As the Miami-Dade County Clerk of the Court and Comptroller, Juan Fernandez-Barquin wears plenty of hats.
He oversees jury duty and traffic tickets, acts as clerk for the county commission and and works with real estate attorneys to keep a record of the deeds, mortgages, judgements and other documents.
“You want one individual or one office in each county to handle all these deeds if you have to do a title search,” he said.
As comptroller, Fernandez-Barquin acts as the government’s accountant.
“As comptroller I’m the custodian of funds for the county,” he said. “I’m the county auditor, I’m the county investor and I’m also the accountant for the board of county commissioners.”
He said he’s the one that splits up the money for the county budget and keeps track of where it’s going.
The Miami Lakes Chamber of Commerce welcomed Fernandez-Barquin for its July luncheon. He drew a crowd of about 60 members of the business and local leadership community including Mayor Josh Dieguez; Vice Mayor Bryan Morera and council members Juan Carlos Fernandez, Ray Garcia, Steven Herzberg and Alex Sanchez.
During his hour-long presentation, Fernandez-Barquin focused on the duties of his office and how he is improving the process for residents. He also spoke about the different things that he is working on to make his office more transparent and accessible for county residents.
“If you go to the office website … and click on comptroller, there are two links operations and audit underneath it,” he said. “If you click on operations … there is one [link] that says ‘financial transparency dashboard.’”
Fernandez-Barquin said the dashboard shows where county funding comes from and how it is divided among the departments.
He also spoke about the property fraud alert system, which allows homeowners in Miami-Dade County to register a folio number and receive an alert if there is a change in the deed via text message or email.
Residents can register up to 25 folio numbers using the system.
There is also a phone application to track traffic tickets, called “Driver’s Vault,” which lets residents register their license plates to track any traffic tickets.
“You can see all your traffic tickets in Miami-Dade County if you receive a traffic ticket, we’ll send you a push notification,” Fernandez-Barquin said.
The app will also send an alert to let the driver know if they’re reaching the end of the 30 days to pay for a traffic ticket. It also allows users to contest traffic tickets, choose to go to traffic school or pay it.
“We also do payment plans for traffic tickets; it’s one of the first things I instituted when I got into the office,” Fernandez-Barquin said.
Fernandez-Barquin said he was also trying to accept payment plans for parking tickets but hasn’t gotten there yet.
His goal is to automate the office as much as possible, including a chatbot that uses artificial intelligence to help residents navigate the website.
To learn more about Fernandez-Barquin and the services offered by his office visit miamidadeclerk.gov.