By CRAIG FREILICH

POTSDAM -- When the Village of Potsdam court shuts down next month, it will save $150,000 a year and three people will lose their jobs, but town court will become much busier as it takes on the extra cases.

Senior Village Court Clerk Shelly Warner and her deputy court clerk, Sheila Guerin, “definitely do not have jobs” once the closure is officially complete Dec. 7 at noon.

Village Justice Nicholas Pignone will also be out of his job, Warner said. Acting Village Justice Margaret Garner stepped down several months ago.

The town has made one part-time court clerk full time and given raises to both clerks to handle what is expected to be a much greater workload.

And the two town court justices, Samuel Charleson and James Mason, will be doubling the number of court sessions, from four per month to eight or more, to deal with the heavier caseload.

Warner is concerned that the Town Court will have difficulty handling the increased number of cases.

“They are going to be overwhelmed,” she said.

Help From State?

Town officials are in the dark about what compensation, if any, the state – which has been enticing municipalities with money to encourage consolidation -- will provide for the extra expense taking on cases formerly handled by the village court.

While the village will no longer pay two village justices and two court clerks, along with associated expenses, the village will also no longer receive revenues from fines and surcharges levied by the court, according to Village Clerk Lori Queor. But village officials expect to come out ahead by $150,000.

The town will now have the expense of running the court, but it will also realize revenues that they haven’t seen before, from fines for traffic tickets and on other fines levied against violators in the village and the town.

“We will still be getting revenue from parking tickets and code office tickets, but nothing else” through the court, Queor said.

Funding for the town court has to increase, Potsdam Town Supervisor Marie Regan said, because more personnel will be hired, and more money will be going to current court personnel for what is expected to be an increase in workload.

“We’re going from one-and-a half-court clerk positions to two, and we’ve upped the salaries because they will be working more,” Regan said.

Chief Clerk Laurie Hayes is getting an increase from $15,000 as a part-time clerk to $40,000 as full-time chief clerk, and Deputy Clerk Sherri Stone will be getting more than $37,000.

More Security Needed

The town will also be hiring a part-time bailiff as needed during trials and the more frequent regular court sessions, “and we’ll be paying for more heat and more lights” when the court convenes in the refurbished former town hall at 35 Market St., Regan said.

“We’ve tried to be conservative, but that’s where the increase in the court’s budget is from.”

Regan said the village came up with a figure of $152,567 less in expenses for them in the first year of the combined court, “and we’d like to think that is something (the state) would compensate us for, but I haven’t a clue,” Regan said. “I just don’t know how the compensation is going to work.”

“I wish I could give you a definitive answer,” Supervisor Regan said. “We’ve never received any official letter, nothing. We got a phone call explaining that they would audit the village’s books and give us some relief when submitting our budget, where we would make a small deduction to compensate us. And the comptroller’s office in Syracuse said yes, we would receive some compensation.”

But so far, it seems the offer might take the form of some “wiggle room” on the tax cap if the town’s budget exceeds that. This leaves the impression that the state will only allow the town to raise taxes higher than they would be able to do under the tax cap, but there is no offer of funding from the state Department of State or comptroller’s office of the kind that they offered in the past to municipalities that take steps to shrink or dissolve a government or consolidate services.

Concerns Remain

Village Court Clerk Warner, who has been in the job for 23 years, says she doesn’t think that combining the town and village courts is a good idea. “This court is too large,” Warner said.

In 2014, Warner said, the village court “started” 1,842 charges, and “closed” 2,003 charges. She said that was a typical yearly tally.

The merged court will greatly expand their schedule of sessions on Thursdays. In the new court, Town Justice Samuel Charleson will hold court on the first four Wednesdays of each month, hearing vehicle and traffic cases at 10 a.m. and penal law cases at noon, and Justice James Mason will be in session on the first four Thursdays of each month.

“The village court is unique, in the amount of cases we handle and the fact that we deal with the colleges” to an extent the town court has not, Warner said. “I just want to see if they can handle it.

“I will do everything in my power to facilitate a smooth transition, they know I will, but I think it’s going to take months longer than Dec. 7 at noon to transfer cases. I wish residents had a clearer understanding of what’s going on.”

“I expect a very smooth transition, but they will be very busy, especially at the beginning of the change,” said Supervisor Regan. “But I expect they will do a very good job for everyone.”

Warner feels somewhat betrayed that the court merger is being implemented. “I believe the village taxpayers voted loudly not to dissolve the village” and turn over village functions to the town in the 2011 referendum on village dissolution, which resulted in a more than two-to-one rejection of the proposal. The vote was 334 in favor, 687 against.

Not long after that, the village board moved to close the village court and pass the responsibility to the town court, trying to save money in the spirit of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s quest to lower property taxes by trimming expenses through, among other things, sharing services among local governments.

“If I’d had the time after the last election I would have spearheaded a permissive referendum on the courts” to revisit the board’s decision, Warner said.

Believing such a referendum would have repudiated the village board court decision, Warner said “the result would have spoken volumes and we wouldn’t be here today closing courts.”

Warner said she is “shattered” by the way the merging of the village and town courts has been conducted.

“They’ve had four years to facilitate the plan” once the village board decided to go ahead with the merger, with the goal of saving taxpayers money. “They waited until the last four months even bringing it to the table and they still haven’t been speaking with the court. There’s been one meeting,” Warner said.

While Warner might have thought village administration should have been more supportive during the transition, Village Administrator Everett Basford said his office and the board never had the responsibility or the legal right to administer the court.

He said nearly every aspect of closing the village court and preparing for the transition is up to the village court officers.

Village government was responsible for the decision in 2011 to close the court as a way to cut village taxes. But beyond maintaining records of cases closed before the transition, administration of the village court is up to the judges and the clerks, Basford said in an email to North Country This Week.

“The success of the transfer of records relies on the preparation and status of the Village Court staff itself,” he said.

And as for that one meeting they had with court members, “Ms. Warner was at that meeting and chose to leave in the middle,” he said.

Meanwhile Warner said she is also concerned about what she believes is the good record the village court has established.

“We do not automatically make the maximum fines, and the judges here listen to cases of individual indigency,” said Warner, a 23-year veteran of Potsdam courts who worked in many local lawyers’ offices before her appointment, and who put in years with the U.S. Army’s legal system before that.