Staff photos / Ed Runyan Dan Dascenzo, Mahoning County Clerk of Courts, stands outside of the part of the county’s Oak Hill building in Youngstown where the main Auto Title Office is located.

YOUNGSTOWN — Mahoning County Clerk of Courts Dan Dascenzo is working on possibly opening another auto title office to provide better service to residents of the central part of the county.

Dascenzo was appointed by the Mahoning County Democratic Party Central Committee to complete the unexpired term of former Clerk of Courts Tony Vivo and was unopposed in the March Democratic Party primary to retain the seat.

Dascenzo laid out several ideas before the primary for how to improve the clerk of courts office, such as ways to collect unpaid court costs, fees and restitution to victims; as well as institute a courier service for high volume auto dealers in the county, among other plans.

But he also is working to establish an office that would be more centrally located in the county than the current main title office on the first floor of the county’s Oakhill Renaissance Place building on Oak Hill Avenue in Youngstown or the satellite office in the building that houses the Mahoning County Area Court in Sebring.

The Oak Hill building is near the northern border of the county, but the county’s population is dense in Boardman in the center of the county, Canfield to the west and to the east in Poland.

“Let’s be realistic, the Oak Hill facility isn’t necessarily the easier location to get to,” he said. “It’s not particularly close to any freeway exits. It’s not what you would think of a main thoroughfare, such as Market Street or Route 224 or something like that.”

He said the idea of creating another auto title office is based on “what is the most convenient for the public to have access to the title department,” he said.

He said the satellite office in Sebring “helps cover the area,” he said. For someone to drive to the Oakhill facility from Smith Township or Beloit takes about 40 minutes, he said. He said he believes that office is considered more convenient even for people in the Canfield area but not really convenient either.

So he’s studying whether it would be good to create another satellite office somewhere toward the center of the county and closer to good highway access “so that from their home or from their business, they could jump on the freeway.” That could be Interstate 680 or state Route 11, for instance, he said.

“The title department is open 8 a.m to 4:30 p.m. So for instance if I work 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. or 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and I need to transfer a vehicle title to my son or somebody I sold it to, I go down to the title department, it’s not like I can just take a half-hour lunch and get it done and know that I can be back to work in time,” he said.

“And the reason for that is Mahoning County is fairly populous and there may be people in front of you waiting in line and it may take a little bit to get called up to have your number called, and when you do get up to the window, it might take 15 minutes to complete the paperwork,” he said.

“Having a satellite location that can cover some of the more populous areas in the county could be helpful,” he said. The office in Sebring would remain, he said. The arrangement there is productive because the title office and court functions there both involve employees of his.

He said it’s not feasible to add title satellite offices in any of the other courts because those facilities probably cannot accommodate a title office. He’s concerned adding a title office to other existing county court buildings might disrupt the court operations, he said.

He said an additional goal of creating another satellite office would be to try to add a drive-up window or two “so people could drive up and drop their title work off and rather than sitting there waiting, they could run a couple errands and get lunch and come back in 20 minutes or something and pick up their title work,” he said.

He plans to keep the current location in Oak Hill, but it might be good to reduce its scale.

“Throughout Mahoning County are buildings out there that would work well. There may be some available, but they become available at times,” he said.

He said he thinks the county clerk of courts office would be able to fund part of the new office, but he said he would need assistance and approval from the county commissioners before he would move forward.

He said he has talked informally to the county commissioners but “never officially put it on the record as an agenda item or anything like that because we’re not at that stage yet,” he said.

Have an interesting story? Email Ed Runyan at erunyan@vindy.com