Porter County Surveyor Kevin Breitzke orchestrates high-quality projects in the community

The responsibility of a County Surveyor is needed to establish and maintain official land and water boundaries in a community. This person must ensure legal compliance for land use while providing geographical data for mapping, engineering, and construction.

Since 1997, Porter County Surveyor Kevin Breitzke has managed these responsibilities in a manner that sets up the community for the best long-term success.

“It starts with the Section Corner Perpetuation Program, which includes asset surveys, benchmarks, and control monuments,” Breitzke said. “It’s important for us to make sure we have connectivity, consistency, and continuity with the past, present, and future of our infrastructure.”

As the Porter County Surveyor, Breitzke has dealt with large-scale and small-scale projects, which can create variance in how long each one takes to complete. Along with the size of the project, there are a few other key factors that can influence the time frame.

“The time a project takes relies on our planning, and I’m on the planning commission,” Breitzke said. “From a surveying standpoint, we try to make it as expedient as possible. We’ve done more than most counties with the perpetuation of the monuments and their usefulness. We had a program a couple of years ago with the National Geodetic Survey where we went out and did a network of our benchmarks for elevation and vertical position. We made one of the biggest contributions in the state with that high-accuracy GPS.”

Breitzke’s work as the Porter County Surveyor would not be complete without working with a few other departments of the Porter County Government. He believes this collaboration is what creates the best version of any project they work on.

“We’ve always had to work with the federal, state, and county agencies whenever they work with water and planning development,” Breitzke said. “We have a relationship with the Department of Natural Resources, particularly when it comes to dams, waterways, floodways, and the determination of floor elevation. We create maps and work with the parks department, the facilities departments for their individual buildings, and a major scanning project for all the plans that facilities had years ago.”

The Porter County Surveyor can also be called upon to work with animal shelters. Breitzke has worked with the Sheriff, voter registration, and the public library as well.

While most of the tasks revolve around land measurement and development, a County Surveyor has more responsibilities than one might think. This can include researching legal records, recording property data, managing local drainage systems, conducting fieldwork, creating legal descriptions, and overseeing projects and staff members.

“I have statutory responsibility on the drainage board and civil projects,” Breitzke said. “We’re pretty good as far as a county with professional engineers. There was a point in time when I was the only licensed professional engineer and licensed surveyor, but now we have several in the department of stormwater and development. The new system is a lot more efficient, and it gives us the ability to bond for stormwater projects.”

Breitzke’s other involvements include doing verification of business location for the Indiana Alcoholic Beverage Commission and maintaining annexation descriptions along with the auditor. He serves as a member of the Technical Advisory Committee and the chairman of the Technical Policy Committee with the Northwest Regional Planning Commission.

Breitzke finds enjoyment in being the Porter County Surveyor, and he’s excited to make his mark on future projects.

“I’m all about serving the people,” Breitzke said. “I went to Valparaiso University, and both sides of my generation have been here for four generations. It’s my public service, and I enjoy doing it. We currently have about 800 scanned gigabytes of information that are made publicly accessible in Dropbox. Our efforts are to make things easier to obtain for the people, ideally without charges connected with them.”

For more information on the Porter County Government, you can visit portercountyin.gov.