Effective January 1, 2020, the Story County Recorder’s Office will no longer be assigning a slide and page to recorded surveys. Each survey will still have a unique instrument number assigned. In conjunction with this change, the Recorder’s office will no longer be retaining original surveys and storing them in the plat cabinet. All original surveys will be returned to the surveyor.
This change is taking place for a variety of reasons. We are reaching maximum capacity in our plat cabinet so some sort of change was inevitable. Surveys can now be recorded electronically, but Iowa Land Records does not have the capability of assigning a slide and page, which created extra handling in our office that electronic filing was intended to eliminate. Since each survey is assigned a unique instrument number, this change eliminates the redundancy of also assigning a slide and page, similar to the change made in 1994 with all other recorded documents. Finally, by returning the originals to the surveyor we are now in full compliance with Iowa Code, which states the originals are the property of the surveyor. The Recorder’s Office would like to express our appreciation to all surveyors who allowed us to retain these originals over the years. This was especially helpful during the time we were unable to scan documents larger than legal-size.
The office has also been able to utilize a new scanner in the Assessor’s GIS Department to scan larger surveys. The clerks in our office have been working hard the last few months to get all of the previously recorded, larger surveys scanned.
While we do have these larger surveys available electronically, due to printing limitations in the Recorder’s office, it would be appreciated if an extra copy were provided, at the time of recording, for anything larger than 11”x17”, particularly in the case of subdivision plats. The additional copy would be retained in our office and stored in the plat cabinet. However, this is not required.
If you have any questions regarding this change, please contact the Story County Recorder’s Office at (515) 382-7230.
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