Robert Reese

The recent email from the San Francisco Department of Public Works, Subdivisions and Mapping, Office of the City and County Surveyor, announced that there is a new sheriff in town. Mr. Elias French, LS 9406, San Francisco City and County Surveyor. Congratulations, Mr. French.

This got me thinking (uh-oh…)

First, my apologies to my surveyor friends below for using their LS numbers, but it’s public information anyway. Of course, I make no comment, explicit or implied, about Mr. French’s capabilities, expertise or experience, as I have never met him and use his LS number since it was announced to the world by SF DPW.
And I include my license as a reference because it is the one I can actually remember, and it was a really long time ago (but not as long ago as McGee or Mastin). I wish the LS numbers reflected relative age differences, but no.

• Michael McGee, LS 3945.
• Tom Mastin, LS 4819
• Carl CdeBaca, LS 5854
• Robert Reese LS 6208
• Elias French, LS 9406
• Unknown Future Surveyor LS 10051

DISCLAIMER – The numbers below, of course, neither include licenses issued in an entire year for any years listed (which is an altogether different analysis), nor do they reflect a myriad of other conditions (out of state residence, government employment, clients with multiple projects, etc.). They provide only a crude, but telling, trend.

5461 licensed numbers between McGee and French in 46 years – average about 120 licensed per year.
2263 license numbers between McGee and Reese in 18 years – average about 125 licensees per year.
1389 license numbers between Mastin and Reese in 9 years – average about 150 licensees per year.
354 license numbers between CdeBaca and Reese in 1 year – average about 170 licensees per year.
3793 license numbers between Reese and Unknown in 36 years – average about 105 licenses per year.
645 license numbers between French and Unknown in 8 years – average about 80 licenses per year.

SWAG –
Assume

• current licenses are up to 10051 (Pre-82 RCE’s still living is dwindling and negligible, so it is discounted.)
• living surveyors begin at 3551 = 6500 living land surveyors
• 80% still practicing = 5200 practicing land surveyors
• California population = 38.9 million
• California population 18 or older = 62% = 24.1 million (capable of holding title to real property)
  • (Actual data says 7 million residents own their own home.)

This is 1 (one) licensed surveyor for about every 4600 people in California.
(Completely neglected are regional population densities, distribution of licensed surveyors, etc.)
The low number of licensed surveyors and high per capita representation for this select and seemingly rarified group is unsustainable given the burgeoning technical tools for the geospatial practitioner.

Bureaucrats will want to fix this – actually, they are trying to fix this with sunset law review, if not other legislative devices.

I recently asked another (solo) surveyor, “What kind of survey work do you do?”
Answer: “ I do it all.”

The Crownholm v Moore et al suit for a constitutional right to prepare site plans lost – for the time being – but only because of specific language in the current California statutes (and because Crownholm counsel’s suit had a [possibly intended] fatal flaw of suing government employees as individuals).
But the Institute for Justice – and others – will persist, as there is a deep pool of resentment against economic exclusion and an ample population of individuals technically qualified to perform technical tasks who want to drink from the financial fountain that currently says “Licensed Land Surveyors Only”.

Engineers have licenses that are specific to a type of engineering – structural, seismic, etc. and are excluded from those sub-category titles without the requisite testing.
Lawyers are licensed to practice any facet of jurisprudence, but usually offer services in specialties in which they have particular aptitude or experience or expertise. But there is not a title license limiting practice to say, criminal or corporate or probate law.
Land surveyors are similarly licensed as lawyers with broad scope.
I recently asked another (solo) surveyor, “What kind of survey work do you do?”
Answer: “ I do it all.”

So here is where the inquisition of opinion may renounce me and condemn me to be tied to a stake for burning.
I submit that there be a land surveyor licensure specifically for boundary (and possibly geodetic control as related to such legal matters), and create other license species for mapping, topo, construction, positional geodetics, hydrography, etc. – non-boundary, more technical tasks that are distinct from the more “legal” oriented facets of land surveying.
Other than the revenue streams from topo, or construction staking, or site plans, or hydrography, do we land surveyors care about persons providing survey services, really, unless of course, this is one’s “bread and butter”? Does an individual who can provide aerial mapping, or construction staking really need to understand the public land survey system or rules of evidence for forensic work?
I’ve always felt that providers of “technical” survey services who fail or cause damage in society or who perform poorly, licensed or not, will be culled in courts of law or euthanized in the courts of public opinion (read: Yelp), and that those who rise above the “standard of care” will be rewarded and provided evolutionary advantage by the darwinistic processes of positive referrals (read: “word of mouth”).
The current heartburn the surveyor community has about encroachment into licensed practice is, in my opinion, economic, mostly.
A group that has legislated access to specific economic resources is doomed, again in my opinion, to legislative and legal assault from other non-licensed, possibly well-qualified (read: academic), even experienced (read: drone pilot) individuals, wanting access to the same abilities to potentially well-paying remuneration for “land survey work”.

…I think I smell smoke….