Consolidation of the court systems in the Verde Valley has been a topic on the minds of the Cottonwood City Council for several years, and during council’s work session on March 13, the topic of court consolidation popped up once again and took priority over the five other topics on the council’s agenda for the evening.
Prior to tackling the consolidation of the Cottonwood Municipal Court with the Verde Valley Justice Court and the Clarkdale Municipal Court, Mayor Tim Elinski said the discussion would be an opportunity to explore, if any, the fiscal benefits consolidation would provide Cottonwood and what would be the best route to get the budget in line if council chose to consolidate.
Council settled in to discuss the topic by first hearing from City Magistrate Douglas LaSota, who provided the council a packet outlining some possible repercussions of consolidation on matters like municipal budget planning.
The consolidation model council is considering is based on the city of Prescott’s consolidation plan, and therefore, Elinski asked LaSota in his opinion why consolidating the court system would not be a viable option for council.
LaSota’s main concern in regard to council’s consideration to consolidate the court is that it would have a negative impact on the quality of justice, specifically because he expects there to be an increase in court filings in fiscal year 2018 based on data from fiscal years 2016 and ’17. He said engaging in consolidation would be either cost ineffective or cost neutral for the council, which is why it would not be beneficial for the council to engage in a consolidation model similar to Prescott’s.
“Things have gone up since then. If you start to look at fiscal year 2016 versus fiscal year 2017 and start in, say, July of 2016, you see that cases start going up at that point in time,” he said. “Then in September 2016 it goes from 163 to 269 cases a month and October of 2016 to 2017 it goes to 141 to 247 cases a month — that’s a 100 percent case increase …. Then we went from 202 last January to 348 this January.”
He also went on to note that in regard to cases in 2018, the court has seen about 2,000 cases, and last year they were at 2,394, so the court is almost already over last year’s case numbers. The anticipated total of cases for fiscal year 2018 is 3,028.
LaSota also circled back to the possibility of there being no cost savings if the council decided to consolidated the court system. Additionally, it would also have an effect on some city employees under the court. He said if the council is considering consolidation for financial reasons, there are other options to consider to find alternative sources of revenue.
“Consolidation can have a negative impact on some court employees,” he said. “If court consolidation were to occur, it would be difficult and potentially costly to return to a city only court,” he said. “… There are some things that were proposed last year that the city has never considered. I gave you ideas on how you could do additional revenues. Nobody has ever followed through on that, such as cost of prosecution and fees and that type of thing. Those are still things you can do to make up the difference.”
To close discussion on the topic, Elinski circled back to his statement prior to opening up discussion on the item, noting again that council would not be making a decision on this topic immediately, but rather they would be taking what they hashed out during the March 13 meeting to help them determine if having city and county cases consolidated would make the most fiscal common sense for the council, and if it would benefit the people of Cottonwood.
The next work session for the Cottonwood City Council will be held on Tuesday, April 10, at 6 p.m. It is expected that the council will continue to keep the possibility of consolidation at the forefront of its concerns.
Makenna Lepowsky can be reached at 282-7795 ext. 126, or email mlepowsky@larsonnewspapers.com
