Land Surveying in Austell, GA

Land Surveying in Austell, Georgia

Austell is one of the places where the recording county is a genuine question rather than a formality. The city limits cover ground in both Cobb County and Douglas County. The Census Bureau puts the city's internal point on the Cobb side, and part of the city runs south across the Douglas County line. The city's own subdivision chapter takes the split for granted: it defines "health department" as the Cobb County or Douglas County health department. Settling which of the two indexes a tract belongs to is step one, and it comes off the boundary rather than the mailing address.

On the Cobb side, deeds go to the Superior Court Clerk's Real Estate Division at 10 East Park Square, Building C, in Marietta, about thirteen miles north-northeast of Austell. Ownership and assessment data for Cobb parcels is published by the Cobb County Board of Tax Assessors, and Cobb County GIS carries the plat and deed references on its map portal at gis.cobbcounty.gov.

On the Douglas side, filing runs through the Clerk of Superior Court on the fourth floor at 8700 Hospital Drive in Douglasville, roughly ten miles southwest. The scale of that office is on the record: in 2024 it filed 16,563 real estate documents, 11,692 liens and 203 plats. Douglas County parcel records are published on qPublic at qpublic.net/ga/douglas/. Whichever county the tract falls in, the plat itself is filed electronically through the Georgia Superior Court Clerks' Cooperative Authority, as Georgia has required.

Approval inside the city limits is a separate step from recording. Chapter 42 of the Austell code puts final plat approval with the planning and zoning commission and the zoning administrator, certified on the face of the plat. The chapter is administered by the zoning administrator, and the mayor is the designated official who provides final review, certification and signature for every plat the city receives. Community Development sits at 5000 Austell-Powder Springs Road, Suite 141. Rezoning and variance applications are due by the tenth of the month and generally take 60 to 90 days through the Planning and Zoning Commission and the Mayor and City Council.

Austell is specific about what belongs on the drawing. A preliminary plat has to locate the tract by land district, land lot, county and state, and carry a location map reaching a full mile out from the subdivision showing streets, highways, land lot lines and railroads. Where a tract contains a stream or drainage way with any area susceptible to flooding once every hundred years, a grading and drainage plan prepared by a state registered professional engineer has to be submitted along with the preliminary plat.

That flooding clause is not theoretical here. The city states directly that Austell has been through multiple flooding events, including the serious flooding of September 2009, and it runs a Stormwater Management Division that keeps the city enrolled in the FEMA National Flood Insurance Program's Community Rating System, currently at a class 5 rating that lowers flood insurance premiums for residents. Sweetwater Creek runs through town, and one of the city parks on it is Legion Park at Sweetwater Creek. For a lot anywhere near that floodplain, the document a lender or insurer is really asking for is usually an elevation certificate.

S&S Land Surveying works out of 549 West Ave in Cedartown. Bart Sims is the licensed Georgia land surveyor who signs and seals the plat, and S&S is licensed in Georgia only.