I??m the examining land surveyor for an adjoining county. Today I received a record set for final review and signature... this initial submittal was pretty marked up.... the normal process is the record set come back to me / with or without the Surveyor??s signature.... this one come to me after being to being signed by everyone else- both parties, surveyor, county assessor- and it comes to me with 5 errors remaining uncorrected- typos and incorrect in information not included in the original, incorrect location diagram.....and there is a VERY OBVIOUS error I found today that I didn??t catch the first time.... fun fun fun...?ÿ
and there is a VERY OBVIOUS error I found today that I didn??t catch the first time.
Everyone makes mistakes, but one of my pet peeves is when I submit a revised map based on a markup and it comes back with new redlines not shown on the original markup.?ÿ If it's substantive I'll make the change without objection, but I've taken -- in my cranky old age -- to rejecting revision requests that aren't required by statute.
I don't do many projects that require discretionary approvals, so almost all of my agency submittals are Records of Survey, which in California are regulated by state law rather than local agency ordinance.?ÿ The County Surveyor's review authority is fairly limited, so if I don't agree with a suggested change I don't have to make it.
If you were a Portland area County Surveyor you would have no second thoughts about refusing to accept that plat and sending the thing back for amendments. In fact, it would never have begun it's rounds until you said it was good to go. In fact, the same goes for everybody else who signed. Everybody has to agree that it's good to go before anybody signs it.?ÿ
5 errors remaining uncorrected- typos and incorrect in information not included in the original, incorrect location diagram
I strongly agree with Jim on this, but there comes a point where I will not be party recording crap because it is more convinient...
Except Clean Water Services. For some reason they are the only agency gets to review the mylars in Washington County after you have run the review gauntlet and submitted the final plat map.
Crap is crap.?ÿ I have seen so many examples of pure crap it is unbelievable, including one survey from a seated member of the BOR.?ÿ He took it as he should have and made the correction that would have been very embarrassing when found by someone else.?ÿ Yes, we all make mistakes.?ÿ As a reviewer, make note of needed corrections based on statutes, policies and minimum standards, not personal preferences or opinions.
In the "we all make mistakes category" was one very nice subdivision that said it is was in a county nearly 100 miles distant from where it was located.?ÿ Simple to correct.?ÿ Embarrassing if one of numerous reviewers/signers takes one look, says "What the heck?" and assumes if something that glaring can make it through several inhouse checkers then what else is wrong.?ÿ Time to go over it with a fine tooth comb.
The vast majority of plats I have reviewed are excellent.?ÿ But, a quick call to the creator is far superior to a public grilling.?ÿ Even worse is when the errors get through into deeds and mortgages or releases of mortgages or other documents before "someone" sees something that MUST be fixed and the sooner the better.
Do not simply plat what the deed says.?ÿ Make sure the deed is correct to start with.?ÿ I can't tell you how many times this clusterf*** has been found.?ÿ Wrong section.?ÿ Wrong subdivision.?ÿ Wrong block.?ÿ Lots running north-south when the record plat shows them running east-west.?ÿ Wrong alley widths.?ÿ Wrong street widths.?ÿ Wrong city.?ÿ Wrong lot widths or depths.?ÿ Wrong angle between lot front and lot side (square, when it's not square or even close to square) I have had lenders/title companies/even the owners themselves send me the wrong deed to start from.?ÿ If you can dream it in a nightmare...............it has happened sometime, somewhere, to somebody.
What can also happen is that the original submittal is so awful the reviewer may point out the really egregious concerns and tell them to try again, and do it correctly next time.?ÿ The second submittal adjusts two or three of those concerns then makes new errors that weren't errors on the original submittal.?ÿ That leads to the dreaded red marks that weren't present on the first review.?ÿ Mis-identifying the street name on both (or more) submittals is a sure sign of a dimwit doing things with no competent inhouse review being made.
There is a separate issue that drives me nuts. Short trip, I know, but I digress.
