by Richard Prior
Staff Writer
Tip number one for getting the job done in the Clerk of Court’s Office is the same as the one for completing a journey of a thousand miles.
Take one step, one piece of paper, at a time.
There’s reams of the stuff. Piled high on desks, packed in manila folders, stuffed in accordion folders, stacked in rolling carts. And there’s no end.
“It would be easy to get buried in all that paperwork,” said Charlene Ricks. “You have to stay on top of it. You especially need to stay caught up in court files. They have massive papers.”
Ricks is the new assistant to Clerk of Courts Jim Fuller.
That may seem to be a daunting task, and it probably is. But, Ricks explained, most of the assistant clerks are responsible for several departments. And she stays ahead of the paper chase with the only tried and true method she knows: one paper, one file at a time.
When she started her new job about three weeks ago, “My first goal was to get out there and learn what everybody does. The first week I was here I found that very overwhelming.
“I never realized how many different things the clerk’s office does. I’m still trying to get my feet wet.”
Ricks has been with the City for 25 years, the last 17 with the clerk’s office. Until this promotion, she was a supervisor in the juvenile division.
“I did everything there, actually,” she said. “I started out as a clerk, and I became the trial clerk and then, eventually, the supervisor.”
That position, which she held for two years, required her to supervise all the trial clerks, the clerks who take in records, the pleadings to be filed and those who process records in the courtroom.
When she transferred out of the property appraiser’s office, “I asked for the juvenile department,” she said. I always wanted to work with kids, and, over here that was the closest I could come. That was always something that really interested me.”
Business in the juvenile department, as it turns out, has been depressingly brisk.
“They are very busy over there,” Ricks said. “It’s amazing. It multiplies year by year.”
Her first job with the City was in the property appraiser’s office. She didn’t necessarily think she had begun working for a lifetime employer when she went to the job that very first day. Her perspective changed within the first few years.
“I’ve always enjoyed my work,” she said. “It’s not something I dread coming to.
“I’ve never regretted coming with the City. Certainly not in the clerk’s office. They’re good people to work for.”
The Baldwin High School graduate is married, with three children and three grandchildren. Her husband, Fred Ricks, also worked in the property appraiser’s office and is now retired.
The only way to train for her job “is to get out there and get in it,” said Ricks, who oversees about 40 people. “Basically, that’s what you’ve got to do. That’s my approach.
“I go out there and listen to my front runners, what they’re doing, what we can do to improve it.”
Every day, in the controlled chaos of the clerk’s office, Ricks makes sure the staff inputs mounds of data, keeps up with the paperwork assigned to them, “so if someone checks, they can get an accurate account of where their files are.
“Our data people are really good. So are our court files people.”
The first thing she stresses with the staff, she said, is customer service.
“That’s the top thing,” said Ricks. “Everyone down here is real knowledgeable about what they do.
“Taking care of the customers is the first thing, because, if you’ve got irate customers, you’ve really got a mess.
“You also try to make sure they work together, cross-train so you don’t have that problem of customers having to wait. That way, we can pull others when we need to.”
Even after 17 years in the clerk’s office, Ricks only had a sketchy idea of how comprehensive her new job would be.
“It’s amazing what all the clerk’s office does,” she said. “In juvenile, that’s a whole world in
itself. Down here, they just do so much that even after being here so long I wasn’t aware of what all they do.
“The employees here have all been very good since I’ve been here. It’s a good job.
“It’s exciting starting new. I’ve done the same thing for so long it’s refreshing to start in a new department.”