Court seeks to move three opioid-funded positions to general budget and requests jury and travel increases

Members of the county bench presented the courts’ 2027 budget requests, asking for several modest line increases and a structural staffing change the court said is intended to stabilize services.

The court requested a $10,000 increase to the per‑diem jury fund, saying recent and upcoming trials have nearly consumed the current balance and that statute requires exhausting the petit-jury line before drawing from jury-pay funds. Judges also asked for $5,000 more in travel and $8,600 for mileage; the mileage increase included moving RISE case-manager mileage from opioid‑funded lines into the court budget so those staff can draw mileage directly from the court’s allocation.

Most materially, the court asked that three positions — two RISE case managers and the mental‑health treatment court case manager — be shifted from the opioid fund into the court’s general budget. The mayor has offered $100,000 per year for three years toward those positions; the county commissioners’ commitment had not been finalized in the meeting, and the court cited an estimated county share of roughly $174,493.97 for the period discussed.

Judge Ready also requested $2,500 for a family‑court project previously paid from opioid funds. Court leadership emphasized that moving the positions into the general fund is a budgetary step while they continue to negotiate reimbursement from settlement/opioid funding streams.

Committee members asked clarifying questions about transportation for participants on work release and about fund balances to cover the requested increases; staff agreed to follow up on availability of opioid-settlement reimbursements and general-fund impacts.

The committee did not vote on the requests in the session and asked administration to provide fund‑balance detail during the budget process.