Presiding Judge Neli Trevino Santos outlines Houston Municipal Courts' $26.9M FY27 general-fund budget

Presiding Judge Neli Trevino Santos presented the Houston Municipal Courts Department’s proposed FY27 budget to a city council committee, saying the general-fund request is approximately $26,913,000 with special funds totaling about $2,756,000 and overall program expenditures up about 4% from the prior year. "I am very, very pleased to be here today to present the municipal courts, FY '27 budget," Santos said as she opened the slide presentation.

Santos said the FY27 general-fund figure represents a roughly 5% increase from the FY26 budget, driven principally by pension, health insurance and the HOPE program increases. She described the department as organized into eight programs and said courts worked with finance and Ernst & Young to refine performance measures intended to better reflect court operations.

The presentation broke costs into personnel and non-personnel components: the FY27 general fund was shown as about 77% personnel and 23% non-personnel, with examples of non-personnel expenses including court interpreters, mailing of court notices, citation books and contract security. Santos also noted that special funds vary widely by purpose and composition.

Santos highlighted several program-level measures and initiatives. The collections and compliance program launched an email-based service in August 2025 that, through April 30, 2026, processed 7,963 email requests (about 884 per month); the department will add performance tracking for mail and email processing to ensure compliance. New court-operations metrics will track average days to process expungements and the number of case records securely deleted from the case-management system to protect privacy.

She described judicial operations’ specialized dockets—homeless, veterans, youth diversion and prostitution diversion—and said a new metric will measure the share of cases adjudicated through those dockets as well as the number of cases receiving interpreter services. For FY26 accomplishments, Santos said the homeless docket (through March 2026) had assisted 524 individuals and resolved 2,284 cases; Teen Court served more than 150 students last year, and 46 seniors were recognized at a recent Teen Court graduation.

Santos told the committee the department implemented a new jury-management system in FY26 that offers a paperless flow and debit-card payment options, and she said the court is advancing site selection and design for a new municipal court building. Santos also reported the department’s annual customer satisfaction survey returned a 99.6% favorable rating across the main and satellite courts.

Council members pressed for clarifications. Vice Chair Castillo asked, "What is driving the increase, the 29% increase in the municipal court technology fund?" Santos replied the apparent increase reflects vendor-provided funding tied to collections contracts and an internal realignment of costs rather than a direct increase in the court costs citizens pay when they pay citations. "We do get some funding from vendors ... and it's just also some realignment of some costs," she said.

Councilmember Ramirez recounted being subpoenaed and seeing court staff—Santos herself—assisting people in the lobby, and asked whether the courts use email for reminders. Santos said email addresses are not captured on officer-written citations, so the courts rely primarily on text messaging for reminders and notifications; the new jury system is not yet configured to send emails, but text opt-ins have been used to manage juror attendance during a vendor transition.

Ramirez also asked about an award the courts received. Santos credited the public information officers and named staff who prepared the application, saying Houston won the Texas Municipal Courts Education Center traffic-safety award for large municipalities.

Councilmember Martinez praised youth engagement efforts and urged cross-department collaboration; Santos said juvenile case managers collaborate with the Department of Neighborhoods’ anti-gang team but are primarily funded by a special juvenile case-manager fund derived from court costs on citations, which restricts that funding to juvenile-related services. Martinez also asked whether the court has studied charging higher wedding fees ("weekdays is a $100, weekends, a 150"); Santos said fee increases must be justified and go through the city’s fee-schedule and finance processes and noted staffing-cost increases may require revisiting fees.

Santos closed by thanking staff and offering to return with updates on the new building and other initiatives. The committee recessed and planned to reconvene at 1:30 p.m. with administration regulatory affairs and human resources on the agenda.

Ending: The committee did not take formal votes on the budget in this session; Santos and staff provided information and answered council questions, and committee members requested follow-up details on the technology fund, jury-notification capabilities, and fee schedules.