 Welcome to Sheboygan County government working for you. My name is Adam Payne County administrator and co-host of this program with chairman Roger Distruty. That's right chairman Roger Distruty. I'm gonna start by just acknowledging the fearless leader to my left, your right. Roger was just re-elected as county board chairman for his second consecutive term, second unanimous time that the county board has selected him as chair. Tom Wagner, our vice chair but I'm looking forward to the term ahead and just wanted to say congratulations Roger. Thank you Adam. And as you know we bring you a monthly program about county programs, departments and we're very pleased today to have one of our 19 department heads elected Ellen Schleicher from the register of deeds. Welcome Ellen. Thank you. Now let me tell you Ellen has a lot going on in her office whether it's a new child being bored in your family, whether you're purchasing a home or purchasing property. There are so many areas that the register of deeds is involved in and I imagine many of you perhaps have had the opportunity to meet Ellen or her staff but they do a great job and if you haven't today you're gonna learn a little bit more about their roles and responsibilities. So Ellen please begin by just sharing a little bit about yourself. When did you start as our register of deeds? I started as register of deeds in January of 2006. I was appointed by Governor Doyle when my predecessor resigned her position. Had a lot to learn and enjoy learning so it was a good experience for me to you know grow a little bit more personally and socially. And you're from the area? I am from Sheboygan, grew up in town in Sheboygan actually right where St. Nicholas Hospital is right short not too far away from there just about a half a block down the road is now the surgical center so where my parents lived for 30, 40 years and then now live in the town of Lima. Very nice. Country living? Country living. My husband and I my husband I should say it's his hobby farms about a hundred we own about a hundred and forty acres and he cash crops and we raise hogs. I only fill in once in a while but for the most part him and him and my son very nice partnership with that. That sounds like a pretty extensive hobby farm, 146 acres. Impressive. And I recall you sharing with me in the past used to work for the Kohler Company. Worked for Kohler Company for 30 years and various various buildings almost every building the only department or building that I did not work in was the pottery. I worked at the American club when it was the American or prior to it being the five-star hotel the foundry the enamel shop generator engine brass and not the warehouse but farming to leading an office right and an office that again does a lot of very important recording work and has documents that people need or transactions that are necessary to purchase a home or mortgage purchase land. Tell us a little bit about your office what are the roles and responsibilities of the register of deeds. Well our office actually deals in the land records that is our you know most our main purpose it doesn't matter if a home is on it it is the legal description of the land records. So I'm going to use this as an example. Hurricane Sandy went through and just tore up the eastern coast. The houses were gone there's nothing there there's not a physical thing there but the description of the legal description of that plot is in our office recorded in our office and that is how when you're rebuilding you can find you know what where your lot lines are that it's it's recorded there whatever the house on it or the buildings on it isn't really necessary in our office it is actually the legal the physical land. I think that I think that best describes it. I think that's an excellent example obviously we hope we never have a hurricane here but you could have a tornado or some natural disaster where if everything's wiped out just where are the property lines and even if there are buildings there are fences there people still want that certified survey and recorded document just to make sure they know exactly where their lot line is or where they can put up the fence. Correct I mean if we're a lot lines and stuff like that in the cities there are the subdivisions set up where there's each lot it's a lot you know and it shows your lot lines in the county you know more of the rural areas you don't have that set lot you know everything's not square I mean you have your quarter quarters and you know and you're but they're not square it's not you know you can have land cut out from different areas and change by roads. And so then back to the role of your office you what do you and your staff do what's your primary responsibility. Our primary okay so the land is called you get a deed warranty deed, quick claim deed, transfer you know transfer by affidavit whatever so you get a deed and on that deed is a legal description of the lot the deed and the mortgages so when you buy property or you know your mortgage is also recorded usually they're recorded together you have the deed and then the mortgage when you pay that mortgage off the satisfaction is recorded and that shows land you know the title the title insurance or the title of the land it goes back to 1848 you know that so when you're ever wherever it was plotted or surveyed or whatever you know we have records that are dating back to 1848 on the land records and so you can follow your property back to who owned it prior you know to you and prior to them and prior to them if you lose any of those documents or you misplace them or you have a fire you can come to our office and and and get those copies from our office we do have to charge for them but they are readily available for the most part and so you always know where you can go to get your to get your documents so the land records or documents are all recorded at your office and certainly you can go back and look for that but what about going forward if Roger sells