A city has a very detailed 70-page set of subdivision policies.?ÿ Certain things are normally never a problem, say minimum lot size allowed.?ÿ Then you get a subdivision plat to review with a lot that is less than one-fifth that minimum size.?ÿ That lot cannot stand alone.?ÿ It must be sold with an adjoining lot.?ÿ You contact the city staff and they say, "Oh, yeah.?ÿ We discussed that and decided it was OK no matter what the policy states."?ÿ You then ask why it couldn't simply have the lot line removed and include it as being within adjoining Lot XX.?ÿ That's when you get dead silence on the phone line and finally hear, "Guess you're right but it's too late now.?ÿ We don't want to make the guy change his drawing again."?ÿ You explain that there are already 18 things that need to be changed so he will be changing his drawing anyway so take this opportunity to fix the problem.?ÿ That's when you learn that the city staff and elected officials have decided to let things slide no matter how far they are from adhering to the official requirements.
In the realm of "the deed is wrong" is one of my favorite examples of the surveyor being the hero.
Guy wants to split off a few acres around a small, old house that is on a large tract that he had purchased over six months earlier from a geezer who was expected to kick the bucket any moment.?ÿ We show up to begin the field work and discover the house is half on what he bought and half on a different tract.?ÿ Research that adjacent tract and discover it is still owned by the geezer.?ÿ WTF???????ÿ That's when I notice at the very bottom of the last page of the description there is a space down and the word "and"?ÿ with nothing after it.
The geezer owned three oddly-shaped tracts that had effectively been converted to appear to be one.?ÿ The intent was to sell everything he owned to my client.?ÿ No one caught the mistake.?ÿ Not the seller, the buyer, the title company, the lender releasing the geezer's lien, the buyer's lender, the appraiser, the real estate agent....................no one.?ÿ Not even me until the house didn't fit.
Fortunately, the geezer's bucket was yet unkicked and a bunch of red-faced parties had to deal with the third tract that had not been conveyed earlier despite the payment made having been based on including that tract.?ÿ But, if that bucket had been kicked, the resolution would have been far more complicated and delayed.
the surveyor being the hero
Most of the time, the Surveyor get's frowned upon, for finding problem's. It's good to see; when a Surveyor DOES find a problem, he's also able to find a resolution.
I hope there was more than a pat on the back, for that one...
My favorite excuse: It was such an obviuos mistake, why didn't your guys catch it?
For those outside Portland, "Clean Water Services" is the nicey-nice marketing name for what used to be called the "Unified Sewerage Agency".
Been on both sides of the counter concerning ROSs.
As a checker I'd march down the Checklist of elements required by statute, check using map closure submittals that everything adds up, a peek at the road records for naming & R/W widths, and examination of supplied adjounder Docs to make sure names, references, etc are right.?ÿ That's it.?ÿ I'm not going to inject my opinion of the surveyor's conclusions in a redline process; he/she's the one signing the ROS, not me.?ÿ Most submittals where fairly clean, some with no redlining.?ÿ Common was math errors; typos or wrong leader lines, conflicting annotation, etc., not controversial.?ÿ?ÿ
On the other side of the counter, I'd always make my first submittal as perfect as could be, and was grateful when the checker pointed out typos, math errors et. al.?ÿ My worst mistake was labelling the map in the wrong County, woopsie, using the boilerplate copy/paste technique.?ÿ But I have had some trouble in especially backward Counties, where the checker steps over the line and contests my boundary analysis based on *his* interpretation of "found/lost", etc., to promote the "official" record location of the boundaries, especially concerning R/W.
I'll consider his complaint(s) and have a few times acceded to something he pointed out that makes sense, but in general when they step over the line I'll demand recordation with the County Surveyor's disclaimer on the ROS.?ÿ We have that right in many States.
I agree, but then it depends. When I've had drafters who've handed me plans with so many mistakes, I've often found additional mistakes that I didn't catch on the first go. And the more revisions, the more times I have to look at something, the more I'll probably find. Especially when there's dynamic text involved, and labels are apt to change from revision to revision.
About 40 years ago the department I worked in had a clerk who couldn't type her own name correctly twice in a three paragraph letter.?ÿ This was pre-word processor days for that office.?ÿ Official letters were an original and four carbon copies.?ÿ All errors on all sheets had to be erased, carefully realigned in the typewriter carriage and retyped.?ÿ It was pure torture working with her to try to get a perfect document.?ÿ She probably picked up on the crappy spelling ability from her parents who named her Vicktorria.?ÿ She went by Torrie.
