At a Dec. 8 Magnolia City Council meeting, the results of a recent evaluation of the Municipal Court department were released in the meeting’s agenda packet, which identified several problems with court procedures.

The evaluation, which was ordered by the Council, was done by Hardin & Robbins LLC Court Consulting Services, based out of the Austin area.

The Council approved hiring the firm to perform an evaluation of the practices and procedures of the department at an Oct. 13 meeting.

The call for an evaluation came just one day prior to the Oct. 14 resignation of former city marshal Robert Elkin, who held the position for only a month, and less than a month after the resignation of court clerk Patricia Perez, who resigned Sept. 25.

Both cited personal reasons as their main cause for quitting.

Margaret Robbins, one of the founding members of the firm who said she performed the evaluation “a little over a month ago,” submitted an 18-page assessment on Dec. 3 to City Attorney Leonard Schneider detailing the results of a thorough evaluation of court procedures and practices.

In the report, Robbins said the firm “identified several concerns relating to management, procedural/processing and judicial issues during the assessment.”

She went on to write in the assessment that her firm discovered problems with how the court “handles complaints, dismissals, judgments, payments, time payment fee, unrestrained child fines, deferred disposition, driving safety courses, warrants, failure to appear, capias pro fines, jail credit, assessment of court costs, handling of juveniles and indigent defendants.”

Despite the long list, Robbins said that they are all common problems that she has seen in many other cities she has evaluated.

One of the more pressing problems she found was with incorrect court costs and fees that the court had not been collecting.

“I have probably by now checked 180 cities and not found one city where court costs are correct,” said Robbins, who has worked in the court system for more than 30 years.

She said the problems stemmed from outdated computer software from vendors.

However, money loss should be minimal in such cases.

“Most of the court costs that were wrong were for offenses that they didn’t handle a lot, so they weren’t a big issue for Magnolia,” Robbins said.

But the biggest problem Robbins said she found was with outdated forms.

“What I’ve found in most courts is that forms are important,” she said. “Once you have those in line and have those proper in the court, then the processes just fall into place.”

Since her day-and-a-half-long evaluation in October, Robbins has been back twice to make sure new processes are being followed.

She has since worked with the court to order up-to-date forms and helped with inputting those into a computer system.

Among the other items the report details is the issue of executing warrants, of which the report cleared up confusion over issues of authority and suggested the city look in-house for a warrant officer.

“Both a warrant officer and a marshal have the same jurisdiction to serve process — the county in which the city is situated,” the report states. “We suggest that instead of a marshal, the city use one of the city police officers as a warrant officer.”

The Council recently voted to contract with her firm, which means she will visit the court once a month to help ensure the proper functioning of the court and will also be available anytime by phone.

She said her contract is “open-ended,” but does not expect to be needed for much longer.

“It will probably be another three or four months,” she said. “The clerks have been very diligent in getting the forms in the system and new processes in place. They’re working hard enough that I don’t think I’ll need as long as the Council thought I would.”

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