New Fairview and Boyd have two inter-local (ILA) agreements. The first was approved in July 2023 for New Fairview to operate Boyd’s municipal court. The second ILA was approved in September 2023 for Boyd to provide 15 hours a week in city police services to New Fairview. This post will focus on the court ILA. The following best explains and summarizes the court ILA as copied from the July 17, 2023 New Fairview City Council agenda packet (link at bottom).
Start of copy- “City staff recently met with the City Manager of Boyd, William Taylor, and the Interim Police Chief, Jason Schmidt, to discuss possible contracting of law enforcement services for the City of New Fairview. During the conversation, Mr. Taylor asked if the City of New Fairview would be interested in providing Municipal Court Service for the City of Boyd. They recently lost their Court Administrator and have some concerns about the condition of their court documents and finances. The City of New Fairview has the knowledge, skills, and ability in our Assistant City Secretary/Court Administrator, Susan Greenwood, to be able to operate the Boyd Municipal Court. We also have the capacity to do this without any negative impact on our Municipal Court operations.
The operation of a municipal court by a city for another city is not uncommon. In fact, the Town of Trophy Club and City of Roanoke are doing this, as are the Cities of Colleyville and Keller.
Our Court Administrator, Susan Greenwood, did an audit of the Boyd municipal court documents, cases, and finances, and presented her findings at the June 15 Boyd City Council meeting. The Boyd City Council directed their City Administrator to work with the City of New Fairview on an Interlocal Agreement (ILA) for New Fairview to begin the operations of Boyd’s municipal court. Here are the highlights from the attached ILA that have been worked out:
● NEW FAIRVEIW will provide all municipal court services for BOYD and operate the municipal court dockets at the New Fairview City Hall every month.
● BOYD will provide a certified peace officer to be the Bailiff for each municipal court docket.
● The current Municipal Court Judge for NEW FAIRVIEW will serve as the presiding judge for the NEW FAIRIVEW municipal court and will be appointed as the Municipal Court Judge to preside over BOYD cases.
● BOYD shall provide NEW FAIRVIEW municipal court staff full access to BOYD’s municipal court software to be able to take payments, process citations, prepare court documents, and perform all other related tasks for BOYD.
● NEW FAIRVIEW will prepare several required reports to BOYD and will submit their required State of Texas reports.
● All financial transactions for BOYD municipal court will be kept separate from NEW FAIRVIEW’s municipal court financial transactions.
● All Human Resource services necessary for the recruitment, screening, employment, and training of all personnel required to provide municipal court services for NEW FAIRVIEW and BOYD, including providing all employee policies and procedures and the administration thereof shall be provided by NEW FAIRVIEW.
● The NEW FAIRVIEW City Administrator and the BOYD City Administrator will jointly address operational and policy decisions that may arise from operating the combined municipal court system.
Staff will need to hire a Permit Tech/Administrative Assistant to help our Court Administrator with the increased workload from Boyd. Staff are also still working details and costs for Boyd to provide New Fairview with law enforcement services for enforcement of city ordinance violation calls (ie. loud noise, soliciting without a registration, child safety zone, city park violations, etc.), and traffic enforcement.
FINANCIAL CONSIDERATION:
1. BOYD agrees to pay NEW FAIRIVEW one-third (1/3) of all court revenues collected after state fines and fees are paid to the State of Texas. Payments shall be made to NEW FAIRVIEW on a monthly basis.
2. NEW FAIRVIEW shall contract for and pay directly to the contractor all costs associated with municipal judge and municipal prosecutor services for BOYD related court actions and will allocate a portion of the cost of these services based on BOYD caseload and dockets, to be paid by BOYD monthly.
3. BOYD and NEW FAIRVIEW will budget an annual sum to be determined based on agreed upon needs for court security and court technology to be paid for from the court technology and court security funds held by BOYD and NEW FAIRVIEW.
4. BOYD will contract and pay directly for their municipal court software, collection agency fee, credit card processing service and any citation software.
5. BOYD will be responsible for payment of any municipal court related state fees.
6. BOYD will pay its portion of any fees assessed as court costs to NEW FAIRVIEW for court security
7. BOYD will provide a dedicated laptop and printer to NEW FAIRVIEW to use for BOYD’s municipal court operations.
8. BOYD will provide a certified peace officer to be the Bailiff for each municipal court docket.” – End of Copy