Budget Cutbacks Impacting Office Hours for County Clerk
Saturday, September 26, is the last Saturday we will offer weekend hours at our Northeast Branch.  Beginning Monday, October 5, our new office-wide hours will be from 
8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
The current model for funding the clerks of the courts statewide is a statutory allocation of certain court fines, fees and costs that clerks collect.  These revenues have been declining across the state for the past several years.  While there has been some decline in the number of cases, the decline in revenues has been much more dramatic.  Not all case types cover their cost of processing.  Some generate excess revenues, such as traffic cases, and others consume more resources than the revenues we are able to collect, such as felony cases. 
 
The mix of these revenues has changed significantly over the years.  As an example traffic citations written in Leon County are down by more than 40 percent, while additional officers are being hired due to the increase in violent crimes.  In addition, revenues from family law and other civil cases have declined as more and more filers are being determined indigent and, therefore, not required to pay any filing fees.
 
For the past several years, the Legislature has made up for the shortfall in revenues with an appropriation from general revenues.  This year they elected not to and clerks took a 5.1 percent reduction mid-year.  The revenues to support clerks' budgets for the FY15-16 are projected to decline further and additional cuts in our budget are expected beginning October 1, 2015.  My court budget is down from $6.5 million in 2005-06 to an expected $5.5 million in 2015-16.  During this time, we have enhanced services, served more citizens, attorneys and judges, and absorbed increased costs in health care and operating expenses.
 
While we continue to look for ways to become more efficient, the decline in our revenues has outpaced any efficiency measures, and we are being forced to reduce services.   We are not sure that these reductions in services will be sufficient to balance our budget and additional measures may be required, including not being able to operate two separate payment facilities for the convenience of our customers.  We will be monitoring our revenues and expenditures and, to the extent additional service reductions are required, we will advise you in advance.
 
If you have any questions, please let me know.

Portal Enhancements Deployed on September 18 
The Florida Courts E-Filing Portal release (2015.02) was implemented on September 18, 2015.  The end user notes will soon be posted on the Florida Courts E-Filing Portal website at www.myflcourtaccess.com/authority/portalsoftwareupdates.html.
In the meantime, here are the highlights:
  1. Date added to news & information page.
  2. Email notification preference options that give the filer the ability to opt out of receiving email notifications back from the portal. Filers can configure their accounts for the following email types: (a) filing received; (b) corrected filing received; (c) processing completed for filing number; and (d) filing filed for judicial review.
  3. Workbench gives filers the ability to (a) save their work on trial court filings and (b) process the filing at a later date.
  4. Metadata warning alerts the filer to the fact that it is their responsibility to remove the metadata or it could become public record.
  5. E-Service enhancements include (a) the use of Word wrap to display the complete email address of the users on the service list; (b) "Added as Other Attorney/Interested Party" and "My Email Addresses for this Case" now have their own tabs on the E-Service page; and (c) search criteria for 'Added as Other Attorney/Interested Party' was added to the My Cases page to give the filer the ability to see what cases they were added to by other filers.
  6. Creditor and media roles have been added and users can create accounts on the login page. However, state agency, local agency and insurance agencies/agents and surety bond agents will need to contact the county to have their logins created.
  7. New filer status of disbarred and suspended added, which can only be updated by System Administrators. These statuses will stop the filer from logging into the portal.
  8. Filer alerts created to show the filers any alerts that pertain to the issues mentioned above. If a filer has an alert on their account, the system will take them directly to the My Alerts page before taking them to the E-Filing Map page. This page will show any alerts the filer may have. To clear these alerts the filer must select the alert and hit the clear button. If not, the alert will stay active. Filers also have the ability to search within the My Alerts page. This will show any previous alerts they may have had.
The Florida Courts E-Filing Portal staff has developed several online training videos to benefit you and your staff. Take a look: www.myflcourtaccess.com/authority/trainingvideos.html. You can also subscribe to the training channel at www.youtube.com/user/FLCrtsEFilingPortal. The biggest advantage to subscribing is that you are notified when a new video is posted and it's easy to stay current on portal enhancements.

Leon County Adds Reopen Fees to Portal
We are adding the ability for efilers to pay reopen fees on the portal!  So
far, we have added this functionality to three case types in Probate--Formal
Administration and both Summary Administration case types--and to three case
types in Domestic Relations / Family--Dissolution, Paternity and Child Support.
We will continue adding this functionality to all case types over time, so stay
tuned!

When you select Existing Case on the portal, and then select the Division,
type in the case number, and the case information is populated, you will see a
new area under the blue Search and Clear buttons: Additional Fee Options.
Here, you must enter a "1" to be able to pay the $50 reopen fee on the Fees and
Payments tab.

You can check the case status--Open or Closed--easily in the first block,
under Total Fee, where it provides for the Status. And a check of the statutes
will assist you in determining whether a reopen fee is due. [See FS 28.241(1)(b)
and 34.041(2)].
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