MOULTRIE — Colquitt County Clerk of Court Donna Wilson has asked county commissioners for an additional $14,000 to fund an overdue software upgrade.

“I am here this evening to make a request for an amendment to my budget,” Wilson told the commissioners at a recent budget meeting.

Wilson’s office handles documents for State and Superior criminal courts, for county services and jury services. She said she had just been notified that the software they use to operate the office has an upgrade.

She said the new upgrade would use a cloud system and she was working with IT Director Darren Roberson to get the upgrade going.

“Like I said, it’s $14,000 for the upgrade and we have not been upgraded on our software in many, many years,” Wilson said.

She said it will help them get their jury summons out to people in a timely fashion and to print all of their court calendars. She also said it will reconcile their bank statements.

“Without this upgrade, we’re having to do a lot of these tasks manually,” she said.

Wilson said she wouldn’t be asking them for the upgrade if she didn’t think it was important. She said she’s been very frugal and she makes her requests only when she believes spending money is necessary.

She said other surrounding counties have upgraded their software and Colquitt County was one of the few counties that had not upgraded yet.

Commissioner Marc DeMott wanted to know what the $14,000 included and Wilson replied that it included training. She said a majority of her staff were already trained in the software, they just needed to be trained in the upgrade. She said the fee also included customer service and support.

DeMott said he wasn’t opposed to it at all but they needed to know what their monthly increase was because if they go in the cloud, they would have a monthly recurring cost.

Commissioner Mike Boyd remarked that it looked like the State Court has increased Wilson’s workload and the income from that has doubled.

“And of that, a good majority of it comes to the County. So, with that extra workload and the extra income, I guess she’s helping us pay for it,” he said.

At last week’s budget meeting, Wilson returned to give the commissioners updated information on the cost of the monthly fee.

The $14,000 is a one-time cost for the upgrade and then there is an annual fee of $16,000, she told them, which includes the hosting fee, maintenance and any upgrades that come in during the year.

County Administrator Chas Cannon said they would look into seeing if they could skip the hosting fee by something they could do internally.

“Either way, we’ll make that happen,” he said.

She said a technology fee that they had previously spoken about would help off-set the upgrade costs because it was $10 added to each fine.

In February, the commissioners voted to adopt a resolution to support legislation that will add a technology fee to traffic and motor vehicle violations in Colquitt County.

Wilson said, at the county’s February meeting, the goal of collecting the technology fee was to help offset the cost of the software. She also said that she received a bill for it monthly.