(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa County Recorder’s Association plans to ask legislators to raise the fees they may charge for the documents they provide. Dickinson County Recorder Ann Ditsworth is the group’s vice president. “Since 1985, our fees have been the same,” Ditsworth says, “and so we have been studying the ways we could best advance that level.” Under current law, county recorders may charge seven dollars for the first page and five dollars for each additional page of a document. The association plans to ask legislators to raise the fee to 10 dollars per page.

“One of the things that we are most focused on for a fee increase is to be able to sustain the Iowa Land Record Repository, which we created in the early 2006 range and since then have continued to develop and maintain and add documents to,” she says. “…Every mortgage, every deed is going to this website that is one spot for all of the state of Iowa.” Ditsworth says the fees would be used to support the website and help county recorders update software.

“Since the time of computerization, naturally software has changed and so that is a part of how we preserve documents,” Ditsworth says. “Historic preservation is a large part of what we do because our documents are part of the American dream.”

County recorders also maintain copies of birth, death and marriage records and assists the state by registering boats and snowmobiles as well as all-terrain vehicles and off-road vehicles.