St. Clair County Probate Judge Mike Bowling has been on the job nearly six months now and the process is smoother each day. Bowling said he received a warm welcome by the staff and “there weren’t any big hurdles to jump coming in.”

Bowling, formerly the district two county commissioner before being sworn in as probate judge, worked with the commission to redraw the district voting lines. Bowling said the new lines should benefit the county and help nullify some of the problems seen in the last election. “We’ve moved some voters around in the districts, rearranged and opened new polls,” Bowling said.

Argo will now have its own voting place, relieving pressure off the White’s Chapel box. Margaret’s voting place will now be North Valley Church instead of the town hall. Bowling also said that in Leeds, everyone across the interstate would now be voting at Cedar Grove Baptist Church, taking pressure off Moody. The portion of Moody around Bethel Church will be voting closer to Branchville. The new district lines should divide up voters more evenly and reduce long waits at the polls. “I think we’ve got our numbers great,” Bowling said. “We’ve met with all the municipalities one-on-one and everyone of them praised the idea of what we’re doing. They said it would work and I’m pretty confident it will.”

Bowling feels that the two new voting precincts will help the most. The new city hall issues in Argo made it difficult to nail down a place to vote, but Corith Baptist Church will now be utilized for the time being. “We wanted to take a little more of Argo in if we had a bigger place to vote,” Bowling acknowledged. “Hopefully if they get the city hall issues worked out in the near future we’ll be able to take in some of Springville’s overloading on that end to Argo.” The redrawing of the district lines is the county commission’s job but Bowling said he continued helping because as a commissioner he was already involved in the process. Since then, the commission has approved the new district lines and Bowling said they are waiting on the attorney to send all the information to the Department of Justice to get it approved.

Bowling has also made some minor changes to the tag-purchasing process at the probate office. If someone doesn’t have a proof of residency, they are asked for their driver’s license. Bowling said this has a lot to do with people that live in surrounding counties and come to St. Clair County for the weekend. “We’re not allowed to sell any one outside of St. Clair County a tag. We have a lot of weekend residents that come up here and think they ought to be able to buy their tags here. Well, they can, if they say that’s where they live full-time. But if it’s just their weekend home and their tag renewal is being sent to Birmingham, we’re not going to renew them. It’s just what the state says we can’t do and we’re not going to do it,” Bowling finished.

Another area of focus for Bowling is upgrading the probate office’s computer software. The probate office had a three-year contract with Gemini Consultants for computer software and they are looking to upgrade. The office still has a year contract with Gemini but it is on a quarterly basis and can be cancelled with due notice. Bowling mentioned that they would probably be updating the online tag renewal process as well.

Inside the probate office, Bowling said there have been some minor personnel changes. “Nothing drastic. We just moved some people around to try and make the office more efficient. This is not saying anything the prior judge had done wrong, he had his way of doing things and some of them went real well and we’re going to continue doing them. I’m a different person and I just want to see some things done a little different. I want say again that Judge Wyatt had a good staff and he did a good job of putting a staff together.”

The probate court responsibilities were Bowling’s biggest concern coming in as probate judge. “I thought that would be the hardest part for me. But it’s gone real well and I give credit to my two chief clerks for that.” The caseloads surprised Bowling and he said they had six in one day last week.

Bowling joked that the county commission liked to give him a hard time now. “I just tell them, ‘listen guys, ya’ll haven’t been on the other side, ya’ll need to see it from my standpoint,’” he laughed. “You all don’t have to tell me you don’t have any money, I know that.”