. Qualifications based selection not part of a project estimated at over one million dollars. Of course QBS is often political and results in low quality as well, but chances are better under QBS for an on time and quality service. Maybe the county surveyor will bid it and use it as a retirement job.
Utah law says they "may" use QBS when hiring survey work. That means that they are going bid and take the lowest cost. They pretty much get what they won't pay for. At least half the PLSS corner work bid out the last twenty years in my county is junk, causes more problems than it solved. When the real corners have not been maintained or considered lost when there is evidence to where they about were, and landowners did there own thing (maybe even preserved the original with their old fences), all that bringing the "new" PLSS system corners back into the mix does is make all the long established boundaries "off." Make a quite mess into a huge legal mess, lawyers got to love it.
An exercise in futality.
In the 70's I worked on a crew that did some retracement under the Mandate by the state. It was fun and interesting work for the beginner that I was. I left the state in 78 and until today didn't know the that the program was still going. A quick search yielded http://maps.sco.wisc.edu/PLSSFinder/ which ended up to be my timewaster of the day. The on-line tie sheets are sometimes humorous. Several that I looked at were by a surveyor named Jung who also "buried a Whisky (or wine in some cases) bottle with a shell casing on the southwest side of the marker". That is a custom that I am not familiar with. But heck, I like it.
C Billingsley, post: 385904, member: 1965 wrote: ... There's no way a surveyor could establish all those corners for $200 each and get them to agree with the information that has been relied upon through the years. Right or wrong, they would be opening a huge can of worms.
Yes and no. You're right $200 a corner is not near enough to research and adequately determine the most probable location of the original corner. But, at least in Oklahoma, I could fill up ten buses with surveyors willing to get their name on a contract like that. Two victims come to mind, the public and the cadaster. Two winners however, the surveyor that gets to cash the check and every scum-bag-junk-yard-dog-attorney that is a member of the bar in that state.
paden cash, post: 385916, member: 20 wrote: Yes and no. You're right $200 a corner is not near enough to research and adequately determine the most probable location of the original corner. But, at least in Oklahoma, I could fill up ten buses with surveyors willing to get their name on a contract like that. Two victims come to mind, the public and the cadaster. Two winners however, the surveyor that gets to cash the check and every scum-bag-junk-yard-dog-attorney that is a member of the bar in that state.[/QU
I'm sure this would be more practicable in some areas of the country than it would be here. I realize that in some western states you can still find original markers. In Mississippi, I have never seen an original section corner, and I doubt I ever will. Trying to accurately re-establish the original locations of all the corners in an entire city or county sounds like a nightmare, and even if you could do it right, there would be plenty of people willing to fight with you.
makerofmaps, post: 385679, member: 9079 wrote: 20 or so townships. So how much does that mean each corner cost?
http://buffalocowi.wgxtreme.com/
I see 17 political townships and likely 18 physical townships. The $1.2 million is to continue remonumentation that has been going on for many years so it is very unlikely every corner has to be set. That it is spread out over 10 years is reasonable considering the revenue source. Is the County Surveyor a licensed professional?
Paul in PA
