Holly Hansen

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Portage County

The Register of Deeds/Land Description office is one department.  The Register of Deeds serves as administrator over these departments.  The Register of Deeds position is held by Cindy Wisinski.  Two other full-time positions also play an important part in the Land Description office.  This would be the Senior Land Description Technician and the Land Description Technician.  Cross training with the remaining Register of Deeds staff does exist.

Duties involve compiling and preparing assessors’ workbooks and final assessment rolls for all town and village assessors.  We furnish various summary reports and listings as well as copies of all maps involved and pertaining to splits and certified survey maps.  Our office serves as a data entry center for all assessed valuations, which are provided to us by the assessor.  We also inventory, stock and distriubte all assessment forms.  Other responsibilities include:  Assign parcel numbers and set up new parcels, plats and annexations.  Keeping current all information pertaining to assessments, ownership and legal real estate description.  This involves composing new and revising existing legal real estate descriptions, calculating acreage, updating and drafting maps.  Maintaining a computerized real estate master file regarding ownership, legal descriptions, school and vocational codes, assessed valuations and location data for parcels in Portage County.  Maintain special district information.  This real estate master file is utilized countywide and is able to be accessed through phone lines.  The Register of Deeds/Land Description assists the County Surveyor with maintaining his section files, tie sheets and GPS data.  Since 1999 this information along with Original Government Survey maps for Portage County has been scanned and is available to users through phone lines.

Our records consist of approximately 40,000 parcels.  Portage County covers 810 square miles and 522,137 acres, 17 townships, 9 villages and 1 city.  The January 1999 estimated population was 66,490.

Portage County utilizes an in-house IBM 400 computer system.  Since 1996 Portage County has employed individuals to create computerized parcel maps using ArcInfo.  The Register of Deeds and Senior Land Description Technician maintain land division changes on the GIS system.

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