Clerk & Comptroller Sharon Bock’s office is changing its hours beginning Aug. 5. All clerk’s office courthouse locations will be open to the public from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., while the office in Royal Palm Beach is expanding its service to five days a week.
The new hours are designed to give employees more time to process electronically filed court documents now coming to the clerk’s office 24 hours a day, while the expanded service in Royal Palm Beach will allow the office to better serve Palm Beach County’s growing western communities.
“Now that e-filing is required for civil cases, we’ve seen hundreds of documents filed with us each day, on weekends and after regular business hours during the week,” Bock said. “Changing our operations will allow us to keep up with the expanding electronic document volume.”
Clerk’s office employees will continue to work from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. However, the hour in the afternoon where employees are not available to the public will allow them time to process documents, update court files and complete other work. This will save on overtime costs, because that work was previously done before and after normal operating hours.
While these hours are new for Palm Beach County, about one-third of Florida’s 67 clerks — including Broward and Miami-Dade counties — either open to the public after 8 a.m. or close before 5 p.m. to give employees time to process documents.
The clerk’s branch office at the Midwestern Communities Service Center in Royal Palm Beach, now open twice a week, will open five days a week beginning on Aug. 5 to accept traffic ticket payments and payments for other penalties under county criminal court, such as marine infractions and animal infractions.
The office also will sell self-service packets for divorce, eviction and other legal forms, and handle property owners’ petitions for the Value Adjustment Board.
“We recognize the importance of giving our customers as many options as possible if they need to pay a traffic ticket in person or buy legal forms through our self-service center,” Bock said. “Our office in the Midwestern Communities Service Center gives residents in the western communities a way that’s convenient to them to conduct business with the clerk’s office.”
For more information about the clerk’s office, visit www.mypalmbeachclerk.com or call (561) 355-2996.
