The election for county recorder is not so much about electing a county recorder as it is whether there will be a recorder as we know it in Crow Wing County.
It is vitally important to maintain the integrity and continuity of the office to ensure the protection of our invaluable real estate records.
I fought hard in 2012 when county administration proposed to the county board that the office of recorder should be eliminated and its duties brought under a general administrator. Someone who would not have specific expertise in title and real estate work, but someone to administer personnel and programs. I owe a debt of gratitude to members of the business community in Crow Wing County that appealed to the board and expressed their deep concerns regarding this plan. Now Mark Liedl is running for recorder and is proposing the same thing. He wants to combine the recorder with Land Services. He says it will save money. I'm not so sure.
While he says he saved money in Land Services, what he doesn't say is there was over $1,000,000 spent for new equipment and programs which came from the Land Based Reserve Fund, therefore, those dollars never appeared in the Land Services budget.
Liedl apparently has garnered the blessing of the current board to move ahead with his plan of combining offices. If elected, he will hand the board exactly what they attempted in 2012; combine unrelated offices and achieve their goal of making the recorder either non-elected or non-existing.
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Please join me in voting for Doug Hansen. Doug is currently the deputy county Recorder. He is energetic, innovative and does an excellent job. He will work in the best interest of the residents of our county, not the county administrator or the county board.
Kathy Ludenia
Crow Wing county recorder
