Wood County Board

Welcome everyone to midday magazine for this January 24th 2023 24 I knew I was going to do that

I knew I was going to do I was looking at a 23 on here and it threw me

Welcome to the show everybody in the new year

You got your host James Jamel off here in part two

We're going to talk with our friend Ann Leepeck and possibly some other guests will join us from the odc

Looking forward to that right now in studio. We have Wood County board chairman Lance Plymmel Lance always good to see you

Thanks James always great to be here and thank you for bringing a friend to with you

Yeah, it's a real pleasure

And children to do so, but we brought Tiffany Ringer who's our register of deeds

Great register of deeds highly respected throughout the state in fact she we talked about this about a month ago

She's the president of her organization in the statewide level so

Not only brings local knowledge, but those cutting-edge things that are happening around the state in regard to register of deeds

So Tiffany has not tell you so I'm going to shut up and let you guys talk I do I do I need you for one more second Lance

Because I do want to thank you you do a great job this time

You could spend on a lot of different things, but you bring in guests all the time from our wood County health department from our city hall and all that that

I think a lot of our audience doesn't get the chance to meet people like Tiffany very often

I appreciate you doing that man. Thank you very much for that appreciate it

Well, you know, it's interesting. We have some highly talented department heads Tiffany's a little different in the fact that she's a department head

But she's also an elected official. Yeah, so I'd love to take credit for hiring her

We recommended that but but she's done this on her own

Tiffany, thank you very much for being here. How are you doing? I'm doing well. Thanks for having me James

And thank you Lance. Yeah

Tiffany before we dive into a couple of things as regarding deeds that are pretty noteworthy

I think for our community. I just want to get to know you just a little bit

How did you get into the this world? How did you get into doing this kind of work?

So I started out with Wood County in the Wood County Child Support Agency

Absolutely loved my job and when I found out my predecessor

Susan Hinter was retiring

I was like, hey, let's take on a new challenge and I was really excited

I love to be involved legislatively so it worked out really well for me

When it comes to being in charge of register of deeds

That's that's something we don't

Haven't paid a whole lot of attention to I think as a society as a group

Like this one of those things that is kind of in the gray area a bit

What are some of the things that you cover in a job like that?

So my office is responsible for recording all land records

We are the keeper of the records

We also produce all vital records for the county

So people are with us for their entire life

Marriage death divorce

And we also house the DD214

Really important work like very important work that's in the part of the reason I've wrote up before that about it being a gray area

Because we kind of normalize things in society the more we use and the more we get used to them and everything

But it's it's really important work that you're doing over there

Especially when we look at some of the things that we have had to deal with in recent years

One thing that we certainly wanted to note was the home deed theft and and talk about that a little bit with you

So let's start right there if you don't mind Tiffany

What is home deed theft and what do people what do our listeners need to be aware of when it comes to that?

Yeah, James

So this is something that's out there that not everybody is really aware of and you do hear those commercials a lot with the title lock

And that does offer the same service as something that the county can offer

The nice thing about signing up through our county which I'll go into here is it's free

So this is incorporated into my software cost already

So folks in wood county can just contact my office or go to our website and sign up

What happens when you sign up

If a document is recorded in your name

So somebody records something for Tiffany Ringer and instantly within 24 hours

I can choose to receive an alert with a text message a phone call or an email

And and it's a real person calling you too. So you're it's coming over from Iowa

That's her software company

And so it is a real person and if you would not answer they will call three times and they actually leave a voicemail

Yeah, so it's it's super convenient and you know a lot of times you're like oh another telemarketer

No, it's not you can actually listen to the voicemail and then be like oh something happened

It the threat out there is when these folks record something a deed

Let's say of a second home that you may have and this is happening a lot of with those people that

May have a second home in Florida or Arizona for the for the winter right

Um

They're not here monitoring their home for five six months

And in that case they can come back and

Somebody's in their house and not even know it

Um, the situation becomes extremely stressful and this is happening more for maybe some folks that are a little older that aren't paying attention to both properties

Um, and who wants to you're away enjoying life and you're not

um

So the scenario that involves this criminal filing this bogus deed

And and there's nothing we can do about it the deed comes to my office. It's in recordable format

It has all the right signatures now. What do we do? We record it. Obviously if we sent some things wrong we can catch it

Um, but we don't always know that right away these criminals are becoming incredible at this crime

After this deeds recorded they then go and immediately take out a mortgage

And when they do this they're running away with that cash um and right away and it's too late

So when you sign up for this property fraud alert that is free

Um, once we notify you of something being recorded

Those people can contact my office right away and and say hey something was just recorded

What was it?

