October 26th – Guest Speaker Christine Giordano Hanlon, Monmouth County Clerk
Author: Nat Davidson
October 26th, 2015 – Christine Giordano Hanlon, Monmouth County Clerk, returned to the Freehold Township Republican Club as the key guest speaker to bring attendees up to date with the four major services of the Clerk’s office as well as other programs offered.
The first and perhaps the most important is the recording office. With about 30 employees, it is responsible for accepting, recording and filing any document related to property within the county and make them available to the public.
The function generates $55 million in revenues each year in fees that are shared between the State and the County for their respective operating expenses.
Second function described is archiving of present and historic records for preservation. These are stored in the basement of the County Library in Manalapan and currently consist of about 27 boxes of county, court, town, etc., records. Some include deeds going back to the 1600’s. Of interest is recently surfaced 250,000 negatives from the Red Bank Register Newspaper. These are being reviewed and indexed by staff and volunteers with the expectation of making them available online.
Additionally, the County Clerk is responsible for Passport service provided as a convenience, for a charge, through its two offices in Freehold and Neptune.
And finally, along with the Superintendent of Elections and the Board of Elections, the County Clerk is responsible for about a third of the election process. Tabulating, handling the “Vote by Mail” program, providing ballots and handling Candidate Petitions are provided through the office all year long which includes more than general elections, such as Boards of Education, Special Elections, Fire Districts, to name a few.
Ms. Hanlon presented three initiates she has been working on since taking office as the County Clerk from the former retired County Clerk, Claire French. One is an elections website called http://www.monmouthcountyvotes.com. This represents the first county internet source for almost everything one may need from registering to vote, becoming a poll worker, requesting a ballot, finding where to vote, and getting up-to-date detailed election results, and quite a bit more.
Another recent initiative is a Monmouth County Veteran Discount Guide. Along with the Freeholders, and especially John Curley, its liaison to the Monmouth County Veteran’s Service Office, Ms. Hanlon recently announced the ‘Honoring our Heroes” program for more than 30,000 veterans of the county. The new military appreciation program, provides a way for local businesses to honor the Veterans and help them save money. They may qualify by simply showing their Monmouth County Veteran’s ID cards. Obtaining one is also a program of the Clerk’s office, and can be effortlessly obtained by bringing in a NJ Driver’s License and an original DD-214 “Report of Separation” to the County Clerk’s Freehold office or the Neptune Monmouth County Connection. You can read more in the following recently published article, http://www.nj.com/monmouth/index.ssf/2015/10/monmouth_county_businesses_to_offer_veteran_discou.html.
Christine concluded by describing the Monmouth Mobile County Connection program where teaming up with the Sheriff and the Surrogate, go through different parts of the Monmouth County offering services to people within their own municipalities who can’t easily get around the county. With eight past events, the plan is to do more in the future. More recent information link to the following: http://co.monmouth.nj.us/PressDetail.aspx?ID=2185.
More complete services information can be found on the following webpage: http://co.monmouth.nj.us/page.aspx?ID=125
As always, Ms. Hanlon cordially stayed on to answer question.