The dungeon will soon be a thing of the past, for the assessor’s office, anyway. The office is going digital, through a contract with Diversified Research and Development of Portage.
The project, part of a Total Quality Management plan for county departments spearheaded by Auditor Bob Wichlinski, will cost between $98,000 and $150,000, and is being paid for through the auditor’s nonreverting fund.
The move is meant to provide better access to the assessor’s records for the public, offer more secure document storage, offer improved time management for employees, and free up much-needed space in the county building.
Snyder expects the project, which includes purging duplicate and unnecessary documents, to be complete in the next six to eight months. There are just over 80,000 parcels of land in the county — including around 20,000 that fall under the auspices of Portage Township — and there is a file for each one of them.
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Once the documents that are being kept are scanned, they will be stored at a site in Portage. Employees and the public will be able to access them online; anyone who wants to see an original document will have to file a request through the assessor’s office so it can be taken out of storage.
Snyder said his office is coming up with a future plan on how to handle future records, something that will be put in place after the massive digitalization project is complete.
“At some point, we are done making copies and killing trees,” he said, adding documents such as deeds will be scanned directly into the system. “The goal is, we scan it in and everyone can access it digitally.”
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