I'd like to call to order the city council study session of July 16th, 2024.

Clerk, please call the roll.

Councilmember Bushnell.

Present.

Councilmember Daniels.

Councilmember Diaz.

Deputy Mayor Hines.

Here.

Councilmember Umba here.

Councilmember Scott.

Councilmember Walker.

Here.

Mayor Woodards.

Here.

Mayor, Councilmembers of Study Session Material sent to you at 9 52.

Thank you.

All right, first let me apologize to everybody who's been waiting for our for our council meeting to for our study session to start.

We're having some technical difficulties today, and we'll not be able to stream on Zoom, nor will we be able to show the PowerPoint presentation on the screen.

But all of these materials are will be available or are available right now on our website.

And I'll make sure I get you that direct website.

But right now we want to get to our first agenda item, which is the state of the court.

And I would like to call on presiding judge Drew Hankey, Judge Steven Krupa, and Judge D.

Stontag, and Court Commissioner Randall Hansen to begin the presentation.

Thank you, Mayor Woodards, and thank you, Council, for seeing us this afternoon.

We're very excited to give you an update on what's going on in the court up the hill.

First off, we would like to start our agenda with introductions.

Next to me is Commissioner Randy Hanson, and I'm presiding Judge Drew Hankey.

And then Judge D.

Sontag, I should say Department One, and I'm Department Two, and then Judge Steve Krupa is Department 3, and then Commissioner Hansen presides over the courtroom 135.

Also, we have in our the um gallery, the uh our court administrator, Michelle Petrick, our uh uh supervisor, a court operations supervisor, Dana Um Trainer.

Andrea Kern couldn't be with us, Andrea and Mary are unable to be with us today, but Emily Spenter Felton, our therapeutic court coordinator is also here, as well as Olivia Comanares, our community justice counselor.

And then we also have 19 clerks who are hopefully busy at work while we're here.

Um what we would like to do is give you highlights of the achievements that we have from have from this past year, uh which will include some data.

Also uh talk a little bit of talk about our therapeutic courts, access to justice progress, um, and then our vision for the court in the for the future, and then any questions that you may have.

So the first uh thing that I would like to talk about is the data, and um I do have to tell you that the this data is a bit skewed because um we switched our um data uh management system uh in October.

We went from paper to the uh Energize Enterprise Justice system, and that happened in October, so we had to compile some data from our old system to our new system, and then during the time that we were coming on board with the enterprise justice uh program, we had to really slow down our um uh caseloads so that we could get adjusted to uh not only prepping for uh getting um classes on learning how to use the system and then once we went on board in October, then we also stayed our kept our uh caseload low so that the um staff and the judges could uh adjust to the new system, which was quite different as you can imagine from going from paper to a almost total um computer system.

So those are our stats for this year, hopefully uh next year.

Our our plan is to have a full year, we'll have 2024 a full year on enterprise justice, and we'll have better um stats for you at that time.

And then speaking of um energized I keep on saying the wrong word, sorry, enterprise justice.

Um we're very excited to go from a paper uh program as if you can call it that, to um a um collection program on the computer, which um the state, I don't know if you all are aware, but we've the state has been looking for a program to replace the um JIS system, which was the state state system, was built 40 plus years ago, really needed to be updated, but it's taken a long time to get a new program for the state, and um we were fortunate enough to be selected as one of the four uh pilot uh project pilot courts for this program.

But it's taken a long time to get a new program for the state.

And we were fortunate enough to be selected as one of the four pilot uh project pilot courts for this program.

Uh and as it turns out, um, the other three uh courts dropped out, and we were the one and only pilot court to start in October.

Very proud of that, and um we owe that in the large extent to our uh administrators, um Michelle and Dana and um Andrea and Mary said we're gonna do it as we were prepping uh AOC kept on saying, Are are you gonna do it?

Are you gonna do it?

Because everybody else was dropping out.

And our administrator and supervisors said we said we were gonna do it, we're committed, and we did it.

And it's been um a long journey.

We're still learning how to use the system to our to our advantage to help also the other courts throughout the state, but we're getting there.

Uh it's taking some time as at all things do, especially going from such a drastic change to something so new.

But our staff has been really receptive, and um AOC, um, as I have in my um list in here for the advantages, really gave us a lot of hands on support for the first three weeks that we went live.

We had AOC people every day in our courtrooms helping us all, uh the staff and the judges.

We all had training sessions, uh they we had they had listening sessions so that we could tell them what the issues were, and that continues now, and they're not on site any longer, but they are uh taking questions from us, trying to work through issues, and some things are taking longer than others, but um we feel like it's we're at a much better place than we were uh last year at this time.

And there are some exciting things that are gonna happen in the future because of the Energy Enterprise Justice System.

So, just a couple of comments on that.

We've paved the way for the rest of the state, so very uh proud of that.

Uh and the system is completely uh implemented, but like I said, we're still trying to make some changes that will benefit not only our court but the all the courts throughout the state.

Um, and we also have had uh multiple um other jurisdictions come and visit our courts to see how we are doing things, ask questions, and so we're a mentor court for other courts, and we'll continue to be.

This is a five-year-long project, so uh we will continue to be one of the mentor courts uh for others in the future.

And then we have ours are another highlight, um our therapeutic courts.