Public Trustee eBusiness Committee Meeting
September 9, 2005, 11:00PM
Douglas County Public Trustee Office
Tower Room
301 Wilcox Street
Castle Rock, CO 80104

Welcome was given by the chairman, Alynn Huffman with thanks to Jack Arrowsmith, Douglas County Public Trustee for hosting the meeting.

Roll Call was taken.

 Present:

Not Present:

 Others present:

Present by phone:

Jack Arrowsmith made a motion that the July 29, 2005 minutes be approved, Roxy Huber seconded the motion.  The minutes were approved unanimously.

It was decided that Alynn will send the minutes of this meeting to Bob Sagel to post onto the Public Trustee Association website after they have been approved by this committee.

Alynn Huffman gave us a status update on the new Title Company Request for Release of Deed of Trust and Release forms.  Jill Voegtle was not present to assist her.

Mike Gilbert, Clear Creek Gilpin Abstract says four title company requests are required by statute and should not be condensed into two.  Jack Arrowsmith will give other information on this when he talks about the smart documents.

All other contacts seem to be happy with the two release forms.  Cathy Guay, from PRIA agrees that the form format is perfect for PRIA standards. 

Jack Arrowsmith gave an update on the possibility of using Smart Documents for Release forms.  We decided to combine these forms because the Clerk & Recorders were requesting fewer documents for recordings.

Denver County Public Trustee has signed a contract with Kuvera and specified the type of release document that they will accept.  All approved release documents coming from Kuvera to Denver County will look the same.

The Title industry complaint is that because we put both partial & full releases on the same document, it puts them at risk if someone used the wrong document form.  This is an unacceptable risk for them.

It has been suggested that using a Smart document with additional features could diminish this risk.  Jeff Wille at Kuvera supplied Jack with the description of an Adobe Intelligent Document.  Everyone was given this definition and we will e-mail the definition to those on phone.

Description of an Adobe “Intelligent” form

Using forms is one of the most common ways for constituents and governments to interact. However, traditional paper-based communications are costly, time-consuming, and susceptible to errors. And digital workflows are often disparate, incompatible back-end systems, making it difficult to extend electronic forms outside the agency's network.

The Adobe® Intelligent Document Platform provides an efficient and cost-effective solution for form processing that helps agencies streamline the more secure movement of forms and data — to and from constituents, between agencies, and across business processes.

With Adobe solutions, agencies can:

With a smart document, you would get information that the document has been tampered with.  It also gives electronic digital signature information, if it is a pure digital signature.  Any adobe reader can use these documents and no interface needs to be built.  Certain fields can be pre-populated or downloaded from a database.  Cost could be an issue, but it should be reasonable with adobe.

If you are using a smart document to create the release form and check partial, a  question could come up “Is this really what you want to do?”  It was suggested that technology may help with the title company’s issues, but the title companies didn’t give an answer. 

There is already work out there based on real property documents such as legal descriptions, grantor, grantee.  Development cost should be very inexpensive.  If the documents are wrapped in XML they will automatically populate the systems they go to.  The Clerk & Recorder information would also be populated. 

The question was asked, that, if this is something we want to check into and work towards, who would be the proper group to create this document, supply cost, and how would it evolve?  Also, Could we approach the vendors, Kuvera & Ingio.

It was suggested that someone approach the submitters and have them do the development.

Jack Arrowsmith will talk to Jill Voegtle about approaching Ingio.  Jack will make the first contact with Jeff Wille of Kuvera and plan another meeting in the future with Mary Wenke, Sandy Hume, & Jack Arrowsmith.

Douglas County had 377 eRecorded releases in August, 2005.  Arapahoe County had 532 eRecorded in August, over 400 in July, and 126 in June.

How many electronic submitters are there and who are they?   Washington Mutual, US Bank, and Chase are the biggest submitters in Arapahoe County. US Bank is probably there biggest.  Douglas County’s biggest submitter is US Recording and then Washington Mutual.

It was decided that we need to approach the Title Companies again to see if they will buy into the smart document.  Mercury companies are moving forward electronically, so it was suggested that maybe we should check with them.  Pueblo is working with Stewart Title to do electronic recording, but not releases electronically.  Doug Naylon will get an update from the Pueblo County Clerk  & Recorder.

Larry Castle was scheduled to give us an update on the Colorado Bar Association Foreclosure Committee.  He was not present so Roxy Huber and Sandy Hume gave the update.

The last meeting was called off but they did receive a copy of the re-write. The next meeting is Friday, September 23, 2005, with the legislative drafting office.  Then they will meet the following Monday with all other stakeholders, other than the Public Trustees. 

They decided that MERS did not fit in with the re-write and the Board of Directors voted that they did not want to approach the Attorney General at this time, in any shape or form.  There has been no response from Caren Castle after approaching her. 

Jill Voegtle was scheduled to give an update about the eBusiness Summit to be held in Denver.  She was not present, so Jack Arrowsmith gave us some information.   We would like to hold it in February at the Botanic Gardens.  Their calendar will not open until October and a date can be checked on then.

The State Department of Innovation and Technology was asked if they would be interested in participating.  It was decided that we will focus only on Colorado issues this time, not out of state issues. 

The Summit will be scheduled for one day only with breakout meetings for Public Trustees and Clerk & Recorders.

There was discussion about charging a fee of around $15.00.  Most counties don’t have a problem with that, but the time of year and gas costs will be issues for the smaller counties.  It was suggested that we have a Portal for electronic attendance, which could be cost saving, even for other activities.  We need to investigate the availability of electronic technology for meetings.  Mary Wenke will check to see if Arapahoe County has these kinds of facilities available.  If we find a place with electronic technology facilities, it may determine where we have the Summit.  There was much discussion about charging a fee or not if we held this electronically.  It was suggested that there could be a central location where the smaller counties could meet to have the high speed connection available.

It was decided to bring this topic to the group in October at the Seminar in Fort Collins to find out who might have this connection and what might work best.  It was agreed that audio is vitally important, more so than video.

The County with the highest level of technology is probably Jefferson County.

It was suggested that we form a user group and include vendors.

Alynn Huffman said that PRIA has a letter that they send out.  If anyone wants to get on the list for this letter, they can sign in on the website to request it, but, they have to be a member.  This letter provides information nationwide.

There will be an update on re-write presented by Bob Sagel at the Limon meeting and there will be no discussion.  There will be two speakers in Limon.

The next meeting will be in October at Fort Collins after the Public Trustee session is over.  This will be Thursday, October 20, 2005 and the exact location is to be determined.  Jack Arrowsmith will Invite Jeff Wille to this e-Business meeting.

Jack Arrowsmith will demonstrate Regional Technology Systems Foreclosure Program and show Douglas County’s new Subscriber’s Foreclosure Search immediately following this meeting.  All are invited to stay and watch.

Meeting Adjourned      

Respecfully submitted.

Marilyn Bullard, Secretary