Docs online at county

I received the following e-mail today and thought it was worth sharing. It's not a bad idea.

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In 2006, when I was running for County Recorder in Allen County, Indiana, your site mentioned a specific proposal that I had made regarding online availability of restrictive covenants. Your site made a very supportive comment about the project and I wanted to let you know that we were successful in implementing the idea, which went live today.

What follows is a copy of the news release that we issued this morning. I very much appreciated the comments your site made two years ago. You gave me the first indication that the idea was a good one worthy of implementation.

Here’s the news release:

Contact: John McGauley, Allen County Recorder - (260) 449-7391

News Release:

Recorder’s Office Launches Neighborhood Resource Center
Problem-solving tools include free online access to neighborhood covenants and restrictions

(October 16, 2008) – A new online tool for solving problems and improving understanding in neighborhoods throughout Allen County went live today.

The Allen County Recorder’s Office Neighborhood Resource Center can be found on the web at www.allencountyrecorder.us/neighborhoods.

Among the tools offered by the Neighborhood Resource Center is free searchable access to the recorded covenants and restrictions of subdivisions and condominium developments.

"All too often, property owners are unaware of the covenants in place in their subdivisions," said Allen County Recorder John McGauley. "Lack of easy access to this information leaves neighbors vulnerable to frustrating mistakes that routinely snowball into drawn-out conflicts. The Neighborhood Resource Center will be a powerful new tool for reducing this source of conflict between neighbors."

Also included on the site are links to Fort Wayne, New Haven and Allen County neighborhood information, such as contact lists, meeting dates and informational resources. Downloadable maps of the county will allow users to find subdivision names and, in many cases, section numbers.

The Neighborhood Resource Center was developed at a cost of $6,500, paid for using fee revenue collected by the Recorder’s Office. In early 2007, initial estimates of the project cost exceeded $100,000. A low-cost solution was possible by creating the site as an add-on to a new, web-accessible records management system installed by the Recorder’s Office in June 2007.

In order to search the Neighborhood Resource Center for covenants, users will have to at least part of their subdivision name. Subdivision names and neighborhood association names are not always the same. The subdivision name can be found on the owner’s deed and in the property’s legal description.

The site will automatically search all documents that might contain covenants. Users may have to look at more than one document before finding the one containing their covenants. Covenants are amended on rare occasions, so property owners should check for updates from time to time.

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John McGauley
Allen County Recorder
[email protected]
(260) 449-7391
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This is something you might consider sharing with your local Recorder's Office.

Joe

Amen George... I hope to live to see the day that not only are all recorded documents available on line, but also at least a searchable database for the documents themselves exists (if not searchable text within them).

This is a great step. Hope more counties follow. Thanks Joseph for posting this too!