This is the record Center on East Lake Mary Boulevard 1750 East Lake Mary Boulevard...
due to some decisions made in the past, this building we're actually responsible
for taking care of and so one of the things we recently do is we hired a
contractor to come here and seal.. repaint, and seal this building so the between
the roof work that was done and the sealing that occurred on the business
not only does it look better but it's more watertight now to protect any of
these important documents from being destroyed
we actually had some stucco that was cracking, falling off the walls, some
leakage was occurring in the building, and that's not occurring anymore. One of
the problems that occurred with this building when I when I first got elected
is a lot of people couldn't find it. So one of the first things I did was I got
together with the county traffic department and we put some signage up on
East Lake Mary Boulevard that said this is a clerk of the courts office Record
Center, also we're the passport center here because a lot of people would just
drive down the road and miss it because it was really not a conspicuous building...
but one of the problems was just trying to find the building and all it said was
record center so we added Clerk of the Court here. Sometimes it's these little
things that make a big difference so we put the signage up some markings on the
road here and as well as the building so people can find it. "Hello...
doing good." So th is is the record center here these are our passport processing
centers if you want to get a passport just simply sign the list in here as
soon as we can we'll call you back here and make sure all the paperwork's filled
out we do literally hundreds of these each month and it's been come become
quite popular especially as people need to prepare for their future vacations
overseas or even just going to Canada you need a passport now. But basically
you fill out the forms are bringing their birth certificate the proper
amount to pay... you have to bring in your original birth certificate so that can
be forward to State Department so there's some paperwork to fill out. The
nice thing is our certified passport clerk's can take care of you right here
We also do the passport photos over here, you have to be careful you got to make sure you
do these passport photos correctly because you can't smile, you can't wear
glasses, so it's one of the worst photos ever, but you have to do that so
that they'll accept it at the State Department. So.. the other thing that's
really cool is when we started doing this, they do an annual audit, and when
they came back to look at how we process the paperwork and did an audit of us we
scored a hundred percent and they said that was pretty rare for a first-time
clerk's office or any office that starts doing passports to get a hundred percent
on their first review, so our team here is, really proud of that and doing a great
job.
This is one of our new mail machines I guess it's not so new anymore about we're able
to process lots of mail more efficiently and it automatically applies to postage
so our jury summons go out here, a lot of our mail that goes out through the
people of Seminole County right here. This has been a great investment. Can you open
the vault for me so I can take a look these historical documents that we're
gonna restore because I talked to Brent about it again today about the company
we're gonna hire. We're back here in the warehouse at the record center where we
keep all the documents for the retention period until they can be destroyed one
of the improvements we did recently is, might not see it too clearly, but we
resealed the interior and exterior of this building, make sure all the climate
controls are working so we protect all these records that were entrusted to
protect. So this is where we keep in a climate controlled low humidity very
cool room, all the official records of court documents, mortgages deeds, these are
microfiche here, or these are criminal cases we have duplicates of these over
at the courthouses. One of the things we're doing is we're going back to the
creation of the county back to 1913 we're taking all official records and
we're taking the microfiche and the old documents or digitizing them and we're
gonna make that available on the website so right now we're back to 1982 but
we're gonna go all the way back to 1913 and preserve these documents. So over
here we have this is the 18... what year was this? 1846? So these are 1846 maps of
the original land grants of Seminole County and what is happening with these
documents being over a hundred years old we're having a little bit of age damage
to them so we are going to have these professionally restored by a vendor so
we can protect these for the next couple hundred years this is just the original
from the when the state was created. James: Yeah, when they were issued through the department of interior...
and, to people who were wanting to purchase land in the state of Florida basically.
You can see where, in the back, the ink is starting to burn through, and that's
why we need to go where we need to go, and we're fraying off this way too. What they're
gonna do is they're going to separate the backing off of it and they're gonna
put acid-free backing on it and restore clean up as much as they can clean up
off it. GRANT: This is our new system right. JAMES: Yes this is our new bar coding system and as the new
boxes come in they're being bar coded and placed on the shelf into as you
can see a zone, a row, a section, and a level.
Basically we have a new software system where we barcode the shelf and we
barcode the box.. we can make more efficient use of the space here we can
keep it in our spreadsheets in the computer system where as opposed to go
to old handwritten numbers and using a lot more space to keep a row dedicated
just to that particular document type. JAMES: Plus it makes it easier at disposition time
because we have all the information in front of us on the computer rather than
having to go in and write down all this information and type it in. So it's
pre-there of course so we could go in and we can actually easily do a
destruction just based on years. GRANT: Okay this helps us monitor when we go shred
the documents too.
We recently did.. and we did a video on it but a marriage license is
officially recorded here so I know we upgraded this when we upgraded the software
here one of the features was the online marriage application software which we
just started recently so you can fill out that application, you can send it to
us, and then when you arrive at a courthouse or a branch we just print it
up you sign it pay for it and you're good to go
saves you a lot of time and it makes our process work better as well. Because
we're able to report data to department of vital statistics that we weren't
doing before so.. I'm always looking for ways we can I'm a business owner so I
look at processes and see is there some way we can do here to tweak it that'll
serve the citizens better also make it easier on our employees make it more
efficient make our jobs easier reduce our stress level so it's a win-win
situation when we can take a look at what we've been doing, reevaluate it and
see if there's a better way to do it. One of the things is this new
software that we began this year also makes it much more efficient as we deal
with other government agencies.. So one of the great things about this new software
is since we have all the property records the Seminole County Property
Appraiser will come into our data system to get information for his maps
so he can assess the property for how much it's worth. So he comes into our
system to see who owns the property, how big the properties are, the legal titles,
and he'll put it in his system he'll send people out there, they'll assess it, and
then put a value to it for taxing purposes. What used to take three and a
half hours takes thirty minutes now so it's another benefit of looking at
processes seeing how we can do it better for our customers for itself but also
for other government agencies we're doing a lot of that with the sheriff's
office right now and and judges as well looking at how we can do things quicker..
share information electronically.. you know it doesn't make sense to fax
somebody a form so they can take it and type it into their system when that data
can be just sent directly to them and put into their system so we're always
looking at ways to make it more efficient.