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Clerk of Courts moves to new office in Courthouse Square building

4 min read
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The relocation of the Clerk of Courts from the Washington County Courthouse to a nearby county building appeared to go smoothly over the weekend with the new office open in time for business Tuesday morning.

More than a dozen county workers, summer interns and community service inmates spent the Juneteenth holiday weekend moving hundreds of boxes with criminal court files into the Courthouse Square office building despite previous objections raised by Clerk of Courts Brenda Davis about the relocation.

Davis and her workers seemed to be mostly settled in their new office on the building’s second floor as attorneys streamed in to file paperwork in the space that formerly served as the county’s elections office.

“She’s down there and operational,” Court Administrator Patrick Grimm said Tuesday. “Everything in terms of documents or books or papers that was in the courthouse … has all been moved to her new office in Courthouse Square.”

Davis had objected to the move and requested President Judge John DiSalle, who authorized the office relocation, to reconsider his decision during a June 9 hearing to discuss the matter. Davis said she was mainly considered about the support she and her three office workers would receive in packing boxes and moving them across a courtyard to the other building.

But Grimm said they were able to get several county maintenance workers and summer interns, along with Washington County jail inmates working in the “Furlough Into Service” program, to provide the muscle needed to move everything over four days. He said the labor costs for the move were relatively inexpensive since the summer interns worked their normal amount of hours last week and the FITS program includes jail inmates working community service time.

“Summer employees boxed her office up, and different groups unpacked it,” Grimm said. “There might be some boxes left to unpack, but everything is down there.”

The district attorney’s detectives supervised the transfer of sensitive documents, such as sealed case files, Grimm said.

Grimm added that they began packing boxes Thursday and moved half of the office’s computers, giving them a head start on the transfer while also allowing the Clerk of Courts office to remain open until the end of the day Friday. Workers with the county’s information technology department spent Monday getting the computers and phone lines connected in the new office.

“We had a fairly light schedule Friday, so it worked out well,” Grimm said.

The office appeared to be well organized and in good working order Tuesday afternoon when a reporter visited to ask Davis about how the transition was going. Davis, who was meeting with an employee at the time, asked the reporter to return later in the day. About 90 minutes later when the reporter returned, Davis was working with the IT department to get her computer connected to the office printer, and she insinuated she did not have time for a brief interview.

The new Clerk of Courts office is 2,139 square feet compared to the former office in the courthouse that is only 1,523 square feet. There are four desks in the main working space behind a large counter for attorneys and members of the public to file court paperwork. Farther back, there is a secure room next to large filing cabinets that can be rolled back and forth to store the court filings, along with two private offices, one of which appeared to be packed with holiday decorations that Davis and her staff put up during different occasions throughout the year.

County and court officials over the past two years have been moving several row offices – including the register of wills and the prothonotary – into Courthouse Square to create a central filing center in that building and to make room inside the courthouse for a seventh judge and other departments. Domestic Violence Services will be moved out of the courthouse basement and into the recently departed Clerk of Courts office on the main floor in the next few months.

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