Janelle Horne, CP Rotary member and El Dorado County Recorder Clerk, discussed her first 8 months in her job as Recorder Clerk. Immediately after taking office, she needed to provide budget projections for the upcoming year. Janelle found that office productivity had declined 23% and that upgrades to some processes were needed. To accommodate these conditions she eliminated 2 positions plus a probationary employee. The department now has 14 employees. She was very complimentary about the Assistant Recorder. To improve the quality of input for recording requests, Janelle initiated 2 training sessions for title and escrow firms on required processes. She also provided similar training to attorneys. Because of the high volume of marriage license requests in South Lake Tahoe, she obtained permission to train and authorize notary publics in SLT to issue marriage licenses for the County.
Even though the Recorder Clerk office is financially self-sufficient, The County Administration wants to increase the fees for licenses to cover their entire costs. The mandated recording fees subsidize the license fees. Janelle is recommending that these fees be increased over several years to the average of all counties rather than immediately because many of the fees would double. She is also researching old records in preparation to convert to a new software storage system.
To provide improved service and to improve productivity and work flow, Janelle has established the following goals: updating to WEB based maps for users such as SAGE; streamlining the office configuration to improve work flow; and preserving all documents in micro storage.
Most of the question and answer period was focused on the home insurance problems caused by major wild fires.
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