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Justice court warns commissioners of clerk burnout and urges steps to retain trained staff
Summary
The justice court reported filings and staffing pressures, urging the county to consider making a part-time clerk full time (or other retention options) to avoid repeated training costs and procedural errors.
The presiding justice court judge (Speaker 9) told commissioners the county has recorded about 52,000 filings from 2010 to 2025 and has returned to a level of roughly 3,000 filings per year. The judge warned that training new clerks is time-consuming and that recent part-time clerks frequently leave for full-time positions elsewhere, creating recurring training burdens.
The judge urged commissioners to consider making Caitlin (a current part-time clerk) a full-time employee to improve retention and institutional knowledge, saying that retaining trained personnel is ‘‘long term more beneficial’’ for court operations. As an alternative, the judge described a contracted 1099 clerk model used by another jurisdiction to provide an experienced clerk across multiple small courts.
Commissioners discussed trade-offs, including the higher cost of benefits tied to full-time status and constraints created by county policy (vacancy posting requirements). Speaker 4 volunteered a private-pay reduction in conversation as a signal of support for retaining staff, but no formal action or vote appears in the transcript. The commissioners asked staff to consider alternatives and to return with cost and operational details.
