By: Dean Vaglia | Mount Clemens-Clinton-Harrison Journal | Published November 7, 2024
MOUNT CLEMENS — City commissioners approved the city’s allocations to the 41B District Court’s 2025 budget at their Nov. 4 meeting. Amendments to the 2024 budget were approved as well.
Judge Sebastian Lucido was tapped by the court to speak on its behalf to Mount Clemens’ commissioners, going over the court’s ability to cover the cost of its construction bonds. Declining court revenues from a decrease in cases — 16,934 from 27,007 in 2019 — has led to a budget shortfall of $805,000 in 2025. Mount Clemens will cover $104,650 of the shortfall.
“Our funding is dependent on the police departments,” Lucido said. “The more the tickets they write, the more misdemeanors they arrest people for, the higher (our caseload is) and we can’t control that. That’s beyond our control.”
Mayor Laura Kropp discussed the possibility of increasing traffic enforcement based on information from the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments.
“A lot of the SEMCOG data is showing an increase of traffic fatalities and accidents that are more violent in nature, and so that’s a situation we’re actually looking at and going, ‘OK, is enforcement down and is it related,’” Kropp said.
City Commissioner Spencer Calhoun asked Lucido about a possible higher authority stepping in.
“Last year, the former administrator (James) McGrail came and he told us that there was a chance the Legislature and Supreme Court would take action to make sure the courts weren’t funded by fines,” Calhoun said. “Has there been any movement on that?”
Lucido believed the move away from fines would be approved at the state level, though cautioned the situation could change due to the then-impending Michigan Legislature and Supreme Court justice elections.
“They just recently said, the state court administrator’s office, that they were going to be sending somebody from Lansing to all of our courts to review our books and look over our finances,” Lucido said. “They’re at least taking some steps towards (state funding).”
Disorderly persons ordinance delayed
A planned second reading of the city’s amended disorderly persons ordinance was removed from the agenda ahead of the meeting.
Kropp said the decision to delay the vote was to give more time for commissioners to review the ordinance. It is expected to be addressed again in the next few meetings.