me a piece of property am I required then to have that recorded in your office if you want to lay claim to it you know what is in our office is whoever was the last owner whoever now has interest in that property and as long as Roger pays his taxes he's you know the taxes on there he could sell it to you you can say oh Roger you know I'll give you a hundred bucks for that land and Roger goes okay but Roger's still paying the taxes on it if you don't record it nobody knows that you gave him that hundred dollars for that land okay you know so that's really the the final important piece of the process to make sure people recognize you are now the new to show the ownership yeah how many people work in the register of deeds office there are seven of us and you have a budget of roughly seven hundred thousand dollars it's about six hundred and ninety three and if you just saw Ellen smile just a little bit when she said that Ellen can smile because she is the only department of our 19 departments that doesn't rely on any property tax levy and that makes all of us smile isn't it Roger I wish more of our departments didn't have to rely on property tax levy because in most instances they they utilize property tax levy state or federal fees what have you but Ellen does not in fact it's one of the few departments that actually contributes a little bit to our bottom line so how is it that you support your staff and your operation how does that work well our office is everything in our office is done per state statutes you know we don't have any much leeway on how we can charge or not charge so per state statutes recording a document in our office is thirty dollars for every document anything except for Plats which are the fifty dollars the birth death and marriage records are twenty dollars a piece and three dollars for any additional copies we charge for copies if anybody if you need to come into our office to request a copy it's two dollars for the first page and a dollar for any additional so a deed typically will cost you two dollars unless except for the older ones there'll be three dollars most of the time they're there you know just one one page so it's two dollars for a mortgage however those can vary from anywhere from two dollars to twenty four depending I mean some mortgages are two pages three pages some are twenty twenty five pages depending upon the lender how they write it up so and that's a nice transition to an addition to the land records you said there's marriage licenses and other documents as well that are recorded and safeguarded in your office it filed certified surveyed copies are can be got out of our office for birth birth marriage and death we have them safeguarded in our vault and when someone comes in and request a copy then we get it out put it on certified paper and issue that copy so last question before I turn it over to Roger if you can just walk our viewers through I know you can if you will please walk our our viewers through what are the steps involved with processing a deed okay someone comes in what happens then I'd be happy to answer that for you when they come in to process to record a deed generally it's they walk up to the counter or they can mail them in they put a number on it because we have a numbering system in our in our office and it gets put down in a basket and we pick it up by number and you know we do the recording and we record it we scan it we index it then then we check it over recheck it to make sure all the legals and everything is good on it and then we return it back mail it generally mail it back or if it's one of our normal customers that come into the office the title companies or whatever we have a place where we set them and they can pick them up when they're complete they put you know $30 on it or we have escrow cone set that we can draw out of and when you say you record it you know that's what i was looking for you to define a little bit that that's where you scan in the document and kind of certify that this is an appropriate official document right we have our land record or the software is is a index kind of a thing but we put all the information in the grantor grantee scan it scan the document into the system into the computer and then it goes into a processing where you know we do i have here we put down what kind of document it is what the what the amount of the mortgage is or whatever verify the the legal description in the computer and then it gets it gets posted but it puts a timestamp on it and you know i mean you'll hear a lot of info a lot of times and you know what i'm talking about the the race to the courthouse you know and some folks don't really you know they probably don't realize this but if someone is but purchasing something or borrowing money and they want to try and get this recorded before somebody puts a lien on them you know it's called the race to the courthouse who's going to who's going to lay claim to that property before it's recorded some title companies are very very uh adamant about how that is done it can it can cause problems with mortgages stuff like that if if one mortgage is recorded before the other so it puts a timestamp on it and says okay at 230 and you know whatever date April 17th this document was recorded so as of 230 of this that date you now own the property or you now own a mortgage that you have to pay off gotcha gotcha and of course the numbering system is to make sure you're treating everyone fairly inconsistently and as it's received it's processed correct very good thank you ellen roger thank you adamant thank you ellen for the great job you and your staff do for sheboygan county and we've just talked about quite a bit of the talk about the mortgages and conveying ownership let's talk a little bit about the other services that the registered deeds had like in particular how does a person obtain a birth certificate or other vital records okay again that is also run by the state vital records office we have forms in our office