Champaign County Clerk & Recorder

Swearing in from the Clerk and Recorder facebook page.

The office of Champaign County Recorder has officially merged with the County Clerk's office into the new office of the Champaign County Clerk & Recorder. The News-Gazette had a preview of how the merger was expected to play out last month:

Under changes approved by voters in April, Ingram’s job will be eliminated, the recorder’s office staff and functions will be rolled into the clerk’s office and County Clerk Aaron Ammons will become clerk and recorder on Jan. 1, 2022...

Ingram said the five staff members in the recorder’s office will remain in the same space at the Brookens Administrative Center in Urbana.

The chief deputy in the recorder’s office, Toni Ceaser, will supervise the recorder’s office and report to the chief deputy in the clerk’s office, Angela Patton.

That full article here. WCIA had coverage of the actual transition, reporting a software hiccup that may have been unrelated to the merger itself:

There was a minor slowdown early in the day. Long-time staff members said it was due to a software hiccup that was out of their control and resolved within a couple of hours...

The biggest thing to get used to is a new website. Ammons showed us the new, merged county clerk and recorder site. Now, filing and searching deed records are on the same page as other clerk services.

“People who are used to going to the current recorder of deeds website, they’ll get a little re-direct opportunity to click on,” Ammons said.

The old website will be available for another few weeks to ease the transition, he added.

More information and details about the overall transition and how the office operated through the handover from WCIA here (includes video segment).

The last Champaign County Recorder of Deeds, Mike Ingram, ran on a campaign of eliminating the office he was to be elected to. In his farewell message he included his background as a local musician and played some songs from the County's records vault (video available on his facebook page here).