Polk County Courthouse going paperless

Saturday, July 25, 2009

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Files like these will soon become a rare sight in the Polk County courthouse.

POLK COUNTY (Bay News 9) -- Polk County's Clerk of the Circuit Court is taking the courthouse paperless.

Many of the office's staffers have spent their days scanning files into computers. It's a slow process, considering that files are stacked in boxes and on shelves throughout the nine-floor Polk County Courthouse. Other files are stashed at several other storage spaces around town.

Polk County Clerk of Court Richard Weiss said that, in less than a year, all of those files will be accessible with the click of the mouse, a move he says will save the office time and money.

"Just file folders, we spend between $70,000 and $100,000 just for file folders," he said. "Then when you take into the labor to manage those files, to put them together, and bring them to court and bring them back and inventory them, we estimate we could save a minimum of $1 million a year."

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Weiss said that, eventually, the new system will allow lawyers to file court documents without stepping foot in the courthouse. Law enforcement officers may even be able to send in traffic tickets from the road.

The clerk's office has already converted its civil division documents to electronic files. This week, it started working on the files for the felony division.

Weiss said another big benefit of going paperless that the files will be less vulnerable in the event of a hurricane or other disaster.

For instance, several years ago, the Polk County Courthouse had a serious mold problem, which meant each court document had to be cleaned with Listerine.