Peering into an adjoining room filled with people staring at computer screens, County Recorder of Deeds Mary Ann Stukel could identify nearly all of them: employees of title companies.
Like any successful business person, Stukel recognized her primary customers on sight–in this case, the people who regularly research property titles in the lower level of the County Office Building. How regular? “They’re here all day, looking up information.”
She suggested the lone unidentified individual might be one of the “walk-in customers, people wanting to know about their property. The public is very interested in the background of their home, when it was built–especially people buying an old home. They like to see what it cost.”
Stukel is a Crest Hill resident and a licensed real estate broker with 22 years of experience. She worked in the recorder of deeds office in 1982 and 1983, performing most of the functions she now has employees performing for her.
Rebuffed by voters in 1988 during her initial bid for the recorder of deeds post, Stukel won the 1992 election. She wasted no time abandoning the mainframe-based computer system installed by her predecessor.
The controversial move established a $500,000 networked personal computer system independent of Will County’s mainframe computer operation.
“The biggest challenge was coming off the mainframe,” she said, acknowledging she departed from the recommendations of the county’s information systems management department.
“They don’t know the needs of each department,” she said.
One of Stukel’s needs involves her department’s shrinking space. Computer printouts, decades-old hardbound books and microfiche continue to gain ground at the expense of the public portion of the recorders’ office, where the information is legally required to remain.
“Nothing can be discarded,” Stukel said, noting a particular property’s paper trail may stretch back 100 years. Likening herself to a librarian, she added, “We have books back there from the 1800s.”
Since 1992, the recorders’ office has handled and filed an average of 115,000 documents a year, according to Stukel, who says the paperwork reflects increased construction, reselling and refinancing activities.
“People go into Naperville and see the prices and come here, although Frankfort does have quite a few residential developments. I look around (Will County) and see we do have some vacant land left, but they (builders) just keep eating it up.”
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