"Or putting the public trust first by creating records of their work that allow future surveyors to walk in their footsteps. "
Amen brother!
:good:
:clap: :clap: :clap:
In QLD if you place a mark in the ground you have to Lodge a Survey Plan of record for that monument. Within 40 business days of it being placed.
By the way, I have complained to Beerleg
"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."
😛
Please, tell us more about the function of this site.
Don
> > Your work will be available to any other surveyor. So your business advantage in the area of the survey will diminish to about zero.
>
> The state didn't grant you a license to survey in order to enrich you; it granted the license so that you can help the public maintain a high-quality system of real property title location and associated records. You have to figure out the making-a-living part.
I agree Jim, but I would like to rephrase that just a bit:
The state didn't grant you a license to survey in order to enrich you;
it granted the license so that the public is more likely to get a high-quality survey of a system of real property title location and associated records.
You have to figure out the making-a-living part.
and that is a Good Thing
Lewis
> 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!
California has very specific requirements for Records of Survey, so preparing a ROS here is rarely a matter of simply changing the title block on the client deliverable. On the contrary, there's typically a significant amount of additional work involved in preparing a ROS. In my experience, even a simple one takes a couple of hours to draft, and more involved situations can take several days. I'd say my average is somewhere around 4 hours just to get check prints ready to submit, plus an hour or two to address review comments prior to plotting a final mylar.
> And from at least one or two vantage points this tax may be unfair.
“And who ever said the world was fair, little lady? Maybe death is fair, but certainly not life. We must accept the unfairness as proof of the sublime flux of existence, the capricious music of the universe- and go on about our tasks”
? Tom Robbins
Thanks. Its always great to have a shoulder to cry on.
Your distinction is entire specious. The ability to review the logic shown on the map is the ability to review the survey. I am aware of County Surveyors in California taking the position that they can not sign the map, without placing a negative comment on it, unless the surveyor changes his methodology to suit their interpretation of boundary law. Of course, the negative comment will diminish the value of the map to the client. So, in the interests of his client, the surveyor may be forced to ‘cave’.
By the way, I have complained to Beerleg
If this passes for wit on this site, the bar is set very low. How sad.
Kudos! Very droll. But still, in all seriousness, it seems universally agreed on this site, and with this thread in particular, that benefit to the public is a high value for surveyors. So for you to dismiss the value of fairness to the public seems a bit out of step with everyone else. But, still your quote was very clever. And with as little wit as there is on this site, that should be appreciated.
I think that I was pretty clear in my imagined example that the extra cost was due to time spent interacting with the County Survey office. A ‘minimal’ survey is your idea, not mine. Actually, it is another example of the type of ad hominem argument that I seem to have triggered. The fact that ‘clearcut’ gave you a ‘thumbs up’ should make you take pause.
Great point. I was focused on the issue of fairness to the public. But the way that surveyors are cheerfully abdicating their independence in favor of governmental regulation is a serious matter. I think one problem is that as time goes by newer surveyors replace older ones, and they forget a time when we were not answerable to government. I just hope you don’t expect much in the way of reasoned response on this site.
Lewis
You’re memory is kind of short. Yesterday you posted the following:
I've always wondered why California County Surveyors were given review authority of private surveyors work. It makes no sense to me whatsoever...
So, if you understand that California County Surveyors have review authority over private surveyor’s work (at least for certain maps, like RS’s)you must realize that we can’t just record our Records of Survey. There is obviously a process, and more work.
The issue is not so much recordation, as activist vs archivist role of the County Surveyor.
You treated us to a meandering view of your philosophy of surveying, but you never responded to what I have called my ‘central thesis’. I can accept everything that you said, and still not be moved from the main idea that I have put forward here regarding fairness to the public. Still, I would like to make a few comments on your numbered points:
1. What is the point of your reconstruction of the attitude of people in 1891? That was more than a few years ago, and, guess what, things just may have changed.
2. Thanks (I guess) for the clarification on how we don’t survey parcels. I guess in the same way that I don’t drive a car, but an automobile, and don’t watch TV, but television. So, all of those legal descriptions that start with something like ‘A Parcel of Land…’ are wrong?
3. Sort of a platitude. I’m not sure that you have really thought this out. Still, it is not pertinent to this thread.
4. Another platitude. I’m not sure what you mean by ‘serve a purpose to the public’. Contractually, by law, professionally, coincidentally???? I think that this would make more sense if you replace the words ‘serve a purpose’ with ‘impact’. So the impact could be beneficial or detrimental.
5. Another platitude. Again, I’m not sure that you have really thought this out. Still, it is not pertinent to this thread.
6. Your distinction is entirely metaphysical, and does not hold up under scrutiny. I have addressed this elsewhere in this thread.
At the end you write the following, with my comments in parenthesis:
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 have never objected to checking fees. In fact, they seem to be modest in the parts of California where I work), I cannot support or condone an alternative to this process which would result in many unfiled surveys held in private surveyors hands (I never advocated this) simply for the purpose of creating a profitable business empire (I never advocated this) or for the purposes of withholding the knowledge of these surveys from adjacent land owners (I never advocated this either. It would be helpful if you read what I wrote before implicitly characterizing my ideas).
"Does anyone know the rational/justification for this sort of requirement?"
won't comment on the original q. of this post, but...
having practiced in both a recording state (CA) and non-recording state (HI), the quality, professionalism and service to public is greatly enhanced in the recording state.
The variance in degree of county surveyors review in CA may be root of Mr. Soloffs apparent frustration, and the responses here.
> This is my difficulty with laws like those that require Records of Survey in California. I tend to see these filing requirements as a hidden, and probably unfair, tax. It is a tax, and a potentially enormous one, on the individual who triggers this requirement for the benefit of other people in the future.
Life in a civilized society is full of "hidden taxes," if you choose to characterize them as such. One of the most prominent is one that I haven't seen Mr. Soloff complain about: professional licensure. Like the rest of us who are licensed to practice land surveying in California, Mr. Soloff enjoys the benefit of a severe restriction against competition in his chosen line of work. Were it not for licensure restrictions, the cost of having land surveyed would be dramatically lower. As a guesstimate, the number of practitioners offering surveying services would increase by a factor of 10 or more over the number currently blessed with the authority to perform this work. Many would be competent and ethical; many more, in my estimation, would not. But overall, the actions of the market would tend to favor the former over the latter as the horror stories of inept surveys and the resulting costs to clients spread by word of mouth and its technological equivalents, and the market would thus determine the fair value of a survey by endorsing the reputations of those who provide good value. Or at least that's the way libertarian philosophy presents the case. Personally, I'm not convinced, but then I like my protected status so am hardly objective in the matter.
As for the "hidden tax" of ROS checking fees, I do wish there were more consistency across counties in their charges, and I'd be okay with moving the "hidden tax" from the individual to the overall tax base if there were some means of ensuring that hiding it further didn't end up inflating it even more. But I will say that Mr. Soloff's choice of example -- the parcel owner in Palos Verdes -- is one for which it's hard to gin up much in the way sympathy. Most folks who can afford to own a home in PV would hardly notice a $5k bump in the cost of improving their property. The ones who deserve sympathy are the folks in low-income neighborhoods, but most of them would be hard-pressed to afford even the worst of the unlicensed practitioners, let alone one endowed with the "hidden tax" of protection from competition.
"They had it done because it was a legal requirement imposed on the surveyor."
You miss the point - Didn't they request the survey be done for a purpose? If the survey helped accomplish a purpose then they benefited from it...
