Village of Sullivan looks to join municipal court

Posted: March 16, 2009

Oconomowoc – Twenty years after its inception, the Lake Country Municipal Court continues to expand, eyeing the addition of another community to its ranks. The Village of Sullivan has requested to join the system.

"The Village of Sullivan would make 17 communities that the court serves. That makes Lake Country Municipal Court the largest court in terms of the number of communities it serves in the State of Wisconsin," said Judge Doug Stern.

Lake Country Municipal Court serves the City of Oconomowoc; Towns of Delafield, Lisbon, Merton, Oconomowoc and Summit; the Villages of Chenequa, Dousman, Hartland, Lac La Belle, Merton, Nashotah, Oconomowoc Lake and Sussex; the Town of Ixonia in Jefferson County and the Town of Erin in Washington County.

"Lake Country Municipal Court was the first multicommunity court setup in the State of Wisconsin. It started operation 20 years ago. We were the first, and the model has proved so successful with communities working together to have a shared service like this that in the last 20 years there are now 45 multicommunity courts in Wisconsin following our model," Stern added.

The municipal court deals only with ordinance violations. In 2008, it handled about 16,000 citations. About two-thirds of the cases are traffic offenses, and one-third are nontraffic and juvenile matters. As the population continues to grow, the court expects the number of cases to increase.

"It just shows we have been very successful leading the way, showing this model provides exceptional service to our community and the court users," Stern said.

Village of Oconomowoc Lake Police Chief Don Wiemer, who serves as chairman of the court's administration committee, will recommend allowing Sullivan to come in under a contract.

"The reason being their volume will be so low it will have no impact on the court. We're looking at less than 10 tickets a year. It's very little impact on the court," Wiemer said.

"The whole key is we don't want to add enough workload that takes us into a position where we have to add a third full-time person in the office," he added.

Currently, the court is staffed by two full-time and one part-time positions.

"We don't want to go there unless it's caused by existing community volume," Wiemer said.

Sullivan would join other smaller communities such as the Towns of Erin and Ixonia in low volume. In municipalities that do not have their own police departments, concerns typically center on zoning violations or tickets pertaining to burning violations.