JOSEPH CAMPOSEO – ‘A very creative animal’

Joseph Camposeo does not consider himself to be a technology guy.

Nonetheless, the recently elected president of the Connecticut Town Clerks Association – two months into his two-year term – envisions a day when the complete land record for every property in the state is available online.

“Why not?” he said. “The goal is to have standards that produce records effectively and efficiently, and give the people what they need.”

A handful of the state’s municipalities already offer indexes for their respective properties online, detailing the properties’ ownership histories and transactions, he said. But Camposeo wants the version for Manchester, where he has been town clerk since 1996, to include both the property index and images.

“We’re not going to go online until we can offer both,” Camposeo said, adding that he is hoping to have complete records dating back to the city’s founding in 1823 online by the end of the year.

Getting all of Connecticut’s 169 municipalities online, Camposeo acknowledged, will take some time.

“It’s not going to happen overnight in the state,” he said.

Still, he managed to help modernize the records system in Manchester, and believes he can help make the same process happen statewide.

“I tend to hit the pavement in two different ways,” he said. First of all, Camposeo noted, his training from a corporate background keeps him looking for ways to improve the workflow.

And secondly, “I’m a very creative animal,” he added.

Camposeo credits his 20 years at the Travelers Cos. and his time at the Savings Bank of Manchester – now NewAlliance Bank – with preparing him for his work as town clerk.

During the second half of his time at Travelers, Camposeo worked in corporate purchasing, which is the same type of work he did when he moved over to the Savings Bank of Manchester, he said.

The bank was in expansion mode, Camposeo recalled, as it grew from 12 to 20 branches, and from being a $1 million operation to a $1 billion operation.

“It was a bank that was ready for creativity,” he said.

Camposeo said he wanted to bring some efficiency to the ordering process, so he helped move the bank away from hand-written requisitions handled through interoffice mail and toward an online system that delivered supplies overnight. The change, he explained, was not just about adopting the latest technology.

“It was to organize a system where people could order supplies and get them the next day,” he said.

‘Write in the People’

Camposeo’s approach at the bank caught the attention of his fellow members of Manchester’s Board of Directors – where he served three terms – and they asked him to seek election to the town clerk’s office when it became vacant in 1996.

Once elected, “my strategy was to take a look at what was really going on here,” he said. “When you create change, you have to get people to buy in.”

“To improve the process,” he added, “you not only write in the goal and objectives, but you also write in the people.”

By 1998, the department had migrated to keeping the records electronically, and had digitized all the land records dating back to 1823, he said. After a lengthy search – including a nationwide request for information, followed by a Request for Proposals and cross-country travels to demo different systems – the department upgraded again to its current system, he said.

“The process of recording is now seven times faster,” Camposeo said. “You can instantly see the transaction in real time.”

The vendor is Worthington, Ohio-based Cott Systems, and its Cott Resolution product is used in nearly 100 of Connecticut’s 169 municipalities, Camposeo said.

Apart from providing instant updates for people doing land records searches, the information also can be used, for example, to let the Board of Education know how many children will entering kindergarten, or it can tell police and firefighters who lives at a given address obtained during a 911 call, he said.

For Camposeo, the value of the data, and all the ways it can be used, boosted the appeal of taking the concept statewide.

“The first thing we have to do is get everybody on the same page,” he said.

That group includes the mortgage brokers, the Realtors, the appraisers, the town clerks, the lawyers and the title searchers, Camposeo said, noting, “These are all different perspectives on the land-record process.”

He added, “We’re going to have to focus on convincing local and state legislators that the sharing of services and technology is going to be cost-effective.”