Faced with a six-figure deficit, the council held executive session personnel evaluations and made several amendments to the city’s budget at a Feb. 27 meeting.

The council voted to put Purvis on leave due to findings revealed in his evaluation, which he requested to be made public.

Margaret Robbins, of Hardin and Robbins consulting firm, who has been evaluating and working with the court and its clerks since November, spoke throughout the majority of the evaluation.

Robbins went over several reports she filed and highlighted the problems the court had before she began working to correct the problems.

The issues brought up included complaints not being sworn in, improper dismissal of court cases, signed and uncompleted judgments for capias pro fines (a type of warrant) improper collection of court costs, subpoenas being issued instead of summons to notify defendants of charges filed and outdated or incorrect forms used.

One of the major problems she discussed was the court’s processes regarding hot checks.

Robbins found that the court had more than 800 cases filed of issues of bad checks and none had sworn complaints.

“That means the court had no authority to take any money or order any restitution from any defendant,” Robbins said. “That also means that this is a great injustice to the merchants in this city because these cases were not handled properly.”

She estimated there was more than $130,000 in fine money collected that the court had “no authority” to collect and would have to return.

“The bottom line is, if the city has no authority to collect any type of money, then you can’t keep it,” Robbins said. “You have to give it to the unclaimed property division of the state.”

City attorney Leonard Schneider clarified that the city will have three years to find the individuals to reimburse them. It also gives the city three years to raise money as well.

After three years, the money will have to be returned to the state comptroller’s office.

When questioned by the council, Purvis said he wasn’t aware that procedures and processes were being done incorrectly.

“The things that I haven’t done, is truthfully, simply from ignorance,” Purvis said. “None of us know all of it all, I don’t care who it is. You just can’t know everything. That’s fine. I accept it, all the wrongs that I did.”

Purvis, who said he has been a judge for more than 35 years, served 28 of those years for the city of Magnolia.

“I’m sorry this has come to this type of situation,” he said during his evaluation. “Whatever things are wrong, I take full responsibility. Court clerks have no responsibility for this.”

Later in the meeting, the council voted to cut two positions from the police department; one police officer and one police department clerk.

Along with reductions in the police department, they voted to reduce the court staff from three full-time clerks to two full-time and one part-time clerk and eliminated night court.

The council also discussed moving to a four-day work week at city hall and moving to centralized purchasing of supplies.

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