Record of Survey

Some review to assure major things aren't left out is good and I can't see eliminating reviews entirely.

But it sounds like any change proposal should address careful wording of the review requirements to reduce the discretion of the reviewer. Surveying organizations should push back if the discretion is being abused.

I find that I simply have a different opinion to much of your logic and examples but each to our own.

> You call around to a few surveyors and find out that, due to Record of Survey requirements your survey fee will be about $6,000.
It shouldn't be difficult to explain to a landowner that the Survey needed to define, retrace and permanently record for all to see is 0.5% to 1% of their property value. When I worked in So Cal we didn't send a crew out the door on jobs less than 4-5k.

> You are in shock. Your budget has just been blown out.
I don't need to work for a client that is unwilling to be informed about a proper budget and cost and I have no problem explaining the cost reasoning, hourly rates and time needed to do a proper job that will put them on the winning side of a court battle vs them choosing a deed staker who tells them it can be done without a properly filed survey.

> This will cost about $5,000 more.
This sort of statement that tries to put the blame on the jurisdiction is not the route I would take.

> It will involve me in months of haggling with the County Survey Office
I guess I never have had this experience.

>(1) Your work will be available to any other surveyor.
I feel karma is a good thing. I have no problem leaving my footsteps on the ground for others to follow rather than sweep them under the rug. circa 1900's

> So your business advantage in the area of the survey will diminish to about zero.

My business advantage is that profit is merely a byproduct of quality work that leaves the client informed of the process, educated about the results and proud of their new survey monuments and visible boundary to share with their adjoiners.

Cheers and good luck. I don't think there is much room to argue any of these regulations on the west coast. They are a part of our business plan and budgeting.

I think that you misunderstand the $5,000. Of course, I am not referring to fees charged by the County, but the extra cost to my imaginary surveyor to file a RS. By the way, isn’t this sort of posting a way to "make a difference”.

It is quite clear, in some cases, that this is the motivation for NOT filing in many cases. The most common violators tend to attempt to make their Records of Survey as useless as possible in order to make it difficult for future surveyors to profit from their work.

We don’t disagree here. Wayne could not comprehend why anyone would not want to file a RS. I think that the reasons are obvious, as I stated, even though I don’t agree with them, which I also stated “I personally am not influenced by these considerations”.

"The person who had a survey done in 2005 got no benefit from this program, but is basically subsidizing other people in the future, who now benefit from his survey."

If they got no benefit from it why did they have it done?

It certainly protects their property boundaries by publicly memorializing them!

The cost to record a survey drawing should be minimal. (Its $24 here). Why do they have to be examined? Do deeds need to be examined also? Why not? There are as many problems caused by poorly written descriptions recorded in deeds as there are by poor quality surveys!

Washington is a Recording State

The situation of the surveyor and surgeon are not analogous. States, and by delegation, counties and cities have ‘general jurisdiction’, and the ability to limit the right to contract based on health and safety concerns. This ability is the basis of much of medical rules and restrictions. No right of this magnitude operates in the area of boundaries, etc.

I understand quite well, apparently much better than you. For a deed cut survey (which is rarely simple) that only requires $1,000 effort to research, find controlling monumentation for all directions, analyze its harmoneous relationship with all neighbors, review chains of title for it and neighbors for harmony and jr/sr sequencing, if all that can truly be done for only $1k, then it must be so simple that such a simple anomaly would certainly only take about 2 hours to draft.
So either you're still drafting with goose quill pens or you're charging$2,500 an hour to draft. Certainly something so simple to survey will fly through all 58 county surveyors with minimal redlines .

Or perhaps you're a jackleg who spends an hour finding 1 pipe and then deed stakes the lot without considering the neighborhood. And is now complaining about the county surveyor process because the CS isn't buying that brand of bs.

And no, simply sniveling on a forum is no where near what takes to make a difference. Until you take the time to draft a well reasoned proposal and submit it, nothing will get done . Flapping one's gums on a discussion board is simply just that.

The $5,000 in my example is not a County fee, but the imagined extra cost that the surveyor would have to pass on the client for a RS.

> The $5,000 in my example is not a County fee, but the imagined extra cost that the surveyor would have to pass on the client for a RS.

Ohhhh, so you are imagining that you can't simply do the "minimal" boundary survey and now must perform a "real" boundary survey simply because an RS is required to be filed.

I'm with Jim on this one. AZ is $24 for a mylar record of survey. Here in Mohave County we record letter sized "Survey Certificates" for $14 on a simple lot survey with no land division.

Those fees just get added on to the bill as reimbursable expenses, and/or included in your fee.

I still do not understand the mindset of those who oppose recordation standards. Makes no sense whatsoever.

I would have responded sooner, but I had to let my goose quill pens dry. Your last post is sort of the ‘Dirty Harry’ version of professional disagreement. So I’m apparently a sniveling jackleg who enjoys flapping his gums. Maybe my ‘mother wears Army boots’ (When I was 8 years old this was a common schoolyard insult).

But, back to the world of actual adult discourse; neither you, nor anyone else who has posted to my thread has actually disputed my central thesis: Filing requirements, such as the Record of Survey in California, function as a sort of tax on people who trigger this requirement. And from at least one or two vantage points this tax may be unfair.