And we can look it up tell them right away

If it is something that is in fact fraudulent

I get them to the sheriff's department right away and and they can help them how and move forward

Huh, um, the interesting part to you if I may is I I was not aware of this and I'm in the courthouse every day

I I knew the program existed and I just assumed I was signed up. Yeah, if it equals your nat

Um

In fact a lot of departments tell me that

So so she sits down. I said well, you know, is it fairly complicated?

And she's kind of turned her computer screen and said let's do it while you sit here and I'm not exaggerating it took a minute

So I would encourage the people out there to listen to what Tiffany just said and make sure you sign well

You had me at free you had me not not that it you had me at the information you just gave man

That seems very vital very important especially if you are a homeowner nowadays

It's almost like vital to have this it feels like and it also feels very similar to identity theft

Are they similar are are there parallels there? It's close

I mean because you are having these criminals sign your name

And and so they are pretending to be you and typically they have a friend that's a notary

And then in that case they're notarizing the signature obviously illegally and and how would I know?

I mean, it's a notary. There's no possible way to know

Tiffany, they're you touch on this a little bit

I think just to dive a little deeper into it. Who are the most susceptible to this

People with second homes and people with vacant land

So if you own 40 acres somewhere for example and your home is somewhere else or that's your hunting land or you know, just some examples

You might not be there every day and so you wouldn't even know and there have been cases where

Folks do this deed the criminals and then they go and build a house on the property and sell it

Well now they're making money and now there's two titles of this property

So I rely really heavily on my business partners title companies realtors

We we really do because they're the ones that are sitting there with those signatures

And and I'm so grateful for the relationships we have in Wood County

We have not had a case in Wood County. So that's great news

I have received calls from customers that have registered for this saying hey something was recorded

What was it and then I let them know that oh I did do that you know or you forget you paid off your mortgage

So your satisfaction was recorded you forget right so

Um, it's been a really positive experience and I'm really grateful that people reach out

I had the opportunity to present this to the Towns Association

In Wood County which was very well received and we had a huge influx of people signing up for it after that

So hopefully the work keeps spreading yeah, yeah, and we're gonna do our best to help with that

Um, and including that includes you listeners out there

You've got homework spread the word about this spread the where we all know word of mouth goes farther than when

Anywhere and can any medium can ever reach

Um, Tiffany when it comes to this you mentioned that we haven't had any cases of this in Wood County

And you're seeing some positive feedback from this

Um, so we're seeing some good numbers of people signing up for this yes

Growing every time and it makes me happy because it is out there

And it's already incorporated into our costs. So let's utilize it as much as we possibly can

Yeah, we love to get every bit of our money's worth out of things and this is one way to do that

I mean make sure to do that everybody and if people have follow up questions will give you Tiffany's information for wrap up today

But is there anything else you want to touch on in this subject in particular?

Yeah, one other thing there's

We've also had people sign up for let's talk about those people that have second homes in Florida

Their children will sign up for them. So

You get that alert. They're already in Florida enjoying their summer winter

Yeah, yeah, sure lucky them and so then their children are back here watching their property for them

So you certainly can enter your phone number in for somebody else's name

Just to make sure that alert is being heard does that work for non relatives because we know a lot of our

What we call them snowbirds or what other people that leave for the winter or what have you

I always forget what that term is because I've never done that so I don't know what that term is

But for for sometimes we have a neighbor watching the home or or something like that can are they

able to help with that sure can so if you were watching my home

You know, you would enter my name Tiffany Ringer and then put your cell phone number down or your email and then you would get the alert

It feels very flexible. It feels very you know

User-friendly if you will to to the to ever is needing these services. Yeah, and as Lance has stated it's very fast

Yeah, and I have no problem coming somewhere if somebody has a group that you need signed up give me a call

Let me know I can certainly bring a laptop and get people signed up or call my office or there's so many ways to do it

We can make it happen and I love what you said about the communication part of that

I appreciate that Lance does this all the time too kind of gives us a look behind the curtain

The the community appreciates that the community really appreciates the the clear and transparency of the conversations

We have and hearing that it makes us also feel stronger about our community

Hearing that these people are talking this person and this person is talking this organization and this organization is sharing

