Engineering forum Who wants to fight city hall ...

WOW, 29 tons of uplift prevention, and 58 tons of load bearing capacity. Of course , you don't mention the dimensions of the patio in order to compute bearing load or uplift per square foot. However, I just can't imagine what dimensions would require these numbers. California must be unique, or the town building inspectors must be pure stupid. If there is no building engineer, how can they even dispute your plans?

Building departments do not hire engineers because they cost too much.  So they need to play "cya" and get a professional civil engineer to sign off on your design.  It seems to me your choices are find a friendly civil engineer who will sign it for you for a hundred bucks or so or go to the library and get the latest copy of the Uniform Building Code which the bible for city types.  This will put you on a level playing field with city hall.  Building inspectors generally do not know their butt from six bitts they only know what they read in the Building Code.  They are NOT construction inspectors, they are compliance inspectors.  Do not let them intimidate you.  Have them show you in the UBC where they got their figures and take it from there.  I am a retired engineer, construction manager, and construction inspector and I hold city building inspectors in great disdain.  Good luck.