We Lost San Diego

[DWoolley]

We Lost San Diego

For generations, Southern California has had a rich tradition of excellent land surveying and exceptional land surveyors. Within that tradition, San Diego stood near the pinnacle—home to the largest concentration of licensed land surveyors in California and many of the profession’s finest practitioners.

That is why I had trouble believing what I was being told.

This practice was brought to my attention only recently. At first, I did not fully understand what was being described. A couple of Saturdays ago, I spent the better part of the day going through the actual Corner Records.

I expected to discover that something had been lost in the telling.

It had not.

It was true. And what I found in the Corner Records was considerably worse than I had imagined.

For years, San Diego County accepted Corner Records purporting to perpetuate monuments using assumed coordinates on an assumed basis of bearings, without measured angles, bearings, or distances relating the corner to other physical monuments.

The regulation is not obscure:

“Except for those corners referenced in subdivision (9), a drawing shall be made which shows measurements that relate the corner to other identifiable monuments.”
— 16 CCR § 464(a)(10)

The very next subsection provides:

“A reference to the California Coordinate System is optional at the discretion of the preparer of the record.”
— 16 CCR § 464(b) [Arguably, the CCS is repeatable, but even the PRC recognizes the weakness, requires ties and prohibits using coordinates to describe property].

Measurements shall relate the corner to other identifiable monuments. Coordinates are optional.

For nearly 150 years, California land surveyors managed to map, recover, perpetuate, and reestablish monuments without concluding that an assumed coordinate could substitute for a measured relationship between physical monuments.

Then, sometime around 2018, San Diego solved string theory.

The solution, apparently, had been hiding in plain sight: dispense with the measurements between identifiable monuments and simply assign the monument a coordinate.

One wonders how generations of land surveyors missed it.

Instead, with a remarkable degree of institutional arrogance, a profession steeped in the evaluation of evidence and charged with understanding the statutes and regulations governing its practice allowed the product of measurement to substitute for the measurement itself.

Incompetence will do what incompetence does. That is not the interesting part.

The interesting part is that the San Diego professional community did not flinch.

A surveying community with the history, numbers, knowledge, and professional talent to recognize the problem instead allowed the practice to become accepted and routine.

There are defeats in history that matter because of who was defeated.

Alexander’s destruction of Thebes shocked the Greek world because it was Thebes. Hannibal’s destruction of the Roman legions at Cannae mattered because they were Roman legions.

That is the uncomfortable parallel.

This was not some land surveying backwater with half a dozen licensees where an aberrant practice quietly slipped through unnoticed.

This was San Diego. The home of Curt Brown.

It happened in one of the strongest surveying communities in California, in plain sight, for years, and the profession did not stop it.

San Diego did not lack qualified land surveyors.

The profession surrendered the practice.

And that surrender has consequences.

If licensed land surveyors accept that monument perpetuation can consist of generating and recording a coordinate, on what principled basis can we tell Kiewit, Granite, any grading contractor, a GIS technician, or anyone else capable of generating a coordinate that monument perpetuation requires the knowledge and judgment of a licensed land surveyor?

Licensure is not a franchise granted to its holders to impose a tax upon the public. It exists because the license represents specialized knowledge and judgment necessary to protect the public.

We, the professional land surveyors, therefore have an obligation to demonstrate that knowledge.

For anyone who has become confused about coordinates, the hierarchy is not particularly complicated:

Monuments hold paramount in boundary establishment.

Measurements are evidence.

Does this familiar? "When permanent and visible or ascertained boundaries or monuments are inconsistent with the measurement, either of lines, angles, or surfaces, the boundaries or monuments are paramount." Notice, it does not mention coordinates - this is for good reason, this is the California Code of Civil Procedures. When coordinates are listed in any hierarchy of evidence, not in California law, rather, in textbooks, it states coordinates are last to be considered.

Coordinates are evidence of a position within a coordinate system. They are not the measurements relating one identifiable monument to another that § 464(a)(10) requires.

The regulation understood the distinction precisely. Generations of land surveyors understood the distinction. Somehow, the San Diego professional community lost it.

And now, predictably, watch what happens next.

Not: How did we allow this to happen?

Not: How many Corner Records are affected?

Not: How do we correct the practice?

Wait for it. There will be rationalization. There will be justification. There will be anger at the criticism. There will be elaborate explanations for why words such as “shall,” “measurements,” and “other identifiable monuments” somehow do not mean what they plainly say.

And, finally, when all else fails, someone will make the pilgrimage to Sacramento:

“Ric, save us. Tell us we are right, O Omnipotent One.” Whatever the clarity of his answer, the bones will be read in the fire until the desired meaning appears—much as the statutes and regulations have been read here.

Humpty Dumpty explained the method rather well:

“When I use a word … it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

—Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass (1871)

“Shall.” “Measurements.” “Other identifiable monuments.”

The words are not difficult.

What I do not expect to see much of is accountability.

Coordinates! Coordinates! Coordinates for everyone!

That response will tell us something important about how we lost San Diego in the first place.

Mark my words.

DWoolley

PS: I recorded a Ten Minute Surveyor on topic. Before I can publish, I have to edit the 1.5 hours of video down to 10 minutes.

[hellsangle]

Can you post a redacted sample, Dave?
Are the coordinates from GIS? Hand-held GPS? Phone? Do the coords have qualifiers?
You'd have to an idiot to hold coordinates OVER a valid monument! (CCP 2077)

Interesting stuff . . .

Have a good week, all.

Crazy Phil - Sonoma

[DWoolley]

Phil:

I redacted page 2 of one Corner Record as a sample, but the redaction almost seems beside the point. This is not an isolated record or a one-off mistake. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of these records in San Diego. There is no shame in their game; the practice is right there in the public record.

I also spoke with someone in another county who told me that a San Diego surveyor attempted to submit a similar Corner Record there. The county rejected it. Unsurprisingly, the surveyor became indignant that what had become routine in San Diego was not acceptable elsewhere.

That exchange is part of what interests me. After enough years of institutional acceptance, an aberrant practice stops looking aberrant to the people practicing it.

I will post the redacted example.

Dave