Information we're stronger from that and we're able to prevent these things

And hopefully we keep that number at zero for our wood county here

Yeah, so I did reach out to my district. It has happened in surrounding counties

So I don't want you to think that it's not happening in Wisconsin. It is

It's unfortunate, but it is and I wish I could prevent it

I can't but I at least I can alert you. Yeah, and we all we're all adults

We understand the importance of insurance. Hopefully you never have to use it

But you want it there you want it there if you need it that is this to the definition like hopefully

Um, I didn't mean to

Do you have another question this I wanted to make sure that

You touch on to what those everybody thinks the red shirt deeds us it says deeds

But she talked about the vital records and you know the one thing I wanted to make sure before we run out of time at some point is

What they need to bring what they need to do when they come into your office looking for specific records

Whether that be marriage licenses desertificates

Sorry about that. I was wanting to be a radio host

You take your chance you take your shot Lance you take your shot. That's it. I'll shut up

That's fine. It's fine. Let's go ahead now. I'm sorry Tiffany. Go ahead. Well, thanks for asking land

That's good question. It's good question

When you come to the office for a vital record we've actually upgraded those services and you can get your vital record online

If you go to my website

It's out there to order there's several different options as we use different vendors for that service

You can have it overnighted or you can have normal general mail

We cannot email facts. That's that's not allowed

But we can certainly get that vital record to you without you having to come to the office if that works best for you

So the cost for a vital record is $20 for the first copy and then three dollars for each additional

Every time you come back. So you always we always encourage get as many copies as you think you're going to need right away

We need a valid ID and if you don't have a valid ID

That all happened during COVID with the expiring of drivers license

We do accept two pieces of mail

To show who you are as well. Very cool. Very cool. Good question Lance. Good question

They haven't here for some reason

There's a couple reasons a couple

We wanted to get into new services that you guys are offering over there too and just dive a little bit more into that

We've kind of touched on it a little bit here

What are some other new services that are you guys are offering over there?

So we like I said we're doing the vital records online

And we are always looking to improve our indexing

So right now huge project in our offices to get our certified survey maps available for searching by number

because

When you're in that field the title companies trying to help them out a little bit

It's difficult for them. It takes more time to call my office and say what's that document number

I want to make it more efficient

So the goal is to be able to just search by that CSM that's located in that legal description

And you're able to find everything you can now if that being said

Obviously the manpower that would be needed is huge

So it is going to be a project that'll take us a while but we'll get there

Very cool and are there other things in the works or other things you guys are working on

I don't need details necessarily but just so you guys are

You know you and your team are kind of thinking of other ways to improve the department

Well our main priority is always customer service

That is so important to me my staff knows that

Representing the office the representing the county we're there to serve the county

And that is a huge priority

So we are always looking for a way to be more efficient

Anyway, I welcome any phone calls from anybody saying hey, what if you try this? Oh, absolutely

Let's let's talk about it. What else can we do?

You know, I'm there to serve the people of Wood County

So they elected me to do so and I will a lens. I see why you're brought to me

She's great. I mean, she's obviously great interview and great on camera with you. I mean, she's always smiling

But the interesting part I think that is most people don't know

Everything that occurs within a courthouse

And the size and the scope of what is just done in in Tiffany's office and the Richard D's office

I mean, this is a giant vault with records echo back to how far back do we go 18 what ever yeah so far back and and we have taken the time to

Turned some of those into a digital format

But the cost to do that as Tiffany said not only the the time but the cost is phenomenal

But you know you go in there and I don't know what the oldest record I've ever looked at but when I look at some of this old stuff

I'm into the mid 1800s and I I really don't know how far back it goes

But there's a lot of books a lot of information and

Tiffany and her

Staff are they're the safekeepers of all this. Yeah, Tiffany. How big of a staff do you have over there?

I have four staff. Okay, just for the rest of us to put that in perspective with what Lance is saying and everything

That that is impressive the what you the work that you and your team do. Oh, yeah

Like I said, we could always use more but that would be too much of a burden on taxpayer

But we can get it done yeah, and I appreciate that appreciate that that gusto of you and everything in your team

It's a tough to because usually when this kind of conversation comes up

And we could you know manpower and that oh volunteers

We can't really have volunteers for something like this

So appreciate the hard work that you guys do on this subject and especially with everything we were talking about before about the

The rise of of theft of deeds and things like that

It's that much more important that we have good people behind there and appreciate the work that you're doing

When I was doing a little bit of a homework for this interview

I was thinking about the job itself and how long have you been doing this again, Tiffany?

