County Mayor Rogers Anderson made it clear in the past that the county needs a new juvenile court facility.
He also, as the county’s voters and ergo officials dislike debts and deficits, made clear the necessity for creativity in raising funds.
The Law Enforcement/Public Safety Committee took a swing at both Thursday evening, while meeting at 6 p.m. in the conference room of the Williamson County Administrative Complex.
They approved a resolution to, in essence, make juvenile offenders (help) pay for their own new court facility.
If the Commission agrees with the committee reccomendation when it meets on July 11, the court clerk will start adding $75 in court fees to certain cases of offending juveniles.
(Photo by Shelley Mays)
“Over a year it could raise $110,000- and more than a $1 million over a decade,” said juvenile court judge Sharon Guffee. “The legislature this year has this bill allowing us to assess an additional 75 dollars for the purpose of hopefully getting a new building down the road, so we wanted to show our good faith effort in hoping to assist that cause. We have many families who can afford to pay more than our measly little $60 in court costs. We are not an income generating court, but this is not an excessive amount based on what we are already charging and it excludes all our foster care children.”
The resolution states that the court clerk shall collect a $75 fee from anyone who:
-enters a plea of guilty or nolo contendere;
-is adjudicated at trial or handled under pretrial diversion or retirement;
-violates probation or a court order
“So it is only on our delinquent, unruly, traffic cases,” Guffee said. “Of course we cannot always collect what we assess- and we just have some families who just need to put food on the table, and if somebody cannot pay it we are not going after them, but it could help do our part in paying for a new building”
The current facility- which includes the juvenile clerk’s office, Judge Guffee’s chambers, the actual juvenile court, and also functions as the juvenile detention center for the county – is basically a wing of the county jail. It holds 12 beds.
By comparison, Rutherford County built a 64-bed facility for $6 million in 2008. The total kit-and-kaboodle, including court and clerk and etc, cost $12 million.
Guffee said that the desperate need for the juvenile court system to grow with the county only gets clearer.
“As you know there are another seven more subdivisions coming into the county, so we cannot expand our staff to what we anticipate our growth to be in the next 10 to 15 years in our current space,” she said. “We can’t fit any more people in there.”
“I do not know if you have ever been up there, but they are walking on each other up there at the juvenile facility,” Matt Milligan,county commissioner for District 3 and chairman of the Public Safety/Law Enforcement Committee, said.
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