You seem to look at my posting as an entire waste of time. I did this in order to find out what my professional peers think about this subject. I may, in fact, attempt to change the law in the manner that you suggest. But, and maybe I am odd in this way, but before forming an opinion with real conviction I attempt to get input from others. Strange concept for some, I guess.

By the way, I have complained to Beerleg about your post. I think that the function of this site is for serious discourse, not childish insults.

Part of the cost estimate for any filed survey, Record of Survey or other plat, should realistically include the extra time spent dealing with "reviewers" who often want to tell you how to survey. Some of them do so more than others. So Lewis has a point there about added costs.

This never used to be the case. If you look at old guide line booklets and regs from the 1960'-1980's, it used to be the "practitioner", we the land surveyors, who decided solely what went into a survey. For example, the old state and national county engineers association booklets,used to have as the title; "Guide lines for Preparing and Filing Records of Survey". It never said guide line for "review' of Records of Survey. It was left up to the practitioner, not the reviewer, to make final decisions.

I have interviewed county surveyors for a future national magazine article; some of them say they "like to make the call as to what is a "material discrepancy". For our fellow surveyors in non-filing states; that is the "trigger" or code requirement for filing the official Record of Survey.

By the way, the Alaska code quoted above is almost word for word like our code section here in CA. Did we copy them or did they copy us ?

The real question is how did things get so turned around ? Us not living up to our responsibilities? Big government out of control ? Maybe a combination of both ?

:good:

They had it done because it was a legal requirement imposed on the surveyor.

Your second point is worthwhile, I think, but still doesn’t argue for an ‘activist’ County Surveyor, vs a County Surveyor who simply files maps.

Sometimes the truth hurts. Hopefully you can get past the sting of criticism and get to a point where you take it constructively. I do look forward to maybe someday vetting a well reasoned proposal on this subject.

The platting authorities in California must be an entirely different breed than what I'm accustomed to dealing with in the recording districts here in Alaska. Record of Surveys here get little or no review at all since they are not a subdivision and do not create any boundaries, only document a survey used to establish existing boundaries. Here they are for the most part voluntary. The survey police are not going to descend in black helicopters if I don't file one. Having lived and worked in California I do know it to be one of the most ungodly regulated of all the states. Might have had something to do with me leaving the Golden State for good so many years ago.

I can understand surveyors not wanting to give away their work by making it part of the public record, but therein lies the fundamental paradox of the surveyor in private practice. In just whose interest do they serve and what are those priorities? Is their first interest to their bottom line and maintaining their competitive edge however and whenever possible? Or putting the public trust first by creating records of their work that allow future surveyors to walk in their footsteps. :-/

$20 bucks to record one here btw, plus my drafting time and if I give something away in the process of maintaining harmony in the neighborhood down the road? So be it. Other's ROS surveys have saved my butt on more than one occasion. Like I said, just playing it forward. B-)

>
> But, back to the world of actual adult discourse; neither you, nor anyone else who has posted to my thread has actually disputed my central thesis: Filing requirements, such as the Record of Survey in California, function as a sort of tax on people who trigger this requirement. And from at least one or two vantage points this tax may be unfair.
>

Okay Lewis, I'll respond to your central thesis.

1. The requirement to file a Record of Survey in CA was first established in 1891 expressly for the purposes of documenting a public record of the survey as run on the ground for property boundaries that were not previously mapped and/or monumented so that land owners and subsequent land surveyors could appropriately follow the original footsteps. In reality and if you think about it, at this point in time the majority of the "private" surveys involved rancho boundaries, subdivisions of those ranchos, and the beginnings of the sectional breakdowns as the Fed Govt started patenting the federal lands. By all available accounts, this was most likely viewed as benefit by the land owners and not as a tax, but that is my opinion based on my research on the matter.

2. Land Surveyors survey property boundaries - they do not survey "parcels". It is very difficult to survey someone's property boundary without it also being someone else's property boundary.

3. Land Surveyors are not advocates for any one property owner - they are advocates for the true location of the property boundaries regardless of who is paying them or why the location of the property boundary is needed.

4. ALL property boundary surveys serve a purpose to the public. In some cases, that purpose is beneficial, in others, it may appear detrimental.

5. ALL boundary surveys should be performed with the same standard of care regardless of where it is located and regardless of whether someone else will be reviewing a resulting report of that survey. It's been my experience, working in recording and non-recording states, that this is predominately the standard.

6. I said this previously in this thread but you may not have read it. County Surveyors in CA do not have the authority to review a land surveyor's survey. The statutes governing the review of a Record of Survey authorizes the County Surveyor to review and comment on the "Record" of Survey, in other words, the document or map, and how that "Record" complies with specific sections in statute.

While I certainly understand the concerns that you have expressed relative to the manner in which "some" County Surveyors perform their responsibilities or some of the fees being charged by the County to perform these services, I cannot support or condone an alternative to this process which would result in many unfiled surveys held in private surveyors hands simply for the purpose of creating a profitable business empire or for the purposes of withholding the knowledge of these surveys from adjacent land owners.

Lewis

"The $5,000 in my example is not a County fee, but the imagined extra cost that the surveyor would have to pass on the client for a RS."

What is an "imagined extra cost"? There is no extra work required to prepare a Record of Survey drawing. Don't you prepare a drawing documenting your work for your client anyway? All you have to do is record it!