{"id":31950,"date":"2023-05-02T13:03:37","date_gmt":"2023-05-02T17:03:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=31950"},"modified":"2023-05-02T13:03:41","modified_gmt":"2023-05-02T17:03:41","slug":"clerk-of-court-resource-shortage-forces-temporary-closing-of-the-lakeland-office-on-may-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2023\/05\/02\/clerk-of-court-resource-shortage-forces-temporary-closing-of-the-lakeland-office-on-may-8\/","title":{"rendered":"Clerk of Court: Resource shortage forces temporary closing of the Lakeland office on May 8"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Polk County Clerk of the Circuit Court office in Lakeland will temporarily close starting May 8 because of resource shortages, Clerk of the Court Stacy M. Butterfield said in a news release.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"580\" height=\"326\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 580px) 100vw, 580px\" src=\"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/image.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-31951\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/image.jpg 580w, https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/image-300x169.jpg 300w\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Court proceedings and jury trials will continue at the Lakeland Government Center at 930 E. Parker St., but the clerk&#8217;s service lobby will not be open to customers, the release said. A drop box will be available at the entrance of the Government Center for customers to submit paperwork for evictions, small claims, and traffic cases, as well as documents that need to be recorded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Operations in Lakeland will resume once the office has overcome the resource challenges and is able to provide superior service, the release said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Many of the clerk\u2019s services are available online at&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/protect-us.mimecast.com\/s\/1ICVCv2xPoUyRp1oPcXgrG2?domain=polkcountyclerk.net\">www.PolkCountyClerk.net<\/a>. Customers are encouraged to visit the website as their first option, the release said. Residents may also call the customer service center at 863-534-4000 or visit the Bartow or Northeast offices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The clerk\u2019s office in the new Northeast Government Center also opens May 8 at 200 Government Center Blvd. in Lake Alfred. The current government center closes permanently on Friday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThis is not an ideal situation, and it is counter to my priority to make services as easily accessible as possible,\u201d Butterfield said in the news release. \u201cWe unfortunately do not have enough trained team members to staff the Lakeland office. We are doing everything we can to solve this and resume operations as quickly as possible. I apologize for any inconvenience and thank everyone for their patience.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Butterfield and other Clerks of Court have lobbied the Florida Legislature for a change in the formula that determines the funding for their offices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Polk County Clerk of the Circuit Court office in Lakeland will temporarily close starting May 8 because of resource shortages, Clerk of the Court Stacy M. Butterfield said in&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31951,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[4962],"class_list":["post-31950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-clerk-of-court-resource-shortage-forces-temporary-closing-of-the-lakeland-office-on-may-8"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}