The Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder’s Office’s mission is to fulfill the legally mandated function of the Assessor, County Clerk, Recorder, and Records Management Program in an accurate, timely, professional, and courteous manner and to ensure high quality service. The Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder’s Office consists of four separate entities.

 

The Assessor’s Office locates, identifies, and assesses taxable value on real and personal property within Riverside County in accordance with State law. All property is fully taxable, unless otherwise exempt by State law. Several computer programs work in conjunction with the department’s mainframe, storing over 895,000 assessments for Assessment Year 2008/2009 – an increase of 2% over 2007/2008. The Assessor’s Office is continually striving to find new technology to improve the efficiency of the appraisal process for this increasing number of assessments.

The County Clerk’s Office issues marriage licenses and certificates, performs civil marriages, files fictitious business name statements, processes U.S. passport applications, and registers notary publics. In 2007, the County Clerk provided over 9,500 marriage licenses, filed over 21,000 fictitious business names, and performed over 3,000 marriage ceremonies.

The Recorder's Office records, as mandated by law, all recordable documents in connection with ownership and titling of properties and other negotiated items within the County of Riverside. The office also maintains permanent records of recorded documents, vital statistics (birth, death, marriage), and real estate documents, which serve as the legal basis for determining ownership of land. The Recorder’s Office has the task of examining over 700,000 documents per year to ensure that they meet the legal requirements, imaging the documents, indexing them, and archiving all official records recorded and filed within Riverside County.