District Court seeks sales-tax allocation, staff reclassifications and interpreter contract funding

Franklin County District Court Judge Orozco presented a package of requests during a Sept. 24 workshop, asking the board to use a portion of the county’s mental-health and substance-use sales tax to support court staff and services and to fund a full-time interpreter contract.

Judge Orozco asked the board to allocate 20% of her salary and 20% of the district court administrator/probation director salary to the mental-health sales tax fund. She said that amount would be roughly $86,500 (presented as the approximate allocation available under that formula) and argued the sales tax was intended to support judicial and therapeutic-court staff: “the sales tax was created for this purpose,” she said.

Orozco told commissioners the court has secured substantial grant funding for…