Township approves district court budget
By Dana Casadei
The 48th District Court budget was approved unanimously by the Bloomfield Township Board of Trustees on Monday, November 25, with the township’s portion just over $1.3 million.
The approved budget continued a downward cost for the township, decreasing it from the year prior, when Bloomfield Township’s contribution to the court’s budget was $1,487,422, which was down from the 2023-2024 budget.
Bloomfield Township will advance the court the $1,300,534 and is one of three funding units for the court’s operations – the other two being West Bloomfield Township and Birmingham – due to an agreement executed between funding units in 2021.
The 48th District Court serves the charter townships of Bloomfield and West Bloomfield, as well as the cities of Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Keego Harbor, Orchard Lake Village and Sylvan Lake.
The approved budget has two components. The first addresses caseload and monetary funds received by the court, the second is focused on the expenses for the operation of the court.
For 2025-2026 the total overall budget is $4,930,000, and all three funding communities will advance monies to the court to cover the costs. Those payments will be made quarterly by each of them.
With the payments themselves, the amount paid by each funding unit is determined by a caseload percentage audit. Bloomfield Township was the lowest of the three, coming in at 26.38 percent, with West Bloomfield at 34.33, and Birmingham at 39.29.
West Bloomfield and Birmingham are being asked to pay $1,692,469 and $1,936,997, respectively, for the upcoming budget.
As far as the actual budget for 2025-2026 goes, it was broken down into six different categories: salaries, benefits, operations, professional fees, security and other expenses, and equipment and capital.
Benefits had a 4.01 percent increase this year compared to 2024 – going from $1,105,000 to $1,149,277 – which was the highest increase, with everything else coming in at an increased percentage that was below four percent.
Regarding this last calendar year, court administrator Patrick Dunn told the board that 2024 was a very significant one for the 48th District Court, with nearly a 60 percent increase in the 2024 projected civil cases.
There were increases, although not nearly as significant, in both drunk driving cases and traffic cases too.
The 48th District Court was also impacted by the launch of the electronic filing system, MiFILE, this past December, Dunn said.
The goal of MiFILE is to ensure that Michigan litigants are able to electronically file documents, 24 hours a day, and to receive documents and notifications from the court in this same way.
When trustee Neal Barnett asked how that program was going, Dunn told the board that it can create a bit of difficulty when a more in-depth analysis is needed to fix a problem within the program, but overall, there are many strengths to using it.
