Consideration of Appointments:  On Call Judges for the Flagstaff Municipal Court.
 

Appoint on-call judges as follows:  Paul Christian, Gerald McCafferty, Tom Miller, Jennifer Nagel, Warren Sanford, Susan Slasor, and Sandra Wagner

 

• Policy Decision or Reason for Action:
  • Appointment of all magistrates is required to be completed by Flagstaff City Council under both the City Charter and FCC SECTION 1-15-001-0002(C)(1).

• All funding for on-call judges is included in the approved court budget.

• Improving public safety by providing coordinated coverage for the Municipal Court with other courts within the county and provides for continuous coverage for all case types and filings.
• Effective Governance

No.

• Approve the appointments.
• Don’t approve all or some of the appointments as recommended by the Presiding Judge and request additional candidates for Council consideration.
• Don’t approve any appointments for On-Call judges.  This would result in a significant impact on court operations, resulting in a shift of judicial resources to those types of hearings and events that have legal and time sensitive requirements.  This would have a significant negative impact on revenues and service to the public.  The efficacy of law enforcement would be undermined.

For numerous years we have been coordinating our initial appearance calendar with other courts in the areas to reduce duplication of effort and costs associated with jail time and transportation of prisoners. Recently, we have added the coordination of after hour search warrants as well. This provides law enforcement a single contact point to get search warrant approval when no court is open to provide it. Our On-Call judges have been a key to be able to provide these services.

• Appointment of On-Call judges allows for ongoing coverage of initial appearances as required by law within 24 hours following arrest (including weekends and holidays),provides for coverage for absences of other judges due to illness or planned absences and allows for additional operations to be performed as the court calendar allows.
• When an individual is arrested they can only be held for up to 24 hours before they must appear before a magistrate who will determine if there is probable cause for the arrest and set release conditions. Should they not appear in this time, they must be immediately released.

Having On-Call judges perform our weekend and holiday initial appearances allows us the guarantee that those accused of a crime will have an appearance before a magistrate and have release conditions set in accordance to the violation charged.

None.

See Options on Page 1.