Utah lost another county surveyor this year. Our county surveyor statute says the county surveyor shall be a licensed surveyor except when the county surveyors office is consolidated with another office. Then there in no license required but all surveying work shall be performed by a licensed surveyor.
Tooele County consolidated in January with the recorders office. So the licensed person will be gone and staff also. As near as I can tell survey work is field work and doesn't include any of the what I'd consider the professional aspect of surveying. So all the decisions about section corners, maintenance of the PLSS, contracting, record keeping and such are the duties of the elected county surveyor mostly non licensed recorders. If they have to have any survey work done they contract with the licensed lowest bid. So there you have it, your license kicks in when you go out the office door with your tools.
I'm going to push for elimination of county surveyors completely, see if a state surveyor could be put in charge of maintaining the PLSS and keeping the records. That would have to be better than creating a bunch of ignorant elected boundary gods in the various recorders offices around the state.
You might suggest that while they are at it they might as well do away with the County Coroner as well. The records office could probably handle that job just as well. I mean, if their dead their dead.
Although it is fun reading in the newspaper, like I did last week, about some poor funeral home worker discovering someone trying to open their body bag and get out.
I many ways I agree with reducing unneeded government workers (I see a lot of them). Yet on the other hand, I know times are tight and we need all of the jobs we can get. Seems like each year someone finds another reason to eliminate another career in our profession.
However, I'm not real comfortable with having a non-licenced "surveyor" [sarcasm]grading[/sarcasm] my plats and getting excessively technical. That just degrades our work even further. There are some tasks well suited to a non-licenced technocrat, but making legal decisions concerning Public Lands and Parcel Surveys etc. just doesn't sit well with me. An experienced license holder can solve more problems than it creates. FWIW.
I don't know if Leon is being sarcastic, or serious. I see the (serious) point that the duties and the qualifications have been reduced to such a point that you might as well not have a county surveyor.
But I agree with you.
To me, the laws should change in regards to who can be a county surveyor and what his or her duties and responsibilities are. I don't know if it should be an "elected" position or an appointed one. It doesn't seem like it should be a "political" position to me.
There is no doubt in my mind that the county surveyor should be a paid position, be a licensed surveyor, and have some authorities that help take care of and resolve problems that can't necessarily get resolved through a private vehicle. I feel that the county surveyor should probably live in the county he is serving, but that there needs to be a way to get someone into the position that lives outside the county as a last resort.
I'm not sure when they did away with the county surveyors in Illinois but I'm going to guess around 70 years ago. Its up to the private surveyors to take care of things on their own. The recorders office just records stuff as its brought in the door.
might as well not have a county surveyor.
In reality you don't have a county surveyor other than a placeholder and they do keep the records. I truly think we'd be better off without the god of boundaries in the county. They make decisions on PLSS corners, review plats and require changes, declare gaps and overlaps that don't exist (paper boundaries rule in their world). Nope I'm serious, we'd be better off without a county surveyor than one basically without a clue. I've tried, just spent a thousand on legal advice trying to object to the consolidation of offices and the unqualified candidates. But our statutes say if the commissioners consolidate the office that a license is no longer needed to be county surveyor. We only have a few counties left with true county surveyors, the rest are all impostors, and legally so. So as it goes and has gone for a long time, it gets worse not better.
I sent a note to a friend that is a licensed RLS and county recorder. He is looking a running against a non surveyor for his consolidated recorder/surveyor spot.
Think of it this way. You've been authorized to be the county surveyor without a license. You have a license to not have a license.
The recorders office just records stuff as its brought in the door.
I been thinking about that. Actually there is bit more to it as the documents need to be abstracted, indexed, placed properly in the database and such. But really, why does the recorder need to elected and, other than a local place to record at, why do you need a recorder in every county. I mean, we've had computers for quite a while now. Why not consolidate the whole thing, recorder and surveyor documents into one data center statewide. It would actually be better for me, internet access to the whole thing. Electronic recording and filing of all maps and such can be done. You wouldn't even need to drive to the building. So what difference does it make whether its in the county or not. It could be as close as the plug in my office wall.
So while we're throwing the surveyors under bus why not the recorders also. That would save maybe 5 times more dollars.
[sarcasm]Why stop at the state level, push it all the way up to the feds.[/sarcasm]
The state board is not doing its job if an elected "official" can practice land surveying without a license.
Here is some law.
Utah Supreme Court - County Surveyor License
By the time they got it in the law that the county surveyor needs to be licensed some counties had consolidated offices. The legislature didn't remove that and it left a hole you could drive a bus through. So the trend is to consolidate the office and just write off the county surveyor. The next step is to just remove it from an elected office but the counties do fight that as if they can shoot one duck what prevents them from going after the rest. So that's why we still have the office plus a couple of big urban counties realize the need for the county surveyor and can fund the office.
