John-

I like the idea of the customer still paying the $8 per page fee, but wonder
if that will fly with the State, as we are not really recording all the
pages.

Its certainly a quandry-  None of us want to fill up our vault space with
decidedly repititous and redundant recording, but we also need the revenue.

Juli
-------Original Message-------

From: Vermont Municipal Government Discussion Network
Date: Friday, January 31, 2003 3:05:20 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: IMPORTANT NOTICE

IMPORTANT NOTICE TO BE ACTED ON IMMEDIATELY**********

House Bill 31 – is now in the Government Operations Committee and testimony
was heard this week. For those of you who do not know – H31 is the ‘short
form mortgage’.

This bill is being looked at as a reduction in vault space and I cannot deny
that it will reduce the number of volumes being recorded.
HOWEVER------the issue that I continue to try to understand is the loss of
revenue to the municipality.

In Milton’s case alone – this is a tremendous loss of revenue and
proportionately to smaller municipalities I suspect that it would be equally
an issue as well. I determined this information by performing the following
task – something that you need to do in your own municipality. I took a land
record volume at random from the 23 volumes created in calendar year 2002. I
determined that there were 39 mortgages. I counted the pages of the
mortgages and reduced them to one page which would have reduced the number
of pages in the volume by 537 and a loss of revenue in the amount of $3,759
00 from this volume alone using the $7.00 per page method - $4,296.00 using
the $8.00 (proposed legislation) per page.

If this were an average volume, the $3,759 x 23 (volumes recorded in 2002) I
would have reduced my revenue by $86,457.00.

Word now has it from Montpelier that the proposal may be a document fee of
$50.00 for the short term which would reduced my loss of revenue to $46,207
00 – this is about one-third of the total revenue generated in the year 2002
 I am not on fees, but this represents almost one cent on our tax rate. I
can admit that it will reduce the vault space BUT I believe that this will
place a financial burden on each and every town in the State of Vermont.
Each and every one of you need to do this exercise and begin to be heard.

There are over 250 clerks in this State. I have heard from very few of you
so I am still not sure what direction you would like to see the Legislative
Committee proceed. Not only do I need to hear from you, but you need to
contact your legislators, select boards, town managers, administrative
assistants – this affects the municipality as a whole. The ironic part of
this issue is that the dollar increase per page – if granted by the new
legislation – will still end with a net reduction in revenue using the 2002
recording statistics.

I BELIEVE THAT WE NEED TO PROPOSE THAT THE SHORT FORM BE USED BUT THE
DOCUMENT FEE WILL BE EQUAL TO THE $7.00 OR $8.00 PER PAGE TIMES THE NUMBER
OF PAGES THAT THE SHORT FORM DEED REFERS TO. THIS ACCOMPALISHES TWO FOLD ---
REDUCES THE VOLUME OF PAPER BEING RECORDED AND GENERATES THE REVENUE NEEDED
TO IMPROVE VAULT SPACE AND MAINTAIN THE RECORDS. IT IS BEING PAID FOR BY THE
PERSON(S) FILING THE DOCUMENT. THE RECORDING FEES ARE A VERY SMALL PORTION
OF THE CLOSING COSTS. SOMEONE BORROWING $100,000.00, I BELIEVE, WOULD BE
WILLING TO PAY THE $105 - $120 FOR A 15-PAGE MORTGAGE IF THEY KNEW THAT
THEIR RECORDS WERE GOING TO BE PROPERLY MAINTAINED. THE TOWN’S FINANCES ARE
JUST AS CRITICAL AS THE STATE’S.                   John