District court budget approved by township

The 2026 budget for the 48th District Court was approved by the Bloomfield Township Board of Trustees on Monday, November 24.

Bloomfield Township, along with Birmingham and West Bloomfield, are considered the funding units for the district court which also serves the communities of Bloomfield Hills, Keego Harbor, Orchard Lake and Sylvan Lake.

Court administrator Patrick Dunn appeared before the township board to present the proposed budget for the coming year.

Based on information provided to township trustees, the proposed budget for 2026 of $5.150 million represents a 4.46 percent increase in costs over the budget of $4.930 million for the court this year.

In terms of costs to the funding units, shared costs are assigned based on the percentage of case load generated by each community.

In terms of case load by communities for the coming year, it is projected that Bloomfield Township will generate 21.19 percent of cases handle by the court, while Birmingham is projected to generate 40.69 percent and West Bloomfield 33.12 percent of cases at the court.

Fines collected from the court cases are shared with local communities based on the case load generated by each municipalities, after the state and county are paid a portion of collected fines.

Material supplied by Dunn showed no added personnel for the coming year but did indicate that a couple of expenses related to employees were increasing noticeably. While employee benefits were increasing 8.3 percent, the largest increases were in the areas of medical insurance (10.4 percent) and for dental and life insurance (10.7 percent).

Overall, general operating expenses at the court are projected to only increase 2.06 percent and security and other expenses are increasing 3.75 percent in the 2026 budget, while equipment and capital expenses are projected to decline by 22.58 percent.

The court generally handles 32,000 cases in the course of a year.

Material presented with the budget data also reminded local officials that the present method of funding the court is expected to be changed at the end of 2026.

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