Legal Description for vacation of right of way help

A different state here, but I'm going to say it needs a full survey. That's too tough to do with verbiage, our planners would require it; boundary and site plat. A plat, location of all utilities, sign off from all stakeholders, ect.

It will go through a couple of readings, if I get it in next week it will show up on the planning commission agenda for June. We are putting through three vacations now, one road, two platted easements, they follow a set process without much give. A boundary-site survey is the first step. 

I can’t be of any help because I only write descriptions based on surveys that have been prepared under my direct supervision.  

if I was publicly employed I would suggest that the person requesting me to write a description cross hatch the areas to be vacated and attach them as exhibits.

I won’t write a description if I haven’t surveyed it.  

... any thoughts on making it more clear to the surveyor who is going to have to determine the location in the field.

This may sound snarky, but it is really not meant that way.  My thoughts would be why not have it surveyed FIRST so that the location in the field is actually known, then prepare a description based on a survey ran on the ground.  There would be a well defined location instead of a bunch of assumptions of correctness/exactness based on the original plat.

Even in my rural minimal requirements area, the plan and description you have would not fly for vacating a city street.

Our local cities do not have anyone on staff capable of writing anything more complex than "Being all of Minerva Street lying north of Ninth Street".  That doesn't stop them from having the city attorney slap together some sort of description and publishing that for the official vacating action.  Then the local surveyors come along trying to help some poor soul who happens to have been "gifted" something at some time in the past.  The surveyor starts asking questions and receives no real answers from anyone.  The City does not want to spend a dollar to give away land to anyone at any time for any reason, even when they are the ones who created the problem.  The GIS department with the County will have the Appraisers Office start taxing someone for the odd piece that "might" have been added to someone's adjoining land.  Sad, but very true.  I"ve seen it too many times.

@JP

I appreciate the feedback (did not sound snarky to me) and agree with everyone that this should be surveyed first before the legal description is created. But the facts are like HC says above that Cities do not want to spend their dollars. I suggested to those above that the adjacent owner who is requesting and benefiting from this be required to have this surveyed before we vacate to no avail. I have the added benefit that the readers here do not in having access to road and utility as-built surveys of the surrounding area and can see that the platted Lot 1 generally conforms with the plat in which I feel comfortable this can be placed on the ground. Will any two surveyors place it in the same area – Heck No! But I feel it will be close enough where no one will care one way or the other (Famous Last Words). This is not an easy legal to follow for any reviewer to contemplate without getting paid and I expect no one to do so. I just thought that maybe their was one or two retired surveyors out their with time who do this for fun to weigh in (like I hope to do someday). Once again, I agree that this should be surveyed first! I appreciate everyone’s comments.

@FAIR

Before this document is executed we will definitely show the adjacent owner the map to confirm it matches his intent. We record the legal description and the map. In your comment you use the term "exhibit" in which i see is used on many legal documents - do you know of why this is used by attorneys instead of just numbering the pages (1of2 etc.) to make sure that you have all the pages? or make reference to map on page so and so? does it add legal weight? BTW thanks for taking the time to look at my post.

@cra903 

Attorneys and title people like using Exhibits. Exhibit A being the description. The preamble will say something like, a tract of land situated in xxxxxx, as shown on Exhibit B, attached hereto and made a part hereof. You can do pages too, it's better to do Exhibits INMHO, but that just me.

@cra903 

Who knows what an attorney is thinking?  EXHIBIT A is where you can expect to find either a description or graphic representation of the subject property.

At least that’s been my experience.

You are on the right track describing the lines to follow. One trrick I have used on these is to write the description without any dimensions, then see if I can plot it on the plat using only the words in my description. Better yet, do what you are doing here and have others try to plit it. U fortunately most of us are using our phones and the screen isn't big enough.

We get way too hung up on numbers. I get it. They are tidy and objective. We foget they must give way to calls for identifiable monuments.

From what I ciuld read I suggest using simple language that can be unerstood by or explained to a layman. Your language describing the fillet area may cause an unsophisticated land owner to stroke out. The average person limits out at parallel or perpendicular...

@Bionic

Thanks for the comments. That simple language is what escapes me when i do not know the end result of the arc data without surveying. Maybe i will get lucky and a machinist will purchase the property. 🙂