LAKE COUNTY ? County officials are negotiating with the Judicial Council of California, Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) to transfer the county”s two court facilities to state property. The information came to light in a Tuesday board of supervisors discussion about plans to develop substations in Lucerne and Middletown for the Lake County Sheriff”s Department.
“It”s my intent to establish three operational areas,” Lake County Sheriff Rodney Mitchell told the board. “Typically we”ve done a north and a south division, so to speak, but we”re going to be losing the Lower Lake substation, which is in Clearlake … we”re ultimately going to be losing that to the courts.”
Chief deputy administrative officer Matthew Perry told the Record-Bee Wednesday that ownership of the county”s two trial court facilities is being negotiated. One is the South Civic Center in Clearlake, also known as Dept. 4 of the Lake County courthouse. The other is the fourth floor of the courthouse building in Lakeport, housing departments 1,2,3 and the juvenile court.
“We”re not proposing that they own the fourth floor of the courthouse,” Perry said. “It”s called a transfer of responsibility. We would maintain the title.” As for ownership of the South Civic Center, Perry said, “We”re not sure yet what we”re going to do there. We haven”t decided how we”re going to negotiate for that building.”
The negotiations arose out of the last phase of implementing a law passed in 1997 regarding the funding and operation of trial courts throughout California. “There were three big pieces of that, one was employees. Employees who worked in the courts were transferred from county employees to state employees.
The county pays to the state a certain amount of money each year, and the state funds operation of courts in terms paying employees. The last part of that law is the transfer of the facilities.” Perry said.
“The intent of the law is to make sure trial courts are operated consistently throughout the state, and that they”re funded so someone in Orange County would not have better access than someone in Alpine County,” Perry said.
Perry said he is preparing a report for the Lake County Board of Supervisors about the status of the negotiations with the AOC. Perry said he plans to have that report and a request for direction before the board in January or February of 2008.
District 2 Supervisor Jeff Smith told Mitchell Tuesday, “I have to wonder if the Lower Lake operation, with the sheriff”s substation there and the way we”re transporting prisoners and stuff, it”s almost nuts that they would boot us out of there.”
“I think it”s premature to call it ?booting,”” Mitchell said. “All that would be coordinated. That”s something that administrative staff, county counsel and I would be working with the courts to make sure ? the courts want a holding area. They must have a holding area. But from an operational perspective we wouldn”t be staffing that and delivering the service that we need to be delivering, primarily starting with Middletown.”
Answering a question from Smith, Mitchell said that response time to Clearlake Oaks from the proposed Lucerne substation would be the same as the response time from the Lower Lake substation in Clearlake.
Contact Tiffany Revelle at trevelle@record-bee.com.
