Circuit Court

Pat Frank, Clerk of Circuit Court, was energetic and proud of the position she holds. She said that her office is "the most important office in the county that people know least about. We handle hundreds of millions of dollars of the counties money." It was shocking to hear that eleven people in her office are responsible for sending 65,000 employees a paycheck every two weeks. We were informed that they keep records of the county and all official records. One big rave that is evolving more and more every day is the use of internet and Frank said that the most recent transactions are accessible via the web.

"As the economy goes sour" crime will rise, Frank said. Because we are facing a touch economy, I thought it was very relevant to get on the topic of foreclosures. Frank said that the only way people are avoiding forecloses is by going bankrupt. "This economy is horrible, unemployment rate is increasing. I was born in the depression and I was a depression baby," Frank continued.

Since the year 2005, the Circuit Court has returned an average of $8.9 million to the Board of County Commissioners, because it is unspent money. As the economy has been run down, in 2007 they only returned $4.6 million, and Frank suspects money returned this year will be very minimal...much less compared to last year.

The Circuit Court employees a total of 917 people. Frank says, “there’s always something going on in this office.” I was surprised to hear that they receive 1,000 calls a day, and even more surprising, 20%, if not more, are calls intended for other groups other than the Circuit Court. Also, about 30-35% of the calls need a Spanish speaker on the receiving end. The Circuit Court records a total of forty-two types of documents, and there are 100 documents being e-recorded each day.