Land Surveying in Milton, GA

Surveying AG-1 Acreage in Milton, Georgia

Milton records entirely in Fulton County, but two county lines run along its edges: Cherokee on the north-northwest side and Forsyth on the east. A tract near either line gets checked against the county boundary before a plat is drawn, because the recording index changes there even when the mailing address does not.

A Milton deed or plat ends up at the Fulton County Clerk of Superior and Magistrate Courts Real Estate Division, whose Deeds and Records Room occupies the ground floor of the Lewis R. Slaton Courthouse, 136 Pryor Street SW, due south of the city in downtown Atlanta.

What sets Milton apart from its neighbors is the zoning pattern. Most of the city is zoned AG-1, agricultural residential, the district that carries the large lots, pastures and horse farms the city is known for. Lots created through the minor plat or final plat process are held to a one acre minimum, and the City Council lifted its moratorium on minor subdivision plat applications of less than three acres in AG-1 after adopting amendments that lined the city's usable area and buildable area standards up with Fulton County Department of Health requirements.

The health department step is real here, not a formality. Milton requires copies of Fulton County Health Department plans with a minor plat submittal. Large AG-1 lots are generally on septic rather than county sewer, and the Fulton County Board of Health Environmental Health Services program permits and inspects on-site sewage management systems and reviews development plans to confirm lots are properly sized. The North Fulton Regional Health Center that handles that side of the county is at 4700 North Point Parkway in Alpharetta. Water and sewer service itself is a Fulton County function, so a split that works on paper can still fail on the septic side.

Plat review runs through the City of Milton Community Development Department at City Hall, 2006 Heritage Walk. Planning staff there administers the zoning ordinance and the subdivision regulations, and a plat has to clear that review before it goes to the county for recording.

The land drives the fieldwork. Acreage in Georgia usually means long deed calls, old iron, fence lines that drifted and adjoiners whose descriptions were written from a different survey. Chicken Creek, Cooper Sandy Creek, Rocky Creek, Camp Creek and the Little River all run through Milton, and each brings a state stream buffer with it. Splitting a Milton tract starts with a boundary retracement of the whole parent parcel, because you cannot divide what has not been established, and the resulting plat has to survive both the city review and the health department review before the clerk will record it.

Milton work is run out of the office at 549 West Ave in Cedartown. William "Bart" Sims, licensed as a land surveyor in Georgia, signs and seals every plat the firm produces. S&S does not work outside Georgia.