BENTON, IL – (William McPherson, Benton Gazette. Please click on the link for the full story. Here is an excerpt below.)
Citing security concerns, the Franklin County Board discussed upgrading the current locking system at the courthouse—which currently is the old fashioned lock and key system.
At the July county board committee meeting Franklin County Chairman Randall Crocker said he has been thinking about a new locking system for the Franklin County Courthouse for quite a while. Crocker said he would like to see a card swipe style system in place at the courthouse, which he said would have a number of advantages. One such advantage would be that the county could program which employee’s cards have access to certain rooms, and in the event of dismissal, termination or an employee switching positions, no keys would have to be turned in and the system could be updated from the county’s side, which could all be processed digitally.
“There are a lot of advantages, you know—you could know who could unlock the door and who couldn’t, and then you can segregate different security levels,” Crocker added at the committee meeting, also noting that such a system would leave a trail that would make it easy to find out whose card accessed which particular room in the courthouse and during what date and time it occured. “I think we’d have to give a lot of thought to what we’d want to do, as far as who would have access,” added Board Member David Rea. “Some of those offices have some sensitive things in them,”
