Heather Dawbarn has officially declared her intention for re-election for Rutherford County Register of Deeds on May 3rd, 2022.
The Republican Party asked Heather to run in 2010 based on her business experience to raise expectations, consistently improve results and lower costs - she has achieved this and more since coming into office.
Heather is a Christian, conservative constitutionalist. She is married, a mother of two and a grandmother. Heather has previous experience running a financial business with her husband and working with an attorney who focused on constitutional rights for individuals and for churches “under fire.”
Commenting on her first term as Register, “I have been relentless in reducing line-item costs in my budget as well as using available technology to streamline and improve service.” She has continued to strive to reduce waste and lower costs as well as work with her team to consistently improve experience with all who interact with her office
Due to her hard work and responsible leadership, she reduced her budget significantly and runs the leanest budget in the county. Since 2010 her slogan is “Protecting Every Single Penny for Rutherford Citizens.”
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Dawbarn worked with state legislators to enact legislation to collaborate with Elected offices to provide her records management system county-wide. This project included researching and installing an in-house microfilm lab, archive writer, and high-speed scanning system. In 3 months, a savings of $208,000 was realized with only a handful of offices participating. A conservative estimate of $2,000,000+ of savings have been achieved eight years on. Other elected office holders and departments who have participated are County Clerk, Circuit Court Clerk, Sheriff’s Dept, Chancery Court, Archives, Budget & Finance, Property Assessor among others.
Records Management is open to all county departments and constitutional offices to utilize this system and reduce their costs and eliminate unneeded space.
As developing Mortgage/Deed Scams are rising, Heather worked with her software vendor to provide a solution: MyLandAlerts.com - this is a free service to alert you when your name is ever recorded at the Deed’s office. You will be able to respond quickly and mitigate potential fraud of your property. To date, no one in Rutherford County has lost their home or property due to this particular type of fraud.
Dawbarn also realized segregated duties created a risk to continuity of operations. Some difficult tasks were performed by only a handful of people. If and when they leave due to sickness/death/retirement this could cause a huge knowledge gap in operations. Dawbarn created a team approach which allowed more seasoned staff to train up less seasoned staff and acquire valuable skills. Her vendor’s software is designed to allow staff to perform every step from start to book & page number. Dawbarn can rely on every team member to be accountable for their own documents finally securing continuity of operations and improving accuracy. Her staff is much happier with the work-flow plus they enjoy merit-based pay & evaluations.
Lisa Duke-Crowell, Country Clerk commented, “We can now manage our documents at a fraction of the cost and save a substantial amount of what we were spending.”
Walker Buford, official records management analyst said, “Imagine reducing 10 tractor trailers of documents into one tractor trailer. This is the impact we are able to make by reducing the space needed to just 10% of the storage paper documents now occupy. Inter-agency cooperation is a great way to reduce costs for our citizens.”
OCR software was customized by her vendor which now takes accuracy and search options to a whole new level. This project is going back year-by-year and identifying any typos or misspellings of words in documents and allows her team to correct these common errors. She has more work to do and continues breaking new ground and setting higher standards.
In 2014, Heather introduced E-recording in Rutherford County. “It’s a value-added service now available to those who have long awaited electronic records delivery. I promised in 2010 to offer this service and we’ve achieved results above our expectations.”
Heather maintains an “open door” policy and is a champion of transparency & accountability. Please call or stop by for a chat or office tour and ask any questions at all. Her staff excels in professional, friendly & courteous service and eager to help you with your inquiries.
Release from Heather Dawbarn for Register of Deeds, http://HeatherDawbarn.com
