The Boyle County Clerks Office 

By 10 a.m. Friday, the frontline in the Boyle County Clerk’s Office is a hubbub of noise with customers coming in, phones ringing, mail delivery and more.

The staff has already been at it about two hours, said Lee Miller, frontline supervisor. Miller said the morning begins around 8:15 a.m. when they arrive for work.

The office, located in the Boyle County Courthouse, opens at 8:30 a.m., she said.

Between customers and phone calls, employees work on title transfers and voter registration, with every document getting looked over by multiple pairs of eyes.

Jill Arnold, the deputy clerk, spends the morning giving title transfers one last look, making sure all the documents are scanned in before sending the files to Frankfort.

Arnold has been in the office the longest; it will be 27 years this April.

She said she really likes the job and that they are able to help so many people.

“We come into contact with everyone — probably more than anyone in the courthouse,” Arnold said.

Every day is a little different, she said, and every day is a steady flow of people.

That’s certainly true on Friday, as the customers continue filing in bit by bit. Miller said there are days when the lines flow out of the office and down the hall.

She’s been there 21 years. Miller came to the clerk’s office on a part-time basis when her kids were young. After the first year, she started full-time and said she enjoys being there.

“I like working with people,” she said.

This morning, within a short span of time, she’s helped update a handicapped placard for an elderly woman and competed tag renewals for another customer.

In the neighboring cubicle, Amy Thompson works on title transfers for dealers. She has a large stack and said she works through them as quickly as she can; sometimes the businesses bring large stacks and sometimes they bring a few at a time.

Thompson has been there 10 years. She said March is an extra busy month, because certain special tags come up for renewal, such as farm tags and tags for big trucks and RVs.

In April, Thompson said, boats come up for renewal.

And, in the middle of all that, there’s election season. The office is where candidates go to file for the primary and general elections.

On Miller’s right, Monica Payne, who has been there almost two years, works on reviewing voter registration cards. Payne is the last set of eyes to look at the cards, which have already been verified and sorted when they reach her. She goes through the stacks, then files them away, with the no longer active cards — when someone has died, for example — in a separate file than the active cards.

There are a lot of those types of checks, said Miller.

“We take every precaution to make sure everything is done properly,” she said.

That same precaution is taken with all of the files they work on, Miller said, with multiple people seeing it before it is submitted or filed away.

Beside Payne, Kathy Allen, an eight-year veteran, helps a man transfer a title to his son-in-law. Kelsey Joslyn, who started with Payne, is sorting the UPS delivery, before working on other transfers. At the end of the row, Dana Palmer, the newest employee at two months, waits on a customer wanting to renew his tags.

The employees work in their breaks during that time, too, trying to go at separate times so they don’t cause a big absence in the office.

All of the women came to the office for a variety of reasons; for Thompson, it was leaving another clerk’s office; for Allen, it was having lost a job after 15 years; and for others it was simply needing a job and learning there was an opening.

Joslyn said, for her, it was “fate.” She said she loves working with the group in the office and for County Clerk Trille Bottom, who Miller called “the bestest.”

Some days, Miller said, they face difficult clients. And some days, she said, they feel more like an information service, pointing visitors to the right offices or directing them to the right phone numbers. They get calls from people trying to reach the District or Circuit Court Clerks, people trying to question what they’ve learned at other clerks’ office and even people trying to reach other clerks’ offices. Miller said they even get phone calls for a dentist office.

“Our number must be similar … People will call and ask if their dentures are ready yet,” she said, laughing.

For the ladies on the frontline, the days end about 4 p.m., when the offices closes — except on Mondays, when they stay until about 5 p.m., Miller said. If there are still customers to be helped, they are there until the last one is finished.