Hillsborough and Montgomery to Share Courts in 2012

An agreement will have Montgomery and Hillsborough Township sharing the Hillsborough Municipal Courtroom and its staff—and reducing costs by $80,000 in Hillsborough.

The Township Committee unanimously accepted a resolution to share its court staff and location with Montgomery Township during its Tuesday meeting. The agreement is pending a vote by Montgomery’s Township Committee, which will meet Nov. 3. If approved by Montgomery Township, will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2012, and will last six years.

The court services will remain in Hillsborough, though the records will be kept separate. In addition, the judge, prosecutors and other court personnel from Hillsborough would remain in their current positions, but their duties would now include handling Montgomery Township cases. All court costs will be shared.

While Montgomery will cut its court personnel, it will retain its court administrator, according to Committeeman Frank DelCore. Montgomery’s contract with its judge expires this year, he added.

“One of the last areas we can really try to generate savings is through shared services,” DelCore, who is on the township’s Finance Committee, said. “This has been something that’s been in the works for a while. It sounds fairly simple but it actually very complicated to combine the courts.  .  . We are sharing, not consolidating the courts.”

Though the Hillsborough and Montgomery courts will share the Hillsborough-based resources, each will need separate filing systems for court cases. The towns will need to establish when each court will meet, as well as establishing when each court session will meet.

“$80,000 is savings in the budget is material,” DelCore said. “We’ll see that on a annual basis going forward. Hopefully, we’ll be able to draw some additional savings out of the agreement going forward.”

The decision to share the court services follows about a year of planning and a feasibility study both townships undertook in 2010. The study cost the towns $5,000, and analyzed the case volumes, staffing, equipment, facility requirements and operating costs for each town.

The inter-local services agreement that allows the towns to share the court service was approved by an assignment judge from Somerset County Superior Court last week.