February 1, 2012
Beginning in 2012 the Circuit Clerk's Office is working to develop a program to assist individuals with delinquent accounts from being referred to collections.
We have kicked off a collection program for the Felony department modeled after our Traffic department that we successfully began in March of 2011. For our initial mailing we sent out 1500 notices on January 3rd 2012, as a result of the January 20th, 2012, court date we have generated over $60,000 for that one court call. We've had over 340 cases that either paid up to date or in full. Close to 300 people appeared in court and we have approximately 1000 cases to be sent to collections.
In the month of January we have generated over $100,000 in revenue beyond what we brought in the month of November 2011, as a result of the new collection process. We normally bring in approximately $700,000 thru our office monthly.
Since initiating our Collections program in 2011, we are bringing in an additional $50,000 a month prior to sending to collection agency. We began a Payment Hearing Officer program over 10 years ago; this program has been modeled after other counties in the state to assist individuals in setting up payment plans for fines and costs owed to the County. We make every attempt to work with individuals prior to their case being sent to a collection agency. The collection company we are working with is Harris and Harris in Illinois and their website is www.pay-harris-law-firm.com.
Lisa L. Bierman, Clerk of Court Rock Island County, Illinois can be reached at 309-558-3312 or www.rockislandcounty.org.
