Four years ago, Christopher L. Wright campaigned for Platte County Recorder on a simple promise: modernize the office, digitize its historic records, and improve public access. Wright announced this week that his promise is becoming a reality.
The Recorder’s Office has completed the digitization and indexing of record books 100–624, which are now available online. The indexing of Books 1–99 will be available in the coming weeks, followed shortly by books 625–745.
“After the remaining books that have been digitized are QA checked for accuracy and fullness and fully indexed this will place the entire County Recorder’s Office online back to patent which is the year 1838” Wright said.
Rather than relying on taxpayer dollars, Wright said he developed a five-year funding plan with the Platte County Commission that reinvested copy and subscription fee revenues back into the Recorder’s Office. As a result, the project was completed without using general revenue funds and at no additional cost to taxpayers and is the biggest effort in the office’s history to modernize all land records.
“This project is about keeping a promise,” Wright said. “I committed to modernizing the Recorder’s Office, preserving our county’s history, and making public records more accessible.”
Commissioner Fricker praised the effort, saying: “Chris came to the Commission three and a half years ago with a bold plan to modernize his office and bring Platte County into the 21st century; he also helped manage the digitization of approximately four or five other county offices and still completed the project a year and a half ahead of schedule.”
In addition to transforming the Recorder’s Office, Wright assisted several other county departments with their digitization efforts, improving efficiency and preserving important public records across county government.
“This is what good government should look like,” Wright said. “Delivering results, improving public service, and doing it without asking taxpayers to spend more.”