available in our office for each respective request we also have them available online on our website that they can fill out they fill the top out is their information and then the birth information we do require that they have valid IDs so check to make sure that and that is to help against property for or not property fraud but identity theft there is certain people that can only there's only certain people that can get a birth record or death or marriage you have to have tangible interest so we make sure that that's all taken care of and or that it's all kosher and and they hand us their their form and we look it up we run run a cert make a certified copy and give it back to him and charge him twenty dollars and why would someone need a certified birth certificate you know years ago you didn't need them as much as what you do now but for now they need them for school for sports they need them to get their driver's license if you're under six under eighteen you need to have your birth certificate for a work permit some jobs when you get employed to be employed you have to have a birth certificate to verify your age um companies that change insurance companies uh the the insurance companies require a birth certificate in the case of a death certificate or an air to establish errors you may need a death certificate of your parents or whatever and then you need birth certificates of any of the errors for the insurance purposes so there's a very very very important document you almost need it for almost anything you do now to get a passport to travel anything you you you need a birth certificate to verify that and i know a lot of people are often interested in researching their family tree uh how can your office help with that we have we allow genealogists in our office um we have a a small area for them to work in um it is in our vital vault and uh they now come in and they fill out a form and they verify you know we we verify their identity and once a year they fill this form out we keep it on record and then they can come in and just sign in instead of having to fill out a form every time we just do it one make them do it once a year so we have all their information on there in case there's any questions on anybody if you know some people don't want other people looking up their stuff so but everything is all under you know as we kind of keep an eye on it they are free to look at any most of the any records from 1848 to 1907 and after that they can look at some of the records if they don't have confidential information on them if they have confidential information on them we will um assist them with what they need to go what they need to find um they usually are looking for um spouse's names and you know like with parents who the father was who the mother was um there's information on there that just amazes me by you know what they can find on a birth death or marriage record just taught me something new there because i wasn't aware of that either i always thought that everything in register of deeds was a public record but there are some documents that are the vinyl records are protected under the state statutes prior to 1907 there was no real how can i say that it's there wasn't a real standard on it and you'll find back it actually is rather interesting but from 1848 to 1907 um it wasn't a requirement to record those documents or register those documents so you see sometimes when people would come in and you can see it in the index you know they'll they'll like they'll come in in like 1897 or whatever and they're registering 10 names you know someone came into the county seat and um registered all their kids at one time but from 1907 forward uh those records are protected um and especially uh birth uh unmarried births uh are confidential no one can see them except for the the birth mother or the child okay and uh what types of information can be found on the chivalry county website oh now we gotta list all this well we have our picture on there that's really nice um we have our office hours we have um and i'm doing this by memory so we have um different places you can go to we have information on land records we have information on how to get to a vital record we have information on um i'm losing it now a lot of information but they should really check it out and look for themselves they should really it's www.chivalryandconey.com and just look for under departments for register of deeds but there is a lot of information on there um it does have our contact information we try and help folks as much as we can to get their information fill out their fill out the forms and stuff and then bring them into the office it's a lot easier um for them there but generally like you know i like to say within five ten minutes they can get their birth death or marriage certificates if you know if there's no problem so and i also understand that you have remote access you can provide that uh how is that uh how does that work and how it's involved generally we have you know we have title companies that that come into the office and uh they look up on our public computers at what information they're looking for a lot of times they don't want to take the time to come into our office so we offer uh remote access it's called it's a our software company it's uh called Laredo it is an online system that they can contract for they sign a contract and they pay a certain amount of dollars per what minutes they think they are going to use we have a sliding scale that goes from 150 minutes to uh unlimited and the dollars is like 50 to 400 dollars split out like six different they have six different options and along with that instead of paying the two dollars and one dollar per copy they pay 35 cents per copy so they contract for that and then we we bill them monthly for what they whatever they use we have some folks that that take the 150 and find out minutes a month and find out that they used it in two days so then they up it we also have a service another online