One of the Clerk’s primary responsibilities is to serve as Official Recorder of documents as defined by the state statutes. Those original documents, listed individually below, are brought in or mailed to the Recording Department. The Recording Department staff copies, scans, records the date and time the document was filed, adds the document to the book of Official Records and returns the original document by mail to the sender. The imaged documents are indexed by name, so that the recording data base can be searched. The Microfilm Department captures these various records using the scanned images to create a permanent microfilm record that is stored off-site.
Records Storage
Manatee County Board of County Commissioners (BCC) requested the Manatee County Clerk to operate a records center, with combined storage for all BCC supervised county offices and the Constitutional Officers. The County Records Center has 8,825 linear feet of shelving that contains approximately 17,000 boxes.
The Clerk’s Record Center has 16,500 linear feet of shelving that holds approximately 442,100 case files from court cases that have not yet met the retention guidelines as established by the Florida Secretary of State.
In conjunction with best business practices, the Clerk embraces current digital imagery technology that reduces cost and fosters financial savings. There are currently 4,676,290 electronic documents that are part of Court files that are available for public viewing and the judiciary. The Official Records have 3,046,411 electronic documents that are available to the public on the Clerk’s public web site.