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Courts request funding for legal services, family-court project and combined lease for drug and veterans courts
Summary
The courts requested modest budget increases for interpreter services, competency evaluations and a $50,000 contractual-services boost tied mostly to a family-court project; drug and veterans courts asked the county to approve combined lease costs at a downtown office.
The court system presented its 2026 budget requests, citing several modest increases and reductions across payroll, legal services and contractual items.
The chief judge said base salaries were unchanged but asked for an additional $6,879 to cover longevity increases. The courts requested $5,000 more for legal services (interpreters/language line) and $50,000 in contractual services for a family-court project; the judge said a family-court representative would provide fuller details on the family-court funding need in a later appearance.
The courts also asked for increased printing and physician-fee lines to cover competency evaluations, which the judge said require two practitioners and are rising with local mental-health demand. Reductions were proposed for liability insurance and law books; hardware and software lines were trimmed based on prior-year purchases.
Separately, drug court and veterans court presented a combined budget that reduced several operating lines (rent, gas, counseling) because a landlord agreed to combine lease arrangements. Veterans and drug court asked for a payroll increase to cover an existing case manager salary gap and additional funds for drug testing and combined rental obligations. The drug and veterans court lease expires at the end of this year; leaders said they had discussed a three-year option with the landlord but that space searches had not found a viable county-owned alternative.
The committee took the presentations under advisement and asked for lease copies and contract details for the family-court project before acting on the requests.
