The City Council met on February 4, 2026, to receive an update from the Municipal Court regarding operational capacity, docket performance, caseload trends, and recent community engagement initiatives. The presiding judge highlighted significant increases in volumes for the Community Support and Property Services dockets, attributed largely to increased enforcement resources and public engagement. The court is currently operating near its envisioned capacity, with plans to hire additional temporary staff to manage surging caseloads while maintaining a four-day work week to support staff retention and public access.
Um and the first docket had one single veteran show up, and I think the docket was five or six people. Um, and no one who was homeless showed up that day. And I wasn't sure anyone was going to show up that day. The veteran came in very late, right at the end. So, in contrast, this morning, um, obviously, like what is the community support docket? And and for anyone that doesn't know, it's as addresses uh individuals that are veterans and individuals homeless. And when I say homeless, I mean cars, couch surfing, hotel rooms, literally on the streets and sheltered, not just literally on the streets and sheltered. Um, we had 69 separate individuals on that docket this morning. Um, they were all homeless as far as I could tell, and no veterans. 11 people were in jail, and then to give you an idea, recently we've had as many as over a hundred individuals on that docket. Um, and so that's a big change over eight years of what is kind of occurring. Um, obviously, this is a connection point for services, and I ask each person to address the top three things that they need right now. Um, and that can be pre-plea, post plea probation, or at all stages of the process. Um, obviously, individual groups and places come, divert New Horizons, uh VA, Borel, uh Love Inc. uh turning point are just examples. Um but like I said, the volume has increased dramatically basically lately. And I'm very cognizant to try to be mindful because everyone is coming to this docket, and expanding it would be somewhat difficult without absorbing a lot more individuals and grouped time. And so, what we've been doing recently on these dockets where they've been so large, um, we have just doing cleanup the next day and we're going into lunch. And so, to give you an example today, which was a smaller docket, not that one of those big ones, we probably were 15 minutes into the lunch hour, but on some of these days, we're 30 minutes into the lunch hour and then cleaning up for an hour the next day. And so I think that's the right way to handle it because I want to make sure we're utilizing our time appropriately. And there's been a little bit of a ramp, but I do want you to be aware that we're pushing the capacity of that as it is envisioned. Um, and it is much I talk pretty fast, right? And I talk really, really fast at that docket to try to make sure we get through it. And that's not really what you want to necessarily do. You're trying to spend enough time to encourage people and make sure that they're being heard. Um, and so we've got to remember it's I just want you to be aware of that. Um I've seen some very positive outcomes on the docket, both individuals that are newly homeless and individuals that have been homeless for long periods. I can anecdotally tell you that we had an individual that'd been homeless six to ten years on the streets and had been on the docket three times. But on that third time, he quit drinking and got housing. And to me, that was a very unusual event and very positive. Um I wish it hadn't taken three times, but third time was the charm. So something to think about. Um, the divert expansion. I think this has been a very valuable addition. Um, individuals falling out spheres of services of other agencies, helping individuals with low capacity and understanding, helping individuals just navigate the difficulties of all the things that either are or are not available to them has been critically important. Working with the prosecutor and the police officers to have better results, and so the prosecutor knows ahead of time. One of the ways we do that too is we try to put positive results at the beginning of the docket, and so the prosecutor knows ahead of time through divert and is able to tell that to the clerk so we can pull those up front and then bring those positive experiences to kind of for people that have not been there before and are really scared or nervous, can see a good result, and that's really helped. Um Project's project homeless connect. I did attend the court attends, and it does lead to positive interactions. Um, for people that are already on the community support docket to acknowledge that we're there. Um many more people that are homeless tend to have a greater level of trust because we are there. Um, and this is the first time we did this. We did recall a warrant for someone. Divert team had brought them up, they were terrified, of course. Of course, the police officers are just a few tables down. Uh, and you know, of course, we were able to do that, and that was one of the reasons we had the clerk there, and we have this case net. So, in addition to do that, so now that's the good part, right? Now, the sad part was is I made them promise they've got to show up for community support docket, and individual did not keep their promise. And so, of course, I issued new warrants, and this time it wasn't cash surety or 10%, this time it was cash owned. Now, that doesn't mean that individual can't come back to me and re engage.