Perks of being County Surveyor

Free deeds is all I can think of, but I'm not one and never spoke to one

Keeping in mind that in a lot of places, including many counties in Oregon and some in Washington, County Surveyor is a real job with a salary, budget, staff, and county work to do.

Keeping in mind that in a lot of places, including many counties in Oregon and some in Washington, County Surveyor is a real job with a salary, budget, staff, and county work to do.

I understand, Mark. It varies.
N

Prior to our "County Government Reorganization of 1983" every one of the 77 counties in Oklahoma had the opportunity to maintain an office for the County Surveyor. Our statues were written to give the elected position of County Surveyor a salary of 1 dollar a year, provide office space in the courthouse with free access to county records. When the CS was called upon by the courts to bring harmony to boundary disputes and other survey related matters, their fees were considered part of the "court costs" and levied at the time of the judge's verdict. Other surveying fees were realized from the County Commissioner's budget. The loose tie to the local Commissioners was the bullet that nailed our County Surveyor program.

In 1980 the FBI investigated alleged kickbacks in Oklahoma from vendors to Commissioners. After two years of undercover work almost 70 Commissioners from across the State were charged with various fraud and felony charges. Over 40 pled guilty the first chance they had. The rest fought in court and most lost. They all did jail time. Over 280 people were convicted when Oklahoma's "Good Old Boys" network came spiraling to the ground. Some consider it the largest government fraud case ever investigated by the FBI.

As far as I know and remember, no surveyors were a part of this. But our legislature hastily prepared the County Government Reorganization of 1983 and tried their best to sew up any loose pockets in the way county government was ran. It was at this time that the office of county surveyor was officially abolished.

Perks? Who knows? Some of the more populated counties, Oklahoma and Tulsa had CS offices that had a dozen employees or more. Most sleepy little backwater counties had an old gent that was rarely at his office.

One practice that I remember all too well was paying the county surveyor for re-establishment of land corners. You see, a lot of the first county surveyors were men that had been associated with the original surveys. The kept (and passed on) eloquent notes as to the locations of most of the land corners in their county. Since the CS relied on outside business for his income, it was perfectly legal for them to charge crew time to "reset" corners from their records. It might take 2 hrs., it might take two days...but the only way to restore a corner was to pay the county surveyor to do it. Most would set a 40d nail and never, ever let you see their notes. Most were BS. Their nails usually mysteriously disappeared a few weeks after they were set. I remember working on subdivisions from corners set by them. Six month's later somebody else working in a different but common section would pay them to restore the same corner....and it might be in a different place.

The county surveyors were the main dissent when it came to passing our "Corner Perpetuation Act" in 1978. After that, someone could reset a corner ALL BY THEMSELVES...and cut the CS out of the loop. It did not set well with a lot of old grumpy surveyors. But time marches on. And most CS have slipped into obscurity.

I had a g-g-great uncle who was county surveyor for some decades in the years after the civil war, 20+ years after the original GLO surveys. Someday I'd like to bother the County Engineer's office (there is no County Surveyor now) to see if they still have field books from that era, but I doubt they do or would let me poke around.

I would bet they still have them. Finding them could be the trick. Or, they might point you to them in five seconds. Rural counties NEVER toss anything. It's buried under 150 years of cobwebs but it's still there.

As an elected position, the office of County Surveyor did not have the requirement of being a licensed surveyor.
Anyone could campaign for the office.
Cass County was mostly an honorary position with not many perks.
No Office, no staff, no free copies of records and no budget.
There was unrestricted access to records and all the county's work (once in a blue moon kind of way).
The office was responsible for a couple of things that with no budget never were actually complied with in full order, yet addressed and kept on file.
County Surveyor was extended some of the limited powers of a Licensed State Land Surveyor in determining boundaries within their county that were outside the scope of a Registered Public Surveyor, (aka Registered Professional Land Surveyor) which was a unique perk in itself.
The last elected surveyor petitioned and had the office abolished.

this position is unique. The public and, mostly, the profession expects a high degree of professionalism, but the main obstacle to providing a needed and valuable service to the public is the mere perception by our county commissioners that we are a costly, political "nuisance". I can show anyone hard figures that prove that the opposite results when our commissioners take on the tasks of survey management: County Commissioners - who have full control over the budget - spend more tax money on "hiring out" low bid contracts to surveyors who do not run for the office. than if they would pay a professional salary to their county surveyor who sought the office.

I am about to vacate my position at the County of Maui. During my 7 years here I manged to purchase 4 permanent GPS base stations along with the network software to run it, 2 x GRS-1 rovers, a Hiper V base and rover, used for areas with bad cell reception, and various software for post-processing and analysis.
At first it was a hard sell, but they soon realized the long term benefit of the infrastructure as other county services were been presented that needed the spatial reference offered by GPS.

antcrook, post: 370615, member: 6417 wrote: I am about to vacate my position at the County of Maui. During my 7 years here I manged to purchase 4 permanent GPS base stations along with the network software to run it, 2 x GRS-1 rovers, a Hiper V base and rover, used for areas with bad cell reception, and various software for post-processing and analysis.
At first it was a hard sell, but they soon realized the long term benefit of the infrastructure as other county services were been presented that needed the spatial reference offered by GPS.

Awesome! We have a county in Colorado where a great surveyor did the exact same thing with setting up network stations that he maintained and all the surveyors latched on to it in that county. His network has grown to even go into other counties. I've never surveyed in that county, but I did get a tour and was very impressed.