City Destroys Property Rights - What's Your City Doing?

A message from Mr. Michael Pallamary, PLS:

As many of you know, I have been battling with the City of San Diego for some time over their wanton and careless destruction of valuable survey monuments. They have essentially destroyed the cadastral network in many neighborhoods. From a surveyor’s perspective, it is quite devastating and from a home owner’s perspective, very, very costly. In many instances, property owners were required to pay a surveyor to set monuments in connection with a map filing. The city has now come in and destroyed these very same monuments. Now, the cost to replace or reset them is running into thousands and thousands of dollars.

In the Hillside Drive area discussed in this news story, I have inspected a large number of streets and maps. What has been happening is, other surveyors have come along and for one reason or another, they have opted to use other, secondary or tertiary control monuments instead of recovering the primary control monuments because they have been paved over or destroyed. I now have two disputes in this neighborhood and one is now in litigation and the other is very close, all because of confusion regarding the location of control monuments. Needless to say, it is going to get worse and expensive. I am doing the best I can to bring this problem to light. Mike Turko and I spent an hour and a half together and he has been working on this story for a week. He is going to do a follow up as he is just as upset as I am.

I am hoping other surveyors and property owners will join me in expressing their concerns about this problem. Turko and I talked about the monument preservation fund. I told him that for every one monument that is preserved using the fund, the city destroys another 100. He is going to do another story. This is a shame and under the law, it is also a crime and the city knows it. I have contacted the mayor’s office and the city attorney but they have no interest and are doing nothing. “San Diego - America’s finest city.”

Michael J. Pallamary, PLS

Principal, Pallamary and Associates

7755 Fay Avenue, Suite J

La Jolla, CA 92037

(O) 858-454-4094,

(F) 858-454-4667

www.pallamaryandassociates.com

mpallamary@pipeline.com