California Surveyors Forums

8762

Where did it come from?
It's evolution?
Who lobbied for it?
Who lobbied against it?
Why?

If you look at the historical PLS Acts on the CLSA Member login site, I think you can possibly find when it was included in the law. I'm not sure if that database includes that.

If you click on the first link under the PLS Act "1891-1961", even the first LS Act included an RS requirement, but it has evolved quite a lot since then.

The rest of that PDF is kind of a mess, with a bunch of Subdivision related legislation included. The first few pages are the first LS Act and early amendments to it.


March 31, 1891 - Chapter CCLV.
Section 10. Duty of Surveyors - Every licensed surveyor is hereby authorized to make surveys relating to the sale or subdivision of lands, the retracing or establishing of property or boundary lines, public roads, streets, alleys or trails; and it shall be the duty of each surveyor, whenever making any such surveys, except those relating to the retracing or subdivision of cemetery or town lots, whether the survey be made for private persons, corporations, cities or counties, to set permanent and reliable monuments and such monuments must be permanently marked with the initials of the surveyor setting them.

Section 11. Records of survey - Within sixty days after a survey relating to the sale or subdivision of lands, the retracing or establishing of property and boundary lines, public roads or trails, original cemetery or town sites, and their subdivisions, has been made by a licensed surveyor, he shall file with the Recorder of the county in which such survey or any portion thereof lies, a record of survey. Such record shall be made in good draughtsman like manner, on one or more sheets of firm paper of the uniform size of twenty-one by thirty inches. This record of survey shall be either an original plat or a copy thereof, and must contain all the data necessary to enable any competent practical surveyor to retrace the survey. The record of survey shall show: All permanent monuments set, describing their size, kind, and location, with reference to the corners which they are intended to perpetuate; all bearing or witness trees marked in the field; complete outlines of the several tracts or parcels of land surveyed within courses, and lengths of boundary lines; the angles as measured by Vernier readings, which the lines of blocks and lots, if the record relate to an original town-site survey, make with each other and with the center lines of adjacent streets, alleys, roads, or lanes; the variations of the magnetic needle with which old lines have been retraced; the scale of the map and date of survey; a proper connection with one or more points of an original or larger tract of land, and the name of the same, the name of the grant or grants, or of the townships and ranges within which the survey is located; the signature and seal of the surveyor; provided, that nothing in this section shall require record to be made of surveys of a preliminary nature, where the monuments or corners are established.

IIRC, it was amended into its current form in 1985.

It all went downriver real fast when the "shall file with the Recorder of the county" turned into "shall subject your survey record to the whimsy of whatever two-bit survey tech happens to be on the job and pay $600" or whatever it says now

I believe we ought to change it back

The requirement that records of survey be submitted to the County Surveyor goes back to approximately 1933. I was involved in the crafting of the wording to the 1985 revision to 8762. There were two diametrically opposed groups involved in the 1985 revision to 8762. The resulting wording that was adopted into state law was a compromise between those two groups. Each group could read into the new wording what they wanted. The whole process was a real education for me in politics.