Is Municipal Court Moving to City Hall? (Video)

It’s Thursday afternoon at municipal court in East Providence, and nearly all the chairs are filled.

Residents have come to the building at 610 Waterman Ave., behind the East Providence Senior Activity Center, on a variety of lower-level traffic offenses, including speeding and expired registrations. Later in the afternoon, Municipal Court Judge Harry Asquith hears animal control charges, such as failure to restrain, and the housing citations.

Over the course of more than four hours on June 30, Asquith presided over nearly 300 such cases. That doesn't include the more than 100 cases for the week that were pre-paid or otherwise disposed of. Municipal court is held once a week, typically 52 weeks a year.

East Providence has had its own municipal court since 1994. It’s now staffed by a full-time administrator and two clerks, a part-time judge and two part-time bailiffs.

In recent months, however, as part of an ongoing discussion on how to save the city money in the face of a deficit of at least $6.3 million on the school side, Mayor Bruce Rogers has said he wants to move the municipal court function back to City Hall, where it started.

But the proposal has been somewhat vague in the details, court staffers said.

“We don’t know what the deal is,” administrator June Lundstrom said. “Maybe they’re not going to get rid of us and they’re just going to move us.”

Rogers said he’s looking to conserve dollars by moving the court back to City Hall, where probate court is already held.

“I’m not after anybody personally,” Rogers said. “I’m just out to save the taxpayers money.”

Municipal Court, in the beginning

Municipal court in East Providence was established in 1994 and was initially run out of the then-City Clerk’s office, Lundstrom said.

“It was basically a convenience for the citizens of East Providence,” Lundstrom said. “It was never a revenue generator.”

In the early days of the court, it was held in Room 306 at City Hall and employed two clerks and a part-time bailiff, Lundstrom said. She was made the full-time administrator in 1997.

Initially, the clerks were appointed by the City Council, Lundstrom said. In 1999 and 2000, the clerks petitioned to become part of the steelworkers’ union because of the sensitivity of the personal information they were handling and were accepted, she said. The judge and bailiffs remained council-appointed positions.

Over time, the number of cases increased and there were security concerns about members of the public wandering City Hall, Lundstrom said.

The court moved in 2001

In 2001, the city moved the Municipal Court to its current building, in what was then part of the East Providence Senior Center’s library. The clerks moved into a building next door.

The revenue generated by the municipal court is determined by the number of violations written, Lundstrom said. That money goes into an enterprise fund in the city budget.

Until recent years, the court generated a surplus each year, she said. The extra money went into the city’s general fund, she said. 

In 2008, for the first time, the municipal court showed a deficit, Lundstrom said. Since then, the court has been catching up, and Lundstrom anticipates it will break even this year. (The city does pay for the heat and electricity at the buildings outside of the enterprise fund.)

The number of violations issued is up, Lundstrom said, partly because of grants that encourage police officers to write tickets for campaigns such as Click It or Ticket. In fiscal year 2009, the court handled 4,105 tickets. In fiscal year 2010, the number increased to 6,273, she said.

She also anticipates that with the passage of legislation that makes not wearing a seat belt a primary offense, those numbers will only increase next year.

The revenue from court costs and fines on traffic violations is divided between the state and the city, Lundstrom said. The state takes $4 off the top of any traffic violation heard in the court, she said. From there, the additional state portion is different for each offense.

For example, if a driver gets a ticket dismissed at the arraignment under Rhode Island’s good driving law, out of the $35 in court costs, the state gets $10, plus the initial $4.

Meanwhile, revenue from city code violations goes only to the city, she said.

The court’s approved budget this fiscal year is $210,150. Lundstrom makes $49,235 and the clerks each make $35,425, plus benefits. Judge Asquith makes about $14,000, but one of the two part-time bailiff’s salary is also deducted from his salary, due to a longstanding arrangement.

The mayor's plan

Rogers has brought up the idea of moving the municipal court to City Hall several times over the past few months since he has taken office.

At the most recent meeting, Councilman William Conley asked for a fiscal analysis of whether it would save the city money or not to move the court and Rogers agreed to it.

Rogers envisions holding municipal court in City Council chambers, where he said probate court is held.

He said he anticipates moving Lundstrom over to the City Clerk’s office to be the prime person to receive tickets and said the city would probably need another clerk to help her.

He said he doesn’t believe the city would need all three positions, but said the affected clerk could potentially bump another employee because of her pay scale. Those issues would need to be worked out with the union, he said.

As for the two buildings, one of which also houses the police department’s community services unit, Rogers said he hopes to pass the buildings on to Robert Rock, the director of the Senior Center.

He could lease them out to businesses or services that cater to seniors, as so many already visit the nearby center each day, Rogers said.

If that doesn’t work, Rogers anticipates at least sealing the buildings so that the city no longer has to pay for heat and electricity.

(Interim City Manager Orlando Andreoni has also mentioned the possibility of returning the city’s traffic lower-level traffic misdemeanors to the Traffic Tribunal, but Rogers said that option is not currently on the table.)

Lundstrom said she’s not against a move to City Hall, but said she’s concerned that the court handled a lot more cases than it used to when it started out and wonders how the roughly 300 people who usually attend the court each week are going to park there.

She also said she worries about the two clerks, one of whom is a single mother. She said the office works to generate extra revenue when it can, by trying to collect on old tickets. And she said she recently saved the city $15,000 a year in benefits when she married her husband, a police officer, and went onto his benefits plan.

But she added that, “I’m sure he’s trying to do whatever is best for the city.”