Smith seeks a new term as Polk County Probate Judge
Probate Judge Linda Smith is hoping that over the next four years if voters allow her to keep her seat on the bench to bring more improvements and streamlined processes to make the public's interaction with this portion of Polk County's judicial system that much easier.
Smith, who was first appointed as Probate Judge in 2011 and later won the seat in the 2012 election, said that the past four years have seen a lot accomplished within the court itself.
"My office wants to provide the people with courteous service and prompt service with whatever their needs are," she said. "We want to always administer the proceedings with fairness and integrity. We want to be open, and I think that's important."
She won a primary campaign against Bobby Brooks, but later saw a general election challenger in Shannon McGee who is running as an independent candidate.
"We're up and running again," Smith said in a September interview. "I spent the whole week at the fair talking to people, and I've been invited to several churches to speak as well."
Overall, she said the general election has been difficult for people to figure out.
"People don't know what to do," she said. "Some people who aren't registered to vote don't want to register because of who is running this year."
She added that "people are interested in our races in the county. Some people... everybody's not that interested in some races, but I think this kind of surprised some people with an independent candidate running."
People need to look at the issues, Smith said, and those spe- cifically for the court that impact their daily lives.
"Look at my record," she said. "My agenda is serving the people of Polk County. I've been in the office 25 years as of July. I chose to stay here because my children were in school, and I wanted to be close to them to go to their school functions. It just benefitted me more when I got my grandchildren and could go to their school functions and ball games."
Smith said she loves her job, and "serving the people in the offices and just helping them." However the focus of her campaign is about where the court has been, and where it is now in serving the people, and what the court will look like and what problems it will encounter in the years ahead.
"They seem to come here just to find their way sometimes because they know where this court is, and can make their way to where they need to go," she said.
Probate court, Smith said, was the court of the ordinary. Though the office can't give out any legal advice, they are willing to help people search in the right direction for what they need to do.
Routinely, Smith said, the court also receives paperwork compiled by local residents rather an attorney.
Technology is playing a bigger role in the court than ever. For the moment, Smith said her office continues to scan in records from previous years, and also has worked to upgrade software for court use to get through current records much faster.
"We can't stay in a bubble in the past and record in just these books," she said. "They're costly. It's $500 a book. We can scan it and have it on a disk for much cheaper."
She also said it was just as important is the education aspect of the job, especially clerks and office workers.
"When I first started out, and I've done every job in the office, it was so important to be trained. It's even more so now," Smith said.
She said that she has thus far done 90 hours of continuous education for probate judge's training, and completed a course started four years ago for probate judge training thruoghout the year.
"It was a good program, and we were tested," she said. "Up until 4 years ago, there was no testing. Now you have to be tested to be a certified probate judge."
She said she also does her best to send her clerks and office workers off to training sessions as well.
The court has also seen more workers involved in background checks for a variety of areas from becoming adoptive parents to firearms licensing.
"It's a lot of technology changes," she said. "And if we don't keep up with what's going on, we'll find ourselves behind when we don't need to be."