By now, court consolidation should be seen as inevitable
By now, court consolidation should be seen as inevitable
The first reaction might well be “what were they thinking” when reading that Mahoning County commissioners voted last week to approve a 10-year lease for new office space for the county court in Canfield.
We’re not passing judgment on the general terms of the lease, which provides 6,970 square feet of space for about $12 a square foot per year at the beginning of the 10-year lease and $14 at the end. Unlike some other leases county officials have signed in the past, this one makes the owner clearly responsible for maintaining the structural integrity of the building.
And, it should be noted, no better bids were received when the county advertised to lease space for the county court. Indeed, no other bid was received.
Tied down for a decade
The provision we find troublesome is the length of the lease, 10 years, with no visible escape clause. This is troublesome only because the lease is being signed at a time when virtually everyone — except the judges and court employees who might be unfavorably impacted — seem to recognize that the time has come for court consolidation of some type.
Mahoning County has four county courts, in Canfield, Boardman, Austintown and Sebring. Youngstown has three municipal court judges and there are municipal courts in Struthers and Campbell.
By the numbers
That’s nine county and municipal courts handling the arraignment, traffic, misdemeanor and small claims needs of fewer than 240,000 people. The county now has one court for every 26,000 people, compared to one for more than 32,000 people when it was at its population peak a generation ago.
Last week, about the same time that county commissioners were inking their 10-year lease for one county court, the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber board of directors announced its support for a plan to consolidate Mahoning County’s lower court system and to eliminate one of Youngstown’s three municipal court judgeships.
Just looking at the numbers — at the cost of running the courts, at the demands that judges are making for facilities, at the duplication of support services in the various clerks’ offices — makes a clear argument for consolidation.
Setting a new standard
It is possible that under any reorganization plan, maintaining a county court in Canfield would make sense. If so, Mahoning County commissioners could argue that we’ve made them a scapegoat for the purposes of this editorial.
That is not our intention. We believe it is important for all county and municipal officials who are in anyway involved with making decisions for the lower courts to begin making those decisions from a new baseline. They should be sending a clear message that things are going to have to change — and some of those changes must come sooner than 10 years from now.
Working an escape clause into this lease may have cost a few dollars more, but it would have sent a valuable message that the days of doing business as usual are over.