coming up on oakdale update we'll continue our series on local law enforcement with district judge richard ilka and we'll meet the city's volunteer of the year they tuned o p o update is straight ahead local law enforcement series today we continue that series with district judge richard they all cost judge thank you for joining us and oakdale update thank you ok let's tell us a little bit about yourself with give us some background education and where you live that sort of thing well i live in stillwater and attended the university of minnesota graduated from law school there in one thousand nine hundred eighty six and began practicing law in stillwater and in washing county in general between one thousand nine hundred three in two thousand and seven i did the city attorney work for the city of oakdale i was appointed by judge by governor plenty back in june of two thousand and seven to be a district court judge and and then was elected in two thousand and eight when you were doing you did private practice too along the way right i did ok how did that go in terms of how does that help you know well in private practice i was able to gain experience and in a number of different areas family law probate real estate law things that i come across day to day as a district court judge and then my work with the city of oakdale i did a lot of criminal law of course and then some in a support this polar regulatory type of laws well so it helps you in the grand scheme of things right absolutely you know it's great ok now i know you were with the city as attorney oakdale city attorney that was doing ninety three in zero seven is that right that's right tell us about that how was that if you know that was a great experience i had a chance to work with people the city working primarily in criminal cases it was really a great experience and i was it was an absolute foundation of building block to becoming a judge in washington did they did they hire you and did you apply for that job or did they were originally back in the early ninety's the city attorney position and in oakdale was a contract that was renewed by the city council on a regular basis and then and i'm trying to think the year i hundred seven or ninety six they went in house and they hired me as an employee of the city on a part time basis to do the work i did for the city and i think that that helped a lot because there was continuity there after that it well because you develop relationships and you understand the way certain projects are certain types of things you're trying to work on have gone over the years and i recall working like with bill schmidt who was the senior building official for oakdale and there would be problem properties that we would be focused on in order to get them in compliance and and i think that if you have continuity and ongoing relationships with staff that really easy when you're in your job where not only that but i think it's that it's it's good that you were you don't have other interests in other communities that maybe you're working for to absolutely i think it takes kind of conflicts out of the case now you mention that you were appointed by pulling the so i ask you what is the difference we being appointed and being voted on i mean judges are there on the ballot all the time and are quite understand that well you know in minnesota we have about two hundred fifty district court judges most of them probably ninety five percent were initially placed on on the bench through the appointment process they point of process involves a screening when i was appointed i believe there were somewhere between thirty and forty attorneys applied to be appointed to the judicial position that i was appointed to and there's an  application you fill out they do a background check that includes looking in any prior complaints that have been filed against you as a lawyer you release your tax returns they take a look at those they do a background check  you of some sort and then they will that that pool down to a smaller group in my case it was about a dozen and then you're interviewed in a large setting by it's you sitting at the end of a table with about a dozen people who've been appointed by  the governor and the supreme court to sit on this little selection panel small's and they narrow you down to three and then or four sometimes but in my case there was three finalists and then you go have a final interview with the governor over at the capitol building and  then usually a few weeks later they tell you whether or not you were appointed or not what kind of questions they ask you a lot questions are just they do they ask you broad it's a broad range of questions you know why do you want to be a judge what kind of things do you think you can offer when you if we if we were to appoint you give us some examples in your background that that you might want us to know about they ask you specific and general questions about your background and then and then what happens though is that  next general election after your appointment you have to stand for election so for example i was appointed in june of two thousand and seven and the next general election would have been november of two thousand and eight and so i was on the ballot two thousand and eight and i was unopposed and i ended up being elected for a six year term and so i'm up again in two thousand and fourteen so do you have to kind of go out and campaign a little bit i mean there or do you not do that you know you the campaigning that i'd say you do is i call it public outreach speaking to groups going out i have i go to the high school in stillwater every year and speak to them i've spoke to senior groups i've done things like that just to  public information part now if you had an opponent yeah you'd probably be marching in parades and and doing other things like that it but in general less than ten percent of the elections judicial elections end up being a poll was opposed and so you think this is a good system you know i i think the system is good or it could be tweaked to then some proposals to go to a judicial retention system instead where you're interviewed by a panel but as with anything the devil's in the details who's going to be on that panel is it going to be a political panel are they going to be looking at the decisions you make really what we do it as district court judges nonpolitical we follow the law where i  like to think we're not activists we're not going to make the next big ruling that's going to go to the supreme court typically work we're kind of the front level people and we're the grunts so to speak are we handle the day to day stuff from parking tickets to divorces to drunk driving to domestic assault work on the front line of this but generally speaking if there is a bad ruling by the public's perception general the most judges get ousted the next election well i think if the judge is perceived to ha series of those in particular they're more likely to have an opponent there they've been on the headlines and they've made some decisions that didn't sit well with the public and so they're more likely to have an opponent ok so let's talk about the district court of what you are part of and there's three drew to show branches and we'll get into that little bit later but first let's talk about this record there's a what two hundred eighty nine judges in the district courts right to be in all ten districts i think it's a moral and i don't know if that's the number for  there's there is in that two fifty to three hundred range for all the districts combined their state in districts in the tenth district that were part of there are about forty five judges i think in the tenth district that's made up eight counties including washington  in order to run for a judge position within the tenth district you don't have to be a specific resident for example of the county that you're chambered in you have to be a resident of the district and large ok so do you ever go to other districts or other not district but we do frequently we travel to other districts