I've been doing it for a little over six years. Okay, so for a while here a good amount of good amount of time

How much is technology

affected your job because reading about people that used to do deeds and such like even 20 years ago

It seems like a completely different world. It's funny that you asked that Jane

So he was just talking to Williams about it before we walked in here

Legislation legislation is changing every day

To keep up with that has been a challenge

But I am so grateful to the county board for being supportive and working with me all the time

Making sure that we do have the things that we need and that customers are always leaving

With what they came in for

so

We have

An amazing software company that I work with and they are always

Keeping things up to speed making sure that I am updated as much as I possibly can be

When I came to office I did switch to the newest version

Which was a huge task and I'm so grateful for my staff

all the hours they put in

But that was able to provide instant recording back to title companies

so we do e-recording and we have

Also put in a program called Swift

So when a document if it's a paper document is recorded we can send it back

Instantly after reviewing it and recording it. So we no longer have to mail things

We no longer have to wait for somebody to come in. It's very fast

So I have reached out obviously to our title companies. Hey, how's it going? What can we do?

They do appreciate the quick turnaround on that. Yeah, I can only imagine

It really has and it sounds like it's changed quite a bit even from when you started six years

Yes, they did not have that service at that time. So like I said that software is changing every day

Yeah, I can imagine and with that as we touched on in the beginning of this conversation bringing a full circle

We're able to protect people better. We're able to really watch out for people better because of

There's always um, I remember when I was one of my first jobs. I was working at deja vu video

Whether it's a throwback anybody to remembers that and they had these magazines that were specifically for the video rental store

Now on the magazine there this thing there that could help you prevent people from

You know dubbing your your tapes your cassette tapes it would be prevented that

And the very next page was a device to counter that device

It's that's the world we live in with technology. There's always going to be that kind of

That that lower part of things that are looking for ways to find a

Chance to take advantage of a system or something like that

So it's so important to have this tech and to have it really up to date

And that and sounds like that's a very that's something you're really on point about

Yes, everything is digital now like flan said like we do we don't save paper documents anymore

Although they are really fun to go in the ball and look at

And if anyone ever wants to see it stop on in i'll show you

I mean where they traded three mules for two acres

That's a thing i'm serious, you know it's

From a realtor's perspective or for a property honest perspective

There are some counties within our state where

Documents don't get recorded for

Days even weeks. I don't know if we ever hit months

But you know there's a lot of comfort in knowing that when something goes over to Tiffany's office and our courthouse

It's really it is instant

So in the world of real estate there's gap insurance to cover things that happen between the time of a title search and the recording of the document

I'm not encouraging anybody not to do that. I use it all the time

But the fact is they're so effective and efficient that it really minimizes that

That exposure and I know we're getting close

But you got some pending legislation. Can you talk do you have time to touch on that or can't you touch on that yet?

Well, there's quite a bit coming up

We say that for the next show. Yeah, there's so much

If if you do we have a minute or two left if you want to just highlight anything

Well right now. I'd love to give a huge shout out to representative crew

He has been incredible to work with and very approachable

He right now is going to spearhead a project hopefully for us on updating chapter 59 43

Which is a function that we operate with every day

He's it is very outdated. It needs definitions. It needs subsections updated

And he was ready and willing to take it on and move it along quite quickly. So

Just a huge thank you to him

Yeah

I've heard of this Scott guy he seems all right. No, no, we've just got joined just once a month

We love Scott. We appreciate the what he does for our community

And that's really cool to hear it's also something that I don't think Scott would bring up himself

So thank you. We appreciate that and if people have follow questions Tiffany one and no more not only about

Deeds but have follow questions about some of the things that we've touched on today

How can they get in touch with you seven one five four two one eight four five zero is our office number

We also have a general email if you go to the county page and choose register of deeds

You can contact us on there as well

One other thing James that I forgot to mention. I do have flyers available for the property fraud alert

There are currently a couple attorney attorney's offices that hand them out during closings

And so if anybody wants them contact me. I'm happy to deliver them

And that contact information one more time seven one five four two one eight four five zero

You did it Tiffany you done you did it nice work really nice work looking for you got you did too good

Though now you got to come back that was the catch you did too good

We didn't tell you that lads and I didn't want to tell you that part

Lance we always appreciate the time

People have follow questions for you and how can they get in touch with you same way, you know

You these years were always laugh. I can give you all that different Google me

No, but information is available through the county. We always look forward to that transparency

You talked about sharing opportunities with our other department heads and elected officials

So they can get the word out. Thanks James. Yeah, thank you Tiffany Lance

Thank you both so much for the time and what you do for our community appreciate you

We'll take a time out. We'll come back and have some more fun on midday magazine right here at WF HR locally grown radio