Clerk of Circuit Court

Have had a lot of experience in this courthouse in my previous work with child welfare and found it to be a very nice building with a convenient parking garage across the street. However during the past week I had to file a paper for a family court case and pay a parking ticket :(
They have overhauled the system in the clerks office and for me it’s crazy! Much worse than even the dreaded DMV! The other day it was a 2 hour wait! Returned today at 7:45 and about 30 people were already in line before they opened.
The workers are very kind and professional; I think they just need to have many more of them or not group all the areas that the clerk serves on one area that can fill up and one must wait in line just to get a ticket.
There needs to be a better way, to facilitate this as many on-​one and telephonic options fail and you ended up coming in anyway to straighten out an error.
And due to the size of the population served they really need an additional or expanded facility downtown or closer than Brandon or Plant City.
Or maybe as a true service to the residents of Hillsborough County they could do a certain amount of appointments like other agencies such as the DMV and SSA have been doing for the past 20 years!
Just glad up not the Duchess here!

#254
When the dreaded Jury Duty summons comes in the mail this is the place you go. If you’ve done JD before you know it’s all about waiting.
The people here are totally nice and keep thanking you for your service. The wait room is very large, tons of chairs, some desks and tables for those who bring work with them. There are magazines and lots of TV’s hanging from the ceiling. There is a snack bar right next door, very convienient. All in all they try to make it as pleasant as possible. If you get a summons be sure to read the instructions on the second page. After calling in the night before I learned I didn’t have to report until 10:30. Parking can be a nightmare though if the garage across the street is full.

You get the mail and see the dreaded envelope saying Jury Duty. UGH! Yes it’s supposed to be a privilege but in reality, it is much time wasted. I suppose when I worked at jobs I hated, it was a break but now I am self employed and going to jury duty for two days caused me to play catch up for the next several days.
The court building is old and sitting on hard chairs not so fun. It gets cold as I think they forgot to pay the electric bill so no sign of heat. Yes, it does get cold in sunny Florida at times.
Parking for jurors is allocated to 3 different lots. The first day, I was assigned to come at 10:30 and 2 out of the 3 lots were filled so I paid the $ 6 to park at the courthouse to perform my civic duty. No reimbursement since it wasn’t one of the assigned lots.
At noon, they break for lunch for an hour. More waiting around while they call names to get assigned a judge. Finally, my name is called along with 18 other joyous citizens. The judge explains the process and asks a few questions and then the attorneys get to ask questions.
After what seemed like a very long drawn out time, they take you outside the court room and call out the names of the lucky 7 who get to come back tomorrow for trial. As I muttered under my breath, please don’t call my name, UGH! My name is selected. Really?
Second day we showed up at 9AM and got to know each other better. We hear the case and get excused, called back in and excused again. Then just before noon they call us in again and turns out the defendant plead out so we get dismissed. So much for my experience of Law and Disorder.

Final judgment. Judge ruled in my favor. He’s ordered that Brickpavers showroom pay me $ 500 and court costs of $ 130.
Now comes the fun. I have to collect the money from the owner Andre.
I was a fool for not checking the BBB first.
This guy has some really bad history.
Wish me luck.

Yeah, eff my life, I got a «failure to come to a complete stop at a stop sign» ticket recently. In my own neighborhood. By the same cop I saw pulling someone over five minutes earlier. Quota? Oh well.
So anyways. The clerk’s office was a lot quicker than I thought it would be.
I was able to get in and out, signing up for stupid driving school to dismiss my ticket, in just a few minutes. While the class can be completed online, signing up for this option is unfortunately something you have to do in person. I would give them five stars but they were misinformed about the rules pertaining to out of state drivers and what an «adjudication witheld» ruling means, which is what you can get for minor traffic tickets upon completion of traffic school. I’m not a lawyer, but I was a court clerk in Virginia for a while (little known fact). Anyways, it is not a conviction in Florida or otherwise. The clerks seemed to think it would translate to a conviction on my Virginia driving record and tried to talk me out of doing driving school and going to court instead. While the info will get sent to your home state, your insurance rates (in VA at least) will only increase when you have a conviction. Which is a solid possibility in court. So if you have the traffic school option to avoid a conviction and a court date, take it!
Anyways, the process was fine. So glad they moved traffic to another building. Thanks. Keep it quick!

Relatively easy to deal with traffic tickets. Get a number and it moves pretty quickly. I had to deal with a ticket for my wife. Too bad I had to come back because it wasn’t in the system yet. My first visit early in the morning was faster than sitting around lunch time.

Well the dreaded accident I had back in july tends to still haunt me. I had paid my ticket signed up for class but never took it so I had to pay an extra $ 40 to not get my license suspended. So having the great dad that I do he accompanied me to the court house being that I just moved here. We paid for parking like $ 2 and when in coming to find out we needed to be in a different building. We walk across the street and wait because they didn’t open til 8. Once they opened we only sat for like 5mins and got called I paid and got everything fixed and was on my way. The young man helping was very nice as well. I must say it was fast and painless and we were out with less then 30min you can’t beat that with a stick. Lol overall fast and cool experience its a plus in my book as long as it ain’t for another ticket for me ;). Until next time Unilocalers adiós!

I had to go and pay a ticket I received, and they moved where you pay your tickets to across from the main court house. I must say this is such a much smoother operation of here. I was able to get in pay my ticket and get out in less than 30 mins. Not that I want to get anymore tickets however I would not dread going down there now.