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 therapeutic court operations and case management and said bringing some staff costs under the mental-health sales-tax eligibility is allowable, given the judicial and therapeutic nature of the work. She said the county has secured grant awards and other funds exceeding $881,000 and later referenced bringing in “right over a million dollars” through grants and awards for therapeutic-court operations.

On staffing, Judge Orozco requested reclassification of the district court administrator/probation director position from grade 19 step 7 to grade 20 step 6, and she provided a projected first-year and second-year financial impact (the transcript recorded a reclassification “negative of $5,283” as an accounting item). She also asked the board to formally reclassify a court therapeutic-court coordinator role (currently combining coordinator and case-management duties) to reflect its coordination responsibilities; Orozco said that coordinator role is fully grant-funded and the step increase requested would not affect the county general fund.

Judge Orozco described an immediate interpreter shortage: the long-time local contracted interpreter resigned for school-district employment, and recruiting certified interpreters by the state AOC list yielded no local part-time candidates willing to travel for hourly work. She said the court’s best option was to contract for a full-time interpreter at $65 per hour (the best available offer reported), which she estimated would cost roughly $57,200 annually for the county; she also noted an alternative single-language option would cost about $208,000 annually, which she called unaffordable. The judge said courts are statutorily required to provide interpreter services and that remote/technology options currently have limits for private attorney-defendant consultations.

Commissioners raised concerns about relying on grant funding and the county’s commitments to the region’s mental-health recovery center. Commissioner comments emphasized caution about budgeting ongoing county obligations that hinge on grant renewals and on the unresolved intercounty discussions described earlier in the meeting. No formal board vote or commitment on the district court requests was recorded; the presentation was treated as a workshop item and commissioners said they will consider the requests during budget discussions.