Duchesne County commissioners unanimously approved a $15,000 consulting agreement with Medici Land Governance on Dec. 23 to begin a project indexing the county’s recorded land documents.

Recorder Shelley Brennan told the commission that the company will use AI to extract indexing information — grantor and grantee names, legal descriptions and parcel identifiers — from scanned documents already stored in the county’s OnBase system and then import those data into the county’s indexing system (COINS). The initial contract is consulting and discovery: Medici will train models, run pilot extractions and help the recorder’s staff verify results. Brennan said the county retains control of verification and will “ground-truth” the AI results.

Brennan estimated that initial deliverables should be evident within about three months, but she cautioned that full indexing of older, handwritten books could take years and requires verification. Commissioners asked about staff bandwidth, deliverables and legal review; county counsel raised no legal concerns in the meeting and staff confirmed available budget for the consulting fee this year.

Brennan also described a possible second-phase online platform that could be offered to searchers, and said the county and the vendor had discussed a future profit-sharing arrangement once a production service is in place. The contract approved at the Dec. 23 meeting covers the consulting phase and does not commit the county to the larger multi-year cost. Commissioners recorded the vote as unanimous.