Superior Court asks board to continue settlement-focused Division 7 services, seeks one-time auxiliary funding

Superior Court leaders told the Coconino County Board of Supervisors the county’s experiment with an extra courtroom pipeline known as Division 7 helped clear a pandemic backlog and that keeping its settlement and arbitration services running will be more cost-effective than restoring a full new trial division.

“Only about 2% of our cases go to trial,” Presiding Judge Ted Reed said. “What happens to the 98% is availability of attorneys and timely settlement and alternative dispute resolution.”

Reed and Court Administrator Sharon Yates appeared for the court’s budget presentation during the county’s multi-day budget hearings and asked supervisors to fund a targeted set of services rather than a fully staffed new judicial division. The court’s request — dubbed the Auxiliary Judicial Services (AJS) proposal — would preserve settlement conferences, civil arbitrations and a flexible pool of judicial coverage while redeploying salary savings from two unused court-reporter positions to offset part of the cost.

Why it matters: Reed and Yates emphasized that clearing older felony and civil dockets produces savings elsewhere in the system and improves access to timely justice. Reed used the recovery court as an example: six recent graduates in that program potentially avoided long prison terms that would have cost the community hundreds of thousands of dollars; Reed contrasted the recovery-court cost (about…