Q. Can you tell us about the awards your office has received for reporting the county’s finances?
A. We learned in June that we received a second award from the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) of the United States and Canada, this time for our Popular Annual Financial Report (PAFR). The first award was the Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting, which I call the gold standard for reporting, transparency and disclosure about the county’s finances — we’ve gotten it for 29 consecutive years, which is an achievement in itself. But this second award is for our first-ever PAFR, a shorter, more reader-friendly booklet than the detailed 400-plus-page Annual Comprehensive Financial Report on which it’s based.
The PAFR, titled “Tracking Your Tax Dollars: A Guide to St. Johns County’s Finances,” features highlights from the comprehensive report and is designed to be straightforward and user-friendly for taxpayers without a background in public finance. It is for Fiscal Year 2020 so some of the data is outdated. You can read it at stjohnsclerk.com/pafr/. We will produce a new PAFR this fall for Fiscal Year 2021 showing how tax dollars are collected and spent, as well as more recent trends on demographics, housing, taxes and more.
Q. Knowing that the Clerk of Courts receives monetary judgments and payments related to court cases, how can readers learn whether they have unclaimed funds with your office?
A. One in five Floridians has unclaimed funds from a forgotten financial account, according to Florida CFO Jimmy Patronis. In May 2022 alone, more than $36 million in unclaimed property was returned to Floridians, with about $1.4 million of it coming from the Jacksonville region. As of the end of April, our office had unclaimed funds totaling nearly $328,000. A quick visit to our webpage, https://stjohnsclerk.com/clerk-unclaimed-funds/, will show you if your name is on the current list. Unclaimed funds can range from a few dollars to tens of thousands of dollars, so I would encourage your readers to check on a regular basis. If you have a claim to money held by the St. Johns County Clerk of Courts, contact my office as soon as possible, because each year we send unclaimed funds to the State of Florida. Once funds are sent to the state, we can’t assist you in recovering those funds.
If your name appears in the document for annual unclaimed funds turned over to the State of Florida, visit www.fltreasurehunt.org to claim your funds.
Q. Do you have an update on county property owners who have signed up for your office’s free fraud alerts?
A. We are about a fifth of the way to our goal of 10,000 subscribers and working hard to get out the message. In the coming weeks, we are looking to partner with our fellow Clerks of Court in northeast Florida in a shared message about protecting our residents’ properties from scammers through our free notification services. It’s easy to sign up and it’s totally free. Our service provides an early warning to a property owner, alerting them to check their records online and take action if a property record or mortgage document has been fraudulently altered. Sign up at https://stjohnsclerk.com/recording-activity/ and let your friends and families know that their county may also offer similar free services.
Q. How can residents get in touch with you?
A. You can call me on my cell phone at (904) 599-8688, the Clerk’s Office at (904) 819-3600 or visit us online at stjohnsclerk.com. I also invite you to check out our recently launched monthly newsletter at https://conta.cc/3y4se4p and sign up to receive it monthly via email.
