Parcel Maps in Sausalito, CA

Sausalito's subdivision ordinance is old, specific, and still binding. SMC section 9.20.010 requires that an accurate and complete survey be made of the land to be subdivided, and the sections that follow require a traverse sheet in a form approved by the City Engineer giving latitudes, departures, and coordinates and showing mathematical closure, with the traverse of the exterior boundaries closing within one foot in ten thousand feet of perimeter before balancing. Where the County Surveyor or the City Engineer has established a system of coordinates, the survey must be tied into it, and all monuments, property lines, and the centerlines of streets, alleys, and easements adjoining or within the tract must be tied into the survey. On lots laid out in the 1870s across slopes nobody had walked, meeting that standard is real work.

The dimensional rules constrain the design as much as the terrain does. No parcel may be less than 30 feet wide at any point, average parcel width may not be less than 50 feet — computed as parcel area divided by the length measured down the center of the parcel — and street frontage of at least 30 feet is required on the front parcel line. SB 9 adds its own standards under SMC section 9.70.030, including a plat map drawn to scale by a licensed land surveyor or registered civil or structural engineer, and new flag lots that must have at least 10 feet of street frontage while leaving at least 20 feet to the remaining lot.

We recover controlling monuments, run GNSS and total station control with closure we can defend, scan improvements that bear on the map, and deliver the tentative exhibit, traverse package, and checked map. See Sausalito monument preservation and parcel maps versus tract maps.