California Surveyors Forums

I am winding down my professional career in land surveying. As I do, I would like to pay back to my fellow surveyors and the public. I will be sending this letter to the County Surveyors where our company practices Land Surveying. Before I do, I am asking for comments from you respected land surveyors and other professionals.

We know how the role of government in our lives grows all the time. However, we can do something about it. We can require them to follow the laws we live under just like they ask us to do the same. We have the ability and power to do this as the Board of Registration will provide the backup needed. The licenses of the County Surveyors are the same as ours. If we are negligent or incompetent or even if it appears to someone that way, we get a complaint filed and we need to defend ourselves. County Surveyors are not exempt from this process. This is their wake up call.

When Counties add excessive requirements to Records of Surveys, it takes them longer to check our maps and their fees go up. The LS Act suggests a fee of $100 for a Record of Survey. This amount is suggested as a reasonable cost to check the data on a map. I can understand the problem when a 50 sheet Record of Survey is submitted. Perhaps the Surveyor who sends this map in should break it up into pieces and pay his fair share too. But no law is perfect we know that. But in general, the suggested amount should work - at least the scriveners felt so.

Here is a question? Why are we letting County Surveyors get away with taking a year to return their first check print to us? One particular County in southern California (which will remain unnamed but I think they know who they are) had so many blatantly unnecessary extra requirements on their check print which I submitted. Without informing me by letter or email, they took about a year to send me their map check and when I received it, I understood why they were so far behind (127 maps were ahead of me).

So I am going to send this letter to all County Surveyors where we work. Anyone is free to use this letter verbatim (without my name of course) or any alteration thereof.


To: County Surveyor
Date: September 1, 2022
Subject: Examination of a Record of Survey
To the County Surveyor and your staff:
Thank you for the work you do to check the Record of Survey maps submitted by Land Surveyors who work in your County. We appreciate your diligent service. A recent post on the CLSA Website Forum has prompted this letter. I have submitted at least one Record of Survey in your County and so I felt the need to remind County Surveyors in general of their duty and privilege. This is not to say that I have experienced any significant problem with you or your staff. This same letter is going to all County Surveyors of the Counties I have submitted Records of Surveys in California.

Consider this as if I am doing the checking and you are submitting the document. Your “document” is the checklists, checkprints and letters you send to the Land Surveyor when they submit a Record of Survey. I am giving you a checklist of what the Surveyor expects of you.

1. Follow the directions found in the Land Surveyors Act. Your role is clearly defined in Section 8766. Record of Survey – examination.
2. Do not add to or take anything away from this section as it is your “Bible” from which you should not “add to or take away” (That is a reference to the last book of the Bible – Revelation chapter 22 and verses 18 and 19)
3. If you still decide to add to this checklist, I will decide if I want to follow the suggestions you provide. I will provide reasons why I do not desire to follow your requirements that are not found in the LS ACT or any reasonable extension of the principles found within Section 8766.
4. When I have completed all adjustments to my map that you have noted but you still are requesting something that I deem as clearly outside your scope of examination, I will complete my map, print it on mylar, sign it and send it in. If the map is not filed in a timely fashion, I may send a complaint to the Board of Registration.

Thank you for your consideration of this matter. There is no need to reply to me as I trust you will comply with the laws we both work under.
Sincerely,
Ken Wilson
Professional Land Surveyor
License 5571 (1985)

I wrote the attached twenty years ago and routed it to the best of my ability. I send it every now and then as a reminder.

"Board of Registration" ceased to exist many years ago. Suggest that if you refer to the Board, use the proper name.

Time required to check a record of survey primarily depends on the volume of boundary related material one has to review to verify it's technical correctness. Sometimes you have east 200 feet of south 100 feet of a section and it is all quickly obvious. Other times you are 6 documents deep in legal descriptions which don't match.
Other comments, (like legibility issues, and what are you trying to tell me by drafting something this way, it is hard to understand, please clarify) happen while you are digging through the boundary establishment.
The clearer and the more organized map submittal package is, the faster the check goes.
I've had single page RS's which took an hour to review, and I had those that got kicked back because after a day I still couldn't make sense out of things.
Trying to limit and cookie cut how long it takes to review an RS is not realistic.
If the problem is that there are too many incompetent reviewers, it needs to be tackled a different way.

Records of survey which do not undergo a peer review of some sort to eliminate basic errors will be a disservice to the public.

