Peoria County committee approves $150,000 to expand circuit clerk document-scanning program

Peoria County committee members voted to approve a $150,000 budget amendment to extend a circuit clerk document-scanning program that uses temporary youth workers to digitize county court records.

The funding, taken from general fund reserves and moved into the circuit clerk’s department budget, will cover scanning operations through the end of the year, Circuit Clerk Bobby said at the committee meeting. "Again, we're asking for a hundred and 50,000, and what that'll do will take us to the end of the year with our program with our summer kids helping," Bobby said.

The amendment was considered within the oversight committee’s dollar threshold and carries the board staff’s support. Scott, a county staff member who reviewed the request with Chief Financial Officer McCord, told the committee that the proposed appropriation would come from general fund reserves and that both McCord and he "wholeheartedly endorse and support the request."

Committee members asked how scanned records will be retained, accessed and validated. Bobby described the files being scanned into the county’s Tyler case-management system (Odyssey is the underlying program) and said the county will transition to a cloud system soon: "we're gonna be in a cloud system" starting about the 19th of the month. He said random spot checks have validated the scanned records: "We've gone through it randomly spot checked it. Okay. We've gone through, like, 84,000 cases that have been loaded into the system. It's a little over 2 almost 2 and a half million documents."

Bobby framed the program as both a cost-saving measure and a youth-employment opportunity, saying the office saves an estimated roughly 50% compared with outsourcing scanning and that the young workers are skilled with computers. He said the office scanned 86,000 documents so far this year and that last year it scanned "over 13,000,000." The county will still retain some paper files that cannot be digitized, such as certain juvenile or complex case materials, Bobby said.

Scott explained why the item came to this committee rather than the finance committee: it fell within the board’s rules of order for committee-level oversight. He also said the circuit clerk’s digitization plan aligns with retention guidance from the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts (AOIC).

On procedure, a member requested the motion and members Sharon and Linda were identified in the motion request. The committee voted in favor of the appropriation; the chair announced, "The ayes have it," and Member Elsasser recorded a reluctant "aye." The committee moved to approve the appropriation and the project will proceed under the circuit clerk’s department budget.

The clerk’s office said further steps include finishing current paper-file scanning, then pursuing a state grant to digitize microfilm holdings; Bobby said the microfilm conversion could cost more than $1 million and that grant applications remain in progress.

The committee heard no public comment on the item. The appropriation funds scanning operations, continued participation of youth workers in the office’s summer program, and the county’s near-term transition to cloud-based storage for case documents.