City of San Jose

[kwilson]

Note that I am sending this verbatim to the Building Official and City Surveyor of the City of San Jose. And this is not the first time I have written to them on this subject.

Two items to observe. San Jose has about a million people with tons of high-priced residential lots. A really nice place to live I might add. The city still allows architects, designers, engineers and any other non-surveyors to submit site plans showing boundaries for development. This applies to new construction, ADU's, Additions and commercial property. Then before the property owner's contractor can pour concrete the city requires a land surveyor to do a boundary survey and verify the setbacks of the forms. This results in land surveying costs from $2,000 to $7000. Some lots are fairly straightforward to determine the boundary. Others are in subdivisions from the late 1800's. Some are parcels that require a Record of Survey because the configuration of the lot has never been shown on a previously recorded map. The RS fee in Santa Clara County is $1059. The property owner is usually unaware of this "hidden" cost that has not been included in their estimate of building costs.

This is to say nothing about projects where steel, plumbing and forms are in place and then need to be moved because the contractor used a fictitious boundary on a site plan created by a non-surveyor and the forms encroach into the setback.

So the first item above involves allowing non-surveyors to perform land surveys. And yes I have sent some complaints to the board. The public is being injured by this.

The second item is where the city is requiring the surveyor to perform design functions. Here is the city comment:

"Submit a boundary and topographic survey prepared by a licensed land surveyor showing the footprint and the elevation points of the new ADU and the new garage. Note: The survey information pertaining to the basis of bearings and the benchmark used must be included in the boundary and topographic survey too."

I have no problem showing existing spot elevations on a site. But it's not a surveyor's place to prepare site plans showing proposed buildings and finish grades.

Ken Wilson