CLERK'S CORNER: March is farm tag time; office awarded tech grant

Spring is a busy time for all of us, and the County Clerk’s office is no exception. March is farm tag month, and is traditionally our busiest time of the year. Remember the voluntary $10 donation included in the registration fee benefits the local 4-H, FFA and Kentucky Proud programs. You have the choice to opt out of this donation if you would like to. We appreciate your patience as the lines may be somewhat longer than normal. We will strive to give you the excellent customer service you have come to expect.
The County Clerk’s office is the repository for a huge amount of documents and it takes organization and excellent records management practices to keep up with the sheer volume of documents. To that end, we have recently completed the clean out of our attic storage space under the direction of Larry Barnett and Jackie Arnold of the State Department of Libraries and Archives. We were fortunate to receive shelving to house and organize our documents at no cost to the county. This will allow us to keep an organized record rotation and destruction schedule in strict compliance with the mandated retention schedule.
During this off-election year, we have taken the opportunity to update and purge our voter registration cards. This had not been done for many years and we have eliminated hundreds of voter cards of deceased individuals and voters who have moved out of the county. This is a best practice that will ensure our voter rosters are complete and accurate to facilitate elections free of errors.
We are extremely pleased to announce the award of a grant in the amount of $63,825.87 from the Transportation Department to be used to update and improve the technology in the office. Our first project will be to security microfilm all the mortgages and then convert the mortgage books to deed books, thereby saving the county and taxpayers thousands of dollars for new mortgage and deed books. We also plan to upgrade our equipment to allow us to scan and have available online all our plats that now must be retrieved from the plat cabinets. This will be a real time saver for many people. These are just a few of the technology improvements we are planning for the office. As always, we would love to hear your ideas for improvements or upgrades to help provide better service to meet your needs. Stop by or call and share your ideas with us, because we are here to serve you.