There are the deed, mortgage and business documents.
He’s got marriages to officiate, passport applications to process and county photo card renewals.
Did we mention the recording of naturalization records?
Whew!!
Then there are the oaths to notaries and the registration of trade names.
Absentee ballots? Got em.
Election certification? Yep.
Voter registration? Done!
Who does all of this? It’s got to be a person who has a passion for public citizenship and community values. After all, there’s a lot to record in a day in the life of Bergen County.
For the record, the man who quite possibly has “recorded” more in Jersey than Springsteen is Bergen County Clerk John Hogan. Just about everything he does is on the record.
He was first elected in 2012 and is midway through his second term.
A Northvale resident and former Northvale mayor, he expressed pride in describing the active and vibrant 70-borough county and its history, the records of which he is tasked to record, accurately and responsibly.
“My position has been around since before George Washington; someone had to keep the land records. That’s where the position evolved from. We are set by the state constitution. Even though we are in the county, I answer more or less to the state, and the records are stored here.”
Few people will never enter their county building at one point or another. Often, a need for a copy of a deed, a mortgage or another personal or business document is what brings a resident in. The county clerk also records and performs marriages, processes passport applications and issues various types of photo cards. Two mobile units in the state are also directed by the clerk all over the county to create or renew photo cards for residents, and the clerk’s office partners with the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Center to provide driver’s license renewals as well. Hogan’s next Satellite Office/NJMVC is scheduled for September 4 at Harrington Park Borough Hall from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 85 Harriot Avenue.
“A big thing now is Ancestry.com, which needs naturalization records. We just did three this morning,” he said. The clerk also manages oaths to notaries public and registers trade names of businesses. The county clerk is also significantly involved in elections and election filings, sending out and processing vote-by-mail forms. As Hogan explained it, vote-by-mail, also known as absentee ballots, is “kind of a cumbersome process; there are a million ways to make a mistake, so the office put together a brochure of a snapshot of what to do.”
Hogan explained that he also certifies elections once they have been administered, but that the elections themselves are administered by the board of elections, who are appointed rather than elected. The key point that he works on is recording it all. “Fair and honest elections need a paper trail,” Hogan explained. The county calendar, a beautiful document illustrated with the artwork of countywide fourth-grade students, is put together by the clerk’s office, listing all the due dates of election filings, and requires significant work each year to update and alter.
One of Hogan’s most exciting projects outside the office is going to high schools to register new voters and explaining the purpose and value of being a registered voter. Hogan visited The Frisch School in the spring and left with over 100 new voter applications from the senior class. He noted that state laws now allow for those who are 17, who will be 18 by Election Day, to register to vote. “The biggest challenge of the form is they don’t know what a ‘municipality’ is, so we have to tell them it means town,” he joked.
Another project Hogan is passionate about is creating a visual history poster for each town in the county and then giving a lecture about it. He has visited most towns in Bergen County to explain their unique histories, roles and moments of interest going back to the Revolutionary War, taking great interest in each of the communities he visits. Hogan explained that the county historian will be working in the coming months to make these posters as well as the full county archives accessible to researchers, who can then work on their own projects and/or further develop records of the county’s vibrancy throughout its history.
Hogan also issues Veteran’s Service Photo Cards; Gold Star Parent Identification Cards, for parents who have lost their son or daughter while in the service of our country; Senior Golden Key Cards; and Exempt Fire Fighter Photo Cards. Visit John Hogan online at http://www.bergencountyclerk.org/.
By Elizabeth Kratz
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