Summary
Clerk of Superior Court Michelle Ball asked the county to temporarily fund 11 deputy clerk positions to address rapid population growth, increases in evictions and traffic cases, and workload pressures from the eCourts rollout; she proposed a phased hire with five positions starting Feb. 1 and the remainder by April 1.
Michelle Ball, Johnston County’s Clerk of Superior Court, asked the county commissioners on Jan. 5 to fund 11 deputy clerk positions to keep up with rapid population growth and mounting case filings. Ball said her office currently employs 52 people across seven divisions and that her “workload shows that I need 10 and a half positions,” so she proposed hiring five deputies on Feb. 1 and phasing in the remainder around April 1 to allow recruiting and training.
Ball told the board the state’s Administrative Office of the Courts uses a three‑year average of filings and time standards developed with the National Center for State Courts to allocate clerk positions, which often leads to a lag between workload increases and state funding. She said her office has used projections with AOC through 2035 to estimate future need but that the legislature has not yet passed a state budget that would provide the positions.
Ball described recent workload trends: more than 300 foreclosure filings annually, a large increase in evictions (small claims) that rose from under 400 to about 1,150 between Jan.–June 2024–25, and an uptick in criminal traffic cases tied to interstate traffic. She also said the county was an early pilot for the state’s eCourts system, which required staff to scan legacy paper files and upload records, increasing staff overtime and ongoing workload.
Responding to commissioners’ questions, Ball said she has identified space and plans to reconfigure existing offices and move archived files to create desks for the first hires; she also said her office is accustomed to accepting time‑limited positions and would return for reconsideration if the state later funds the roles. Several commissioners expressed support for taking the request under advisement and studying funding options before scheduling a vote at a future meeting.
Next procedural step: the board agreed to take Ball’s request under advisement and consider the funding request at a future meeting after additional study.
