MAHONING COUNTY Computers clear halls of clutter
The remaining file cabinets will be gone when the appellate court relocates.
By BOB JACKSON
VINDICATOR COURTHOUSE REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Now that years' worth of clutter is gone from the corridors of the Mahoning County Courthouse, Anthony Vivo says computer technology should help keep the clutter from coming back.
Courthouse staff this week finished moving hundreds of boxes of court files from the basement and second-floor hallways of the courthouse into four vacant rooms in the adjacent county administration building, where they will be stored.
Vivo said it took some three months to plan the relocation and carry it out so that files are kept in an organized fashion that makes them accessible to people who need them.
Fire hazard
The boxes and files had lined the hallway walls and railing for years. Besides being unsightly, they created a fire hazard for which the county had been cited several times by city fire inspectors.
County officials also complained that the files could not be kept properly secured in the halls.
Vivo said those problems have been solved now that the files are in the administration building. All that remains in the courthouse hallway is a rack of bound journal books that will eventually be eliminated when their pages are scanned and saved in a new computer system.
There are also 15 four-drawer file cabinets that hold case files for the 7th District Court of Appeals.
They will eventually be moved, though, when the court of appeals moves from the fourth floor of the courthouse to a new building being built on West Federal Street, Vivo said.
He said a constantly growing caseload, especially in civil lawsuits, has created a larger and larger volume of paper files that must be stored in the courthouse.
But the county recently bought a new computer system with which employees can scan documents for storage on discs, which will eliminate the need to keep paper files, Vivo said.
"We shouldn't run into this problem again," he said.
bjackson@vindy.com