Government response to our current pandemic has certainly varied by state, with citizens across the country under orders to stay at home that expire at different times and include different provisions. Vermont, for example, has taken the first step to reopen their economy by allowing certain services to be available if they’re run by a single worker and no more than two people are present at one time.
As expected, this order has led to different responses across the state because it gives discretion to offices as to whether or not they’d like to reopen. In Brattleboro, the Town Clerk’s office remains closed, but in both Londonberry and Wilmington, offices are being opened for things like legal research.
The Londonberry and Wilmington Town Clerk’s offices have been reopened in a very deliberate way, with just one employee, the Town Clerk, going to the office each day. Everything is wiped down between appointments, and time estimates with their vaults are made so multiple people aren’t overlapping with their visits.
One of the things that keeps traffic down in Wilmington is that they have made their land records available online, going all the way back to 1781. While this is certainly helping to keep people at home during the pandemic, having the records accessible online is also a great tool in prioritizing those visits that actually need to be conducted in person and managing the traffic that the office receives.
Just because someone is available in the office doesn’t necessarily mean that things are business as usual. People from out of state calling about marriage licenses have been told that the service just isn’t essential. In Brattleboro, the Town Clerk would be willing to issue a marriage license in extreme circumstances, and it would take place outside the building. Their land records are also available online going back to 1945, and many of their services, like vital records requests, can be completed through the mail or online.
At Extract, we’re still all working remotely, but thankfully our software works well in a remote environment. We work with state and local governments on redaction and indexing projects to help get information like land records online and available to the public. While governments are obviously seeing some benefit during the pandemic, many of our clients find that it’s a way to keep walk-up traffic manageable at any time and to keep staff focused on other important tasks.
If you’d like to learn more about how we do this, please reach out today.
About the Author: Chris Mack
Chris is a Marketing Manager at Extract with experience in product development, data analysis, and both traditional and digital marketing. Chris received his bachelor’s degree in English from Bucknell University and has an MBA from the University of Notre Dame. A passionate marketer, Chris strives to make complex ideas more accessible to those around him in a compelling way.