Clerk of the Courts, Downtown Tampa

Today we got the experience of visiting the court of the clerks and in particular four members of the clerk’s office. Pat Frank is the clerk of the court but she is certainly not a one woman show. She is joined by a staff of over nine hundred to ensure the various duties of the clerk of the court get accomplished everyday. We spent some time with Pat, Dana Caranante, Director of Juvenile Court Operations, Douglas Bakke, and Director of Family Law Domestic Violence amongst other things. They spoke to what their areas do in helping the clerk of the courts operate on a daily basis.

Pat spoke at length about her role as both the Clerk of the Courts and Comptroller. As comptroller she is responsible for overseeing the funds that the county commissioners spend and dictates to them what they can spend. Currently she is handling a portfolio of about one point seven billion and that is on top of her duties as the clerk of the court. The three most important things to remember as a comptroller is, in order, return of principal, how liquid are the assets, and finally rate of return. Their duties as clerks of the court include keeping records of the court proceedings, collecting child support, issuing passports, and assisting with traffic tickets. I also found it very interesting that she said each year they give back to the county a ridiculous amount of money. In two-thousand and five they return eight million, in two-thousand and six it was nine point eight million and in two-thousand and seven with was still four point six million. That does not even take into account the sixteen million returned to the state for the clerks association. Overall she has many duties that have quite the effect on all of our everyday lives.

After speaking with Pat, three members of her staff spoke to us about their roles within the clerk of the court. We heard about the most requested documents from the court and the way the clerk of the courts handle these requests. Another unique thing they told us about was all the technology that has recently been added to make things easier. The main goal is to make life easier for the general public by making a lot of documents that are requested available online. In addition to making things available online they have setup kiosks to help the general public with some of their questions when visiting the courts.

In closing this was a unique experience and should prove to be valuable for all of us when doing our profiles. Not only did we get a better understanding of how the clerk of the court works but gained some perspective on what all goes into making a court system function. This was also valuable from a citizen’s point of view as a lot of this information could prove to be useful in the real world someday.