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Lawyers, title agencies, and the rest of the various professionals who rely on the Cuyahoga County Recorder’s office to do people’s business have been frustrated over the past few weeks as the processing has taken longer than normal.
There’s a reason for this: bed bugs.
The county confirmed that the office was dealing with an infestation, according to spokeswoman Mary Louise Madigan.
And it’s so bad that pest control companies have been out at least a dozen times.
A dozen. Times.
An internal email to the employees of the district read:
The county’s Environmental Health & Safety Manager works with the Director of Real Estate Services and Facility Management to root out the bugs found on the fourth floor. We know you have been patient; Please get in touch while we continue to work on this.
Here’s what we’ve done so far:
* The technicians from General Pest, Inc. and Orkin have been here at least a dozen times. They have: set up “monitoring stations” (traps) and performed heat treatments up to 130f for 3 hours on surfaces in the affected areas. This goes beyond standard heat treatment.
* General Pest used chemicals in all affected areas from ceiling to carpet.
* Specially trained dogs were in the building four times, most recently on October 12th. Despite these efforts, we had two sightings in the same area on the fourth floor, room 4-100. Therefore, tonight, Friday, October 16. And offer a more aggressive treatment next Friday, October 23rd.
The building will be monitored and inspected between these scheduled treatments. Thank you for your patience – we are working to make this happen.
Those who work in the industry already seemed to know this.
For example, on a listing service dedicated to the charter and title recording process across Ohio, someone recently asked why Cuyahoga County’s turnaround time has been slower than usual.
Here was the answer from someone at a local title agency:
Someone sent a box of bugs to the recorder about 3 weeks ago. They were closed, gassed, reopened and closed again when the second generation hatched.
So only a day or so of personal submissions in the past 3 weeks. Doubt whether many documents submitted by post have been received
Madigan denied anyone had sent bed bugs into the office. On the other hand, the spokesman was unaware of the infestation when he was contacted by Scene last week.
