Annual Report of the Nassau County Clerk’s Office

 

Dear Resident:

I am pleased to provide the Annual Report of the Nassau County Clerk’s Office for the fiscal year 2008.

Created by the New York State Constitution, the Nassau County Clerk’s Office acts as agent for the state and is part of New York State’s Unified Court System serving as the Clerk of Supreme and County Courts. The office has unique duties pertaining to processing and indexing all real property ownership records and court records. Every record must be reviewed for statutory compliance and is retained in perpetuity. In addition, the County Clerk is responsible for safeguarding the vital historic records of the County including the storage and retrieval of records belonging to many county departments.

While one of the most public offices in Nassau County government, the matters handled by the Clerk’s Office are of a personal nature to the hundreds of residents who utilize our services daily. My dedicated staff assists residents, legal professionals, other governmental agencies, court staff and the judiciary with numerous types of services every day including: court filings, name change orders, small claims assessment review petitions (SCAR), deeds, mortgages, mortgage satisfactions, real property maps, judgments and liens, business certificates, notary public requests, passports, and veteran’s discharge filings. In 2008, over 560,000 transactions were filed in the Clerk’s Office equating to nearly 2,300 transactions each business day. Accordingly, the Clerk exercises a non-delegable fiduciary duty as a collection agent for funds generated by these services on behalf of other taxing jurisdictions, including New York State and the Unified Court System and thereafter disburses the funds to these agencies.

The Clerk’s Office provides real time recording of documents. In addition, a mission of the Clerk’s Office is to continue the back file conversion of older records maintained on dated media to a singular digitized platform. My ultimate goal is to create one centralized electronic format for all land records from 1899 to the present.

Additional goals for the Clerk’s Office now, as was throughout last year, are the continued implementation of available technology, responsive constituent services, office efficiency and productivity, and personal privacy protection.
Through the assistance of a grant awarded to the Clerk’s Office by the New York State Department of Education State Archives Division shelving improvements are being made to better accommodate the ever increasing volume of records required to be stored in accordance with state standards.

Further, in partnership with the Unified Court System, we are continually expanding on the e-filing pilot initiative, which allows for recording documents through electronic submission. By year’s end, this office processed almost 1,700 cases electronically, an increase of 4475% over the previous year.

During my tenure as County Clerk, I have consistently carried out my prescribed Constitutional, fiduciary and statutory obligations to the residents of Nassau County, New York State and other jurisdictions through the careful allocation of the resources provided by the County. Toward this end, my office is committed to continue to provide the optimum level of service the residents of Nassau County so rightfully deserve.

Very truly yours,

MAUREEN O’CONNELL

Nassau County Clerk