Arriving at an Elevation

If there's a known elevation, anyone with rudimentary surveying experience can run a level loop, transfer the elevation, or derive another elevation. It's simple, the instrument required is inexpensively acquired, or rented. That's what starts my rant. 

Local bureaucrats/officials/thieves/collaborators require an elevation certificate for new construction, or the addition of other buildings on a property. Usually, a survey crew arrives, spends a few minutes calibrating their GPS equipment, places a nail in a power pole for new construction, and gives the person requiring the certificate a piece of paper to satisfy the paper crazy bureaucrats. The fee is hundreds of dollars, and the nails can be found within a few hundred feet in any given area. 

My problem is that these nails, which are filed with the paper crazies, have a known elevation, should be readily available to anyone that wants to use them, and the information used to build above the flood plain elevations. 

That's not how it works. A certificate is required for everyone, and a surveyor gets hundreds of dollars to perform work that should take less than an hour. Otherwise, it's a bonanza for the surveyors, the counties get a boatload of new filing fees, and the taxpayers are forced to pay for this extortion. 

Meanwhile, the insurance companies get their share of insurance money, since they can adjust their rates for different areas. They would never have had such information, unless a flood event happened, until now. They lower their exposure, which may not be exposure at all. They get more money, the money might not be justifiably required, and they laugh all the way to the bank. 

Of course, anything I happened to bring to satisfy an elevation certificate would be useless, since I'm not a license surveyor, although few surveyors actually perform their own surveyors. They have field parties, with known methods of acquiring the information, which they use to affix a stamp. They are not actually doing a survey, which means they too are misusing the power of government to line their pockets.  

My solution is that counties, if information is received which shows an elevations, should forego a special certificate. A notarized signature on a level loop should satisfy any required elevations. That, and the surveyor should be required to make available to anyone the coordinates, and the elevation for any temporary bench mark they place. Life is too expensive as it is, without adding more fees that only satisfy money grubbers, and their employees.