LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – A committee tasked with prioritizing courthouse construction projects across California voted Tuesday to approve a report that places Lake County’s new courthouse at the top of the list, but officials have cautioned that funding still needs to be found for all of the highest ranked projects.
The Judicial Council’s Court Facilities Advisory Committee met Tuesday morning in San Francisco, where it voted on an updated report that lists 80 projects categorized – in descending order – as immediate need, critical need, high need, medium need and low need.
The proposed Lake County courthouse slated to be built in Lakeport is ranked at No. 1 and classified as immediate need. The four-courtroom facility is estimated to cost $51.2 million to build.
At No. 6 on the list is a second Lake County project, a new one-courtroom courthouse facility slated for Clearlake, at an estimated cost of $15 million. It’s also categorized as immediate need.
“We are pleased to see the Court Facilities Advisory Committee continue to recognize the need in Lake County,” Court Executive Officer Krista LeVier told Lake County News.
In June 2018, the governor and the Legislature enacted Government Code section 70371.9, which requires that before any more funding will be provided to build new courthouses in the state, the Judicial Council must reassess all courthouse projects identified in its Update to Trial Court Capital-Outlay Plan and Prioritization Methodology adopted on October 24, 2008.
The law now require projects to be reassessed and ranked against the criteria established in 2008, level of seismic risk and other health and environmental hazards, impact on court users including accessibility, cost avoidance or savings through operational or organizational efficiencies the project would create, ways to minimize increased ongoing costs, a comparison of the cost to repair or renovate the existing facility versus the cost of replacement, the projected cost of each proposed project per court user and the total costs spent on the project as of the date of the assessment.
Mike Courtney, director of Judicial Council Facilities Services, explained Tuesday that in August 2018 the Court Facilities Advisory Committee met to discuss how to approach that task.
Since February a working group whose members come from the Court Facilities Advisory Committee and Judicial Council has evaluated more than 213 buildings across the state, Courtney said.
The Judicial Council said the process included a lengthy self-assessment by each superior court of their operations and the potential implications of new courthouse construction.
The Court Facilities Advisory Committee is chaired by Brad Hill, administrative presiding justice for the Fifth Appellate District Court of Appeal based in Fresno.
Hill said the committee has been working on the ranking process for the better part of a year.
While there were representatives of a number of courts and communities who were critical of the reprioritized list, Hill noted in response, “It’s been difficult, challenging, but we think we’ve hit on the right balance,” with facilities up and down the state that have been long neglected and need to be replaced.
Hill said the approved list is going to the Judicial Council in November.
LeVier told Lake County News that the next step will be for the Judicial Council to approve the list and send the final report to the Legislature, which the Judicial Council reported that it expects to do by the end of December.
“Once that is complete, the next challenge will be to secure funding for the Lakeport project. Despite being ranked as the highest need in the state, there is a possibility other lower ranked projects will be funded first,” LeVier said.
She said the methodology adopted related to funding decisions allows the Judicial Council broad discretion in determining which projects will be funded. “The Court has argued that there should not be such broad discretion and more weight should be given to the need based scores in funding decisions.”
The need for a new Lakeport courthouse has been recognized for more than a decade.
In July 2008, the state Administrative Office of the Courts submitted 18 trial court funding projects to the state's Department of Finance, among them the Lake County project, listed then – as now – as an immediate need project. Originally, Lake County’s new courthouse was slated to be funded at an anticipated cost of $70.8 million.
A state report found Lakeport’s existing court facility – consisting of four courtrooms and offices in 15,332 square feet on the fourth floor of the courthouse building at 255 N. Forbes St. – to be “severely overcrowded, poorly serves the growing needs of the superior court and lack of basic security features causes unnecessary risk to the staff and public who use this building.”
Little has changed since then, with jurors, witnesses, attorneys and other members of the public frequently crowded in the facility's hallways, and bailiffs needing to move people to bring in lines of inmates from the Lake County Jail.
The Judicial Council purchased land for the project in 2011 on Lakeport Boulevard, but the project – like many others across the state – was put on hold due to the state’s budget crisis during the Great Recession.
Now, with a renewed process under way that’s using a new methodology to prioritize projects, LeVier said, “The Court has been working with the Judicial Council for many months to ensure that our facility needs are accurately reflected and scored correctly in this new methodology. Judicial Council staff, consultants, architects and others have visited the building during this process.”
She called the new scoring methodology “a valid, objective, needs based system to determine the courthouse facility needs across the state.”
Updated list changes some rankings
Lake, Kern and Los Angeles counties each have two projects among the 18 “immediate need” projects included in the newly approved courthouse facilities list.
Mendocino County’s new Ukiah courthouse, expected to cost $89.6 million, came in at No. 2 on the latest list, now in the immediate need category, whereas previously it was No. 5 and in the critical need category.
Lake County’s Clearlake courthouse also originally had been in the critical need group before moving into the immediate need ranking in the latest list.