Short version: Maybe your being too tough?

Long verision:
I recently got the experience of being an interim County Surveyor to help out a neighboring county while they hired a full time CS. I do not think I have ever read the LS act that thoroughly, or pondered debated it more in my mind and with peers. From my experience talking to other CSs when I needed help, I am pretty sure that every CS has thought long and hard about how they understand the law, and it is far from black and white.

While the RoS examination section of the PLS is relatively straight forward for 80-90% of the stuff, some of the sections are wide open for interpretation.

One of the hardest for me was 8764 (a)(4) relationship with neighboring tracts. Does merely showing the difference between the subject and the adjoiners satisfy "relationship" or does it also have to be correctly resolved when there is a conflict?

The second hardest for me is do I consider boundary resolution as being "technical"? Or is "technical" just the math? IE If they make the section 5000 feet, when it should be 5280, but then correctly implement BLM procedure for 1/4 corners and such, is that "technically" correct?

The other hard part is equity for all, IE I can't just wave some surveyors maps through because they generally do good work, while raking some others over the coals because they generally don't. So to ensure that the public is served and maps that will create harm for the public are caught and hopefully fixed, or at least have their harm limited, I have to apply the same standards to all. This means making checklists, and flowcharts, so that I can be fair and impartial to all maps, regardless of their quality. Moral question for you: Is it better to have a finer tooth comb that catches all the problems, protects the public, but costs more? Or is it better to have a course comb that makes reviews fast, but lets problems be created for future land owners to have to spend money on? ( Quick aside, this is why I believe we can't do Crazy Phil's dream...)

I would suggest that for any county that reviews less than 300-500 maps a year, there will be good reasons for everything they ask. For larger counties, I think you have to accept there will be compromises made between efficiently checking maps and allowances for special circumstances.

The county I worked for charged 330 for a review. At my normal bill out in my private company thats about 90 minutes of my time. Just making a file and logging the map in the system etc was a significant portion of my 90 minutes that I would have had in the private sector if that was my budget. Now consider a crappy application package that was lacking needed deeds, or maps. It all takes time = money.

Final thought. Checking maps was just one aspect of what turned out to be a rather complicated job position that had many calls on my attention and time. Returning a RoS in a timely manner was less important than some other items that needed attention. Its the reality of surveying that there are rarely any true "survey emergencies".

Mikey Mueller, PLS
Sonoma County

P.S. It saddened me to hear how you were treated at the CLSA chapter meeting, hope your next meeting goes better.

kwilson wrote: Fri Sep 02, 2022 12:46 am
1. Follow the directions found in the Land Surveyors Act. Your role is clearly defined in Section 8766. Record of Survey – examination.
2. Do not add to or take anything away from this section as it is your “Bible” from which you should not “add to or take away” (That is a reference to the last book of the Bible – Revelation chapter 22 and verses 18 and 19)
3. If you still decide to add to this checklist, I will decide if I want to follow the suggestions you provide. I will provide reasons why I do not desire to follow your requirements that are not found in the LS ACT or any reasonable extension of the principles found within Section 8766.
4. When I have completed all adjustments to my map that you have noted but you still are requesting something that I deem as clearly outside your scope of examination, I will complete my map, print it on mylar, sign it and send it in. If the map is not filed in a timely fashion, I may send a complaint to the Board of Registration.

During the review process, I have discovered that I am receptive to questions from the reviewer. For example, if the response is framed as "how did you set this 1/16 corner?" then I might look at the corner note and discover that I did not explain my methodology sufficiently.

I suppose I find the review comments scribbled in the margins to be ambiguous and confusing, especially if I do not know if they are intended to be suggestive or imperative. Oftentimes, the counties that become entangled in the poor communication web with the submitting surveyor are the same ones that have unqualified staff performing the map reviews and issuing bizarre unchecked review comments from interpreted review guides and checklists.

I've been thinking about the assertion (that Dave Woolley made recently on the statements thread) regarding the ratio of competent professionals to goofball clerks in public service and I tend to agree with his numbers. I estimate that 75% of the people I engage with at the County level are helpful and reasonable. The other 25% are the goldbricking, rigorous-checklisters. I also agree that the ratios of those in private practice are likely similar or worse.

Maybe the big difference is that we can usually choose not to engage with the knuckleheads in private practice