Vote: approved

Item Text

7. CLERK OF THE SUPERIOR COURT REQUEST FOR REVIEW OVER BASELINE Per the Board approved FY 2016 Budget Guidelines and Priorities, approve allowing the Office of Management & Budget to review the following requests over baseline in the amount of $2,484,101: • Personnel Services for Fill the Gap positions $191,701 (Operating expense, Fund 100) • Outside Services for Restitution, Fines, and Reimbursements (RFR) Project $2,292,400 (Non-Recurring expense, Fund 100) Fill the Gap Fund (FY 2016 Request over Baseline) While the Clerk’s Office has submitted budgets either at or below target, there are additional FTG expenditures requiring allocation into the General Fund. This overage is included within our FY 2016 requested General Fund budget. Fill the Gap is an award funded by state and local revenues that continues to decline. This fund pays for staff positions, primarily comprised of courtroom clerks assigned to Criminal divisions. Unlike FY 2016 where fund balance was utilized to offset operational costs, FY 2016 will end with a minimal fund balance, creating an additional need above threshold of $191,701 in personnel expenditures (equaling a FY 2016 total of $576,678 FTG to be allocated to the General Fund). Once again this fund will be reviewed annually and if revenues are recorded higher than expected, personnel costs will be allocated back to the FTG special fund. RFR (Restitution, Fines, and Reimbursements) Project (FY 2016 Carryover Requested) We diligently continue to work toward minimizing impact on our Office and County funds in the budgeting strategy. While our long term strategy is to develop an integrated financial system to effectively manage all criminal financial transactions, it is noteworthy that we began with the RFR system as the first of several legacy systems requiring replacement. Our system is 20 years old, and manages approximately $2.5 billion in fines, fees and restitution payments; in addition, it is a primary source of revenue for numerous County and Court agencies. Failure of the system would be disastrous across multiple agencies from a revenue and victim perspective. Additionally, supporting systems such as General Ledger and Trust will require replacement due to their age and inability to integrate with our newer systems. The Clerk’s Office expects expenditures of $109,341 in the current fiscal year non-recurring allowance provided for this project. We request carryover of any remaining allowance, anticipated to be $2,292,400, in order to continue replacement of the RFR legacy system in FY 2016. We anticipate that replacement of this system will continue into 2018, at a total estimated cost exceeding our original allocation. Preliminary estimates indicate the need for a minimum of an additional $1.5 million within FY17 or FY18. (C-16-15-008-M-00)