Birmingham commission okays court budget

By Grace Lovins

The 2026 budget for the 48th district court was approved by Birmingham City Commissioners during their Monday, December 1, meeting.

The court proposed a $5,150,000 operating budget, showing a roughly $200,000 increase from the previous year.

Birmingham finance director Mary Chavez explained that the city’s portion of the funding is calculated between the court’s three funding units—Birmingham, Bloomfield Township and West Bloomfield—based on the percentage of the case load. For the 2024 calendar year, that percentage was 40.7 percent.

The court is anticipating seeing over 32,000 cases in the next year, said court administrator Patrick Dunn, which he said was in large part due to no-fault amendments that were passed by the legislature in 2021. As well as an expected increase in case load, the budget saw an increase due to changes in benefits, professional fees and salaries along with a slight increase in overall operating costs.

While the city advances the court 25 percent of their allocation of the total expenditure each quarter, any revenue the court generates is distributed amongst the municipalities based on the caseload percentage. Chavez and Dunn both touched on the fact that any surplus the court has is returned to the funding units following a completed audit.

Brad Host, who has repeatedly voted against approving the district court’s budgets, again reiterated his stance from past years that the court’s budget is too high and it’s his opinion the city is losing money on its investment.

Multiple other commissioners, as well as city attorney Mary Kucharek, reminded Host that the court is a service to the public that has an associated cost. Ultimately, commissioners voted 5-1 to approve the 2026 budget for the 48th District Court, with Host voting against approval. Andrew Haig was absent from the meeting.