SEQUIM — In its ongoing investigation of how to open a municipal court — to save residents and police officers the trip to the Clallam County Courthouse in Port Angeles — Sequim has come to a bend in the road.
“Tooling up the municipal court,” Sequim City Attorney Craig Ritchie said this week, may be too expensive, especially as revenues from speeding tickets and other infractions dip.
Sequim Police Chief Robert Spinks told the City Council on Monday night that his officers are issuing fewer than half the traffic tickets they did at this time last year.
The budget is the reason, Spinks said. Due to cuts in the Police Department’s purse this year, he’s had to leave two full-time officer positions unfilled.
The Sequim force has less time for red-light runners, speeders and other traffic scofflaws, he said, adding that while citation numbers are down, criminal activity isn’t.
“It has continued to grow,” so officers are kept busy investigating and pursuing perpetrators, Spinks said.
From January through August, Sequim filed 396 infraction citations in District Court in Port Angeles; during the same period in 2008 that number was 959.
Criminal misdemeanor cases filed in the first eight months of this year numbered 312, up from 94 between Jan. 1 and Aug. 31, 2008.
The city’s revenue from penalties paid for infractions was $44,359.78 in the first eight months of last year.
This year that fell to $31,015.68.
Too soon to tell
Yet Karen Goschen, Sequim’s administrative services director, said it’s too soon to determine whether a municipal court is beyond the city’s financial reach.
The filing fees Sequim pays to District Court are high and expected to rise higher, so the city might save by establishing its own court, probably in the Sequim Transit Center on Cedar Street where the City Council has its evening meetings.
Startup costs – equipment, technology, staff – may be prohibitive, though, and Sequim is in difficult straits as it heads into development of the 2010 budget.
Last month, then-interim city manager Linda Herzog told the council it faces a revenue-to-expenditures gap of as much as $850,000.
Ritchie, the current interim city manager, has asked the council to make a decision this month on whether to move forward on the municipal court.
The 2009 budget contains $45,600 for initial expenses, but in the wake of the financial crisis — and fewer infractions, meaning fewer District Court fees — the members may decide to keep sending Sequim cases to Port Angeles.
“We still have some research to do,” Goschen noted. “The city’s decision on a municipal court needs to be made with the long-term activity level in mind.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.