No clue why I’m getting downvoted haha

Why did your towns not print their index when it was back up last week?? What towns have you had trouble with? Manchester immediately printed the index when Cotts was back up so searchers wouldn’t have to take as much time searching while everything is down.

Like I said, it’s a complete pain but I’ve found searching in-person in these towns is doable and haven’t needed to delay anything because of it.

(Also I’m so happy to see another VT title searcher here!)

More than half, actually. My current list has 138/256 towns online - maybe more as there are towns I don’t search often so I don’t keep up with. My firm has not needed to postpone any closings or delay any matters because of this. Searches for the Cotts towns are now back to how they used to be - searching the cards, general indexes, book indexes, daybook, etc. - before online land records. Yes it’s inconvenient and more time-consuming but isn’t “effectively shutting down most business” as you stated.

I agree that it’s been inconvenient for sure. But as I stated in another comment on this post, only about half of towns even have any ounce of land records online anyway. So having the online land records of ~60 towns using Cotts down for a couple weeks is still better than the ~120 towns that don’t have any land records online at all.

Edit: typo

I am a user of these sites. I was able to use them for land records searches while it was up, and when it’s back up tomorrow or Monday I’ll work on those next in my queue. If I need something urgently, I can’t just call the Town Clerk or travel to the town office.

The Town Clerks are all receiving updates from the CEO every couple days to let them know the current status.

This is not true. Only half of Vermont towns even have any amount of land records online (meaning some of those only have an index, only have images 2021-present, etc.), and of those, only ~60 use the two Cotthosting websites. On top of that, ALL land records are available in the Town Clerk’s offices as physical copies.

It hasn’t been down since December 26. It was back up last week but went down again so they could add more storage but their shipments were delayed.