Bulletin: NY000038

Dear Associates:

Attached for your information is a memorandum from the Nassau County Clerk dated October 12, 1993, which has been circulated by the New York State Land Title Association. This memorandum discusses the appointment procedures which have been established for recording documents in Nassau County.

The memorandum also indicates that the backlog in the recording of mortgage satisfactions has been significantly reduced.

Please circulate this bulletin to your recording personnel.

Attachment:

Letter from:
Nassau County Clerk's Office
240 Old Country Road
Mineola, New York 11301
Dated: October 12, 1993

To:
Land Title Association
From: Doreen Banks, Nassau County Clerk
Subject: Recording appointment procedures

Things have been going along very well. We have moved all land recording staff up to the third floor into one room. Now the noise levels have dropped, and productivity has shown a corresponding increase. Although all of us in the industry have been remarking on the huge number of instruments being presented for recording, with our new procedures, we have continued to record documents as fast as they are presented at appointments.

We have, however, identified two areas which were giving us problems periodically, and the solution we have come up with is the subject of this letter. From time to time, recorders make appointments to record instruments and then discover at the late last minute that they cannot get here with their documents at the appointed time. When that happens, it creates real problems for our office. It is very difficult to find someone else to bring in their work on short notice, and often by the time the recording clerk finds another person who can drop everything and get over here, it's time for his or her next appointment.

Another problem we've had on occasion is when our appointments begin to back up, and title people trying to set up appointments find themselves being given what they regard as overly long waits for recording appointments. While we are working on this problem (we're training our second indexing people as backup recorders) the solution will take a while to implement, and we are using a new procedure to take care of both of these problems in the meantime.

We offer you the opportunity to leave your work, bundled and dated with your appointment, with us against the chance that we will have your work will definitely be recorded before your appointment. It means if we have a cancellation and your bundle is the next one, the recorder will take your bundle and work on it.

If we advance your appointment, we will call your office to send someone right down to take back any instruments which are not acceptable for recording, and to pay for those which are. We will only accept bundles if we have less than 1000 instruments in the box, first come, first in. Any more than that would be overkill.

Please note that in exchange for accepting your bundle, if we do so, you must honor our request to have someone come down immediately if we advance your appointment. If you fail to do so, we won't accept your bundles for the contingency box the next time. Also, if your clerk prefers to work with a specific recorder, we can't guarantee that recorder will have the broken appointment.

The goal behind this new contingency plan is to serve your recording needs while maximizing our own efficiency. With our daily workload more than 50% over normal levels, anything that keeps our people productively occupied serves all our interests. This plan will only work if we continue to get the wonderful cooperation we have enjoyed from the Land Title industry, a partnership which has made it possible to eliminate most of the backlogs already.

On a final note, I anticipate that by October 30, we will be within a week of eliminating the last backlog, in recording mortgage satisfactions. When that happens, we will have eliminated nearly a year of backlog in eleven months. We will have recorded 23 months of workload over that period, in spite of significant staff cuts. I want to thank my staff for rising to the occasion so well, and the members of the Land Title Association for their patience while we worked the problems out together.

It has been an interesting year, and I look forward to the future with confidence in our ability to jointly work out solutions to the problems of tomorrow. Once again, I want to thank Sharon Heard, the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee for making it possible for me to communicate with you in this direct and unusual manner.

Very truly yours,

/s/Doreen E. Banks,
Nassau County Clerk

Suggested Procedure For Obtaining Recording Appointments

1. Before setting up an appointment, vet the documents. Make certain they are in recordable form, and that the cover sheets have been filled out properly. County up how many documents you have and the types they are and work up a run-up sheet for total fees which will be payable to this office.

2. Then call the appointments clerk, at (516) 571-4979, or appear at the office and set up your appointment. You must tell her how many and what kind of documents you have and the run-up total of fees; and if you are requesting an appointment with a specific recorder.

3. If we have room in the contingency box and you are requesting a possible advance to an open appointment, bring the papers down, bundled with your run-up sheet and a check with a cap for your total run-up, plus $50.00.

4. If you appointment is advanced, you will be called at the moment we learn of the cancellation. We will expect you to have someone in our office within an hour after notification of the advancement, to confirm the fees to be charged, and accept back any unrecordable instruments you may have submitted.

5. If your appointment is not advanced, please appear 5 minutes before your appointment and check in. If you have not appeared by 10 minutes after the appointed time, you will be deemed to have broken your appointment, and the recording clerk will go to the contingency box and take the next bundle. If you know you will have to break an appointment, please call Ginger and advise her immediately, so that we can reschedule more smoothly.

We understand anyone can develop a last minute problem. However, we would appreciate your cooperation so that our appointment times will be as productive as possible.