service that for maybe just the person who's just looking up their property or looking up a property that they may be interested in and that's called tapestry and that is a 595 they pay per search and they can print out their documents for 50 cents a page and we do have users that use that also they're not ready to go into the the Laredo so it's another option for someone who's not quite ready to go make that jump. Thank you Ellen. Very interesting and back to the area that uh I'd like to learn more from from you one of the great things about being in county government is that 19 departments 200 and some programs and services you're always learning something and you always have an opportunity to improve upon things and Ellen's made a lot of wonderful improvements and in the register of deeds and uh you touched on something earlier I wanted to come back to because I haven't you know I haven't gone to your office to get a birth certificate for myself and maybe my wife perhaps has used it before but I personally have it I can go to the county treasurer's office and run off anyone's tax bill information that's public information I can go to your office and can I request a property deed for anyone? Yes you can that is public that is public records and that's what I thought but if I go to your office and I want Roger's birth certificate that I can't get. No you cannot. If I want my birth certificate what do I need to show you to prove that I'm it's okay to share that with me. We would need to see a valid pictured ID or if you don't have that there are other indices we can take a passport U.S. we can take a bill but it has to be two bills with your address on that are showing your name and address on there we are now able to now the state has allowed us that if someone has a checking account or their bank statement on their smartphones we can accept that as an ID which just came they just gave us permission to do that. Now let's say I go to your office I want Roger's birth certificate but I have Roger's ID and address information. Do you look like Roger? I would have to look like him wouldn't I? Yes. So unless I was a twin you would turn me away. We would. What are other examples of documents that you can provide because it's a public record and can't provide because well anything to do with land records deeds mortgages trade names contracts subdivisions certified survey maps any of that is readily available for the public it's just mostly the vital records very good nice distinction and again if you're interested in learning more about this or have an interest in your your history or family tree and I know my dad is really into this and I get a I really give people credit who take the time to drill down into that it's fascinating register of deeds wonderful resource and I know I see some of the same faces go to your office I don't know week in and week out or month from time to time just to drill into that just one big happy family in our office and if you want copies of information or you're recording a document as you shared earlier Ellen there are fees associated with that and these are state required fees from a standpoint of how much you can charge for that service and it's to recoup our time and in our investment to to cover our costs essentially right and also while it's yeah they're state mandated mandated but we also the state gets quite a few of those dollars that they are requiring so let's we should make that straight we don't get all of that money in our office why doesn't that surprise me would be really would be really nice but there are the state gets like $15 out of every recorded document every there's vital records they get $12 out of the birth certificates and $8 out of the death and marriage so yep we we don't get to keep all that money for ourselves and some of our viewers might be thinking well why don't more departments do that you know why why am I paying all this in property taxes if in fact the people that are actually using the service or benefiting from the service in your case in your department are paying for the service probably one of the other examples in the county would be the clerk of court's office where people are paying fines and forfeitures but there back to ellen's point the state takes so much of the money that the county collects that we still need to subsidize the clerk of court's office with property tax levy because we can't keep enough of what we retain always opportunities for improvement but ellen can smile because her office doesn't have to rely on that tax levy and that's just fantastic well i want to thank you so much for joining us today and i want to thank you ellen for just an excellent overview ellen has a wonderful team if you've been in that office before you know what a friendly group they are how courteous they are and and i really think they do a tremendous job and reflect so well on sheboygan county so again thank you ellen if you have more questions or want to share any suggestions or opportunities for improvement don't hesitate to contact ellen or myself or roger distruty and that's really one of the big reasons we have this program i think it's been almost a dozen years now that every month we've been showcasing a different department and talking about their roles and responsibilities and you know i think people follow this program roger you know we we've heard that people find it interesting and and i do think there's a lot of good work in this interesting things done here but if you ever have a suggestion for improvement or you know something we want we should consider doing differently don't ever hesitate to contact the department head or contact your elected county board supervisor or myself and we'd be happy to hear your thoughts on that next month we're going to have our director of transportation here greg schnell and a new face for you his name's charles suite he is our new airport superintendent just started about six weeks ago so until next month thanks for joining us