Among Lake’s other neighboring counties, Sonoma County’s new civil courthouse, with a $102.8 million project cost, in included in the critical need category, while the $17.4 million Colusa Courthouse annex renovation was ranked in medium need and the Yolo County Superior Court renovation, at $900,000, was listed as low need.
Lake County’s Lakeport courthouse project also had topped an earlier priority list released Aug. 29, at which time it was one of only four immediate need projects. It remained in the top spot despite some shuffling that led to another 14 projects being added to the immediate need ranking and some other projects dropping lower in the list.
During Tuesday’s Court Facilities Advisory Committee meeting, members explained that since the list was released in August, the public had submitted comments totaling hundreds of pages of information.
The result was more than 120 corrections to the scorecard of courthouse projects, a process that’s continuing in October.
Among the courts proposing projects, 12 have submitted corrections to their narratives and other information in their court facility plans and three courts changed proposed project scopes or court priorities. The final drafts of all of the court facility plans will be submitted to the state in November.
Questions posed regarding process
On Tuesday, the committee heard from several community leaders, residents, judges and court staff from counties including Alameda, Inyo, Los Angeles, Monterey, Nevada and Plumas, raising issues that ranged from locations to rankings, seismic concerns and the need for their community members to have access to courthouses.
Monterey County Supervisor Chris Lopez told the committee it was disconcerting to see the new south Monterey County project, at $27.9 million, falling farther down the list into the “high need” category, with rural residents needing access.
Lopez said the Monterey County Superior Court has told community members that the information about the proposed project for their south county facility isn’t available, and he asked that the committee take another look at the methodology.
Monterey County’s Ford Ord courthouse, at $130.1 million, came in at No. 5 and is among the immediate need projects.
However, another Monterey County Board of Supervisors member, Luis Alejo, told the committee in a letter that he was “surprised and disappointed” to see the Ford Ord project ranked in priority over the south county project.
“South Monterey County has been standing in line for many years for a courthouse to replace the King City Courthouse that was closed by the Monterey County Superior Court in 2013 during the height of the Great Recession,” Alejo wrote. “If the draft prioritization is left in place, it is likely that South County residents will continue to be denied equal access to justice.”
Judge Kevin Brazile of Los Angeles County also raised issues with the methodology, which he wanted fine-tuned to better serve large courts.
The Los Angeles Superior Court is the largest superior court in the state and the nation, with a portfolio of 39 courthouses, serving 10 million citizens in Los Angeles County, according to Brazile’s testimony.
Los Angeles has 17 courthouse projects on the list, including two ranked as immediate need, nine in critical need, one in high need and five in medium need.
While Brazile voiced concerns about the methodology, he nevertheless told the committee – which he said had heeded previous input he has given – “These most recent changes have made a significant improvement in reflecting the needs and priorities of our courts.”
Inyo County Superior Court Executive Officer Pamela Foster told the committee that their $43.8 million project, now listed in the critical need category, has been in the process for a very long time, with the land purchase under way when the process previously was halted due to lack of funding.
In the August list, the Inyo County courthouse project was listed at No. 13 in priority, and was reranked to No. 28 in the latest list, although both times it was in the critical need category.
Foster said every project on the list is needed, but called the latest priority list a “drastic reshuffling,” and she wanted a better understanding of how the projects were reranked.
In reply, HIll said that even though they had to rank the projects, “All of these projects need to be built and we’re going to the Legislature with that in mind.”
Next steps and more questions
Courtney gave the committee an update, explaining that the evaluation process is continuing both because of the amount of public input and the need to submit a report to the Judicial Council in November. His report also summarized the methodology changes and the scoring system.
The committee voted to recommend that the drafts of the revised methodology and statewide list be submitted to the Judicial Council in November for approval, and to delegate to the chair and vice chair the review of the final report to the council.
There are still considerable questions that the process ahead, including just which projects will ultimately be funded.
In a letter dated Sept. 30 and signed by both LeVier and Lake County Superior Court Presiding Judge Michael Lunas, they urged the committee to follow the methodology and said it should be the basis of funding decisions.
“What is the point of a need based methodology and ranking, if there is no requirement that the need based score be used in funding decisions? If you have the highest need, but are never funded, is that just or fair?” Lunas and LeVier asked in the letter.
They also maintained that it isn’t appropriate for a project in the critical need or lower categories to be funded over an immediate need project “simply because the court is in an affluent county where land donation or other financial incentives are available to the project. A small, poor county certainly is less likely to have an economic opportunity available, aside from perhaps the consolidation of court facilities. The fact does not diminish the need for a project.”
There is one other key concern for the Lake County Superior Court – draft language in the committee’s latest report that would allow the Judicial Council to unilaterally exclude single-courtroom facilities, which would impact the Clearlake project directly. Lunas and LeVier said they oppose the language.
The letter explained, “if a new four courtroom facility is built in Lakeport and subsequently the Judicial Council determines not to build a single-courtroom facility in Clearlake, the court will be in the unenviable situation where the new building is not large enough to consolidate and there is no long term solution for the single-courtroom building’s facility needs.”
More information about the state’s courthouse construction process can be found here.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.