02 City Council Min 08-03-04 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Councilman Guest asked what contracting services was for City Attorney Schenk he uses consulting services, who are experts in their fields, to aid him when necessary, but tries to find that for free whenever possible. He also mentioned outside legal costs not covered by TMRS insurance are transferred to this account. He indicated his year to date was $12,941.00. Councilman Bell asked if these funds couldn't be put into a contingency fund and pulled out when needed. City Attorney Schenk said that when he needs those services, he doesn't have time to go before Council and ask for those funds, and besides, he tries to stay within the budget on this. He said those funds which are not used by the end of the year are transferred back into the General Fund. The total cut for that department was $2700. On the Municipal Court budget, Municipal Court Judge Tom Hunt came forward and related that he had proposed to add two court clerks in the budget. He mentioned that he has a temporary at the moment. He explained last year they filed an average of 638 cases a month and this year so far has been averaging 818 cases a month, which is a 38% increase. He continued that the collections averaged last year $50,351 and this year they have averaged $61,961 per month. He said they had a clerk leave in the fall and have had two persons try to fill that position but didnot stay and he felt that was because being a court clerk was a high stress job. He mentioned there were 1200 cases filed in January, and because they had money available in the budget, they hired a temporary. He said the four court clerks in the budget was same number of clerks in their budget since 1990. Councilman Guest said if you don't have the capacity to collect, then there is no use in issuing fines. Judge Hunt agreed and explained that the temporary clerk helped catch up some because of the record fines in January and also had her doing collections. She collected $6700 and her pay was only $5400.