Published: August 01, 2009 02:16 am      

FLOYD COUNTY: Officials look to protect important documents

The recent fire at the Madison courthouse not only destroyed portions of the historic building, but also damaged important documents inside.

What if the same thing happened at the City-County Building in New Albany?

Recently, a group of Floyd County leaders met with homeland security officials to discuss that possibility. They not only looked at photos from what happened following the Madison fire, but discussed ways to protect precious documents housed in the City-County Building.

“It makes you look at what you have and what if it happened here,” said Floyd County Clerk Linda Moeller. “You have to make sure you back up your material and store it off-site.”

Which is what the county has been doing. Several court records and other documents have been removed or copied from the City-County Building and taken to “Iron Mountain” — an underground storage facility in Louisville. The Mountain actually sits below the Louisville Zoo.

“Our basement storage was awful,” Moeller said. “We didn’t know what we had. So we gutted it.”

Moeller said jail trustees, her employees and others worked to clean the area out and put in new shelving. Some items had to be destroyed.

“It’s really nice down there now,” she said. “Everyone in the office goes down there and works. They know their files and their court.”



MARRIAGE LICENSE

The process of filling out a marriage license in Floyd County has gotten easier and more private.

Instead of standing at the counter in the clerk’s office and answering questions, couples are now escorted to a designated area and can complete the form online. Identification is still required, so the form must be filled out in the clerk’s office.

“They can come in, sit down and go through it. It’s one of the nice things we do in this office, so we need to make it nice for them, too,” Moeller said.

Marriage licenses also are being transferred to microfilm, which makes it easier for people to look up and it allows the documents to be properly stored. Kitestring — a company located along Charlestown Road — is doing the work. The cost will be taken from the clerk’s perpetuation fund.



YOUTH SHELTER UPDATE

Planner Don Lopp and architect Larry Timperman will give the Floyd County Commissioners an update on a possible new home for the Youth Shelter.

The meeting will be held at 6 p.m. Tuesday in the commissioners room, on the second floor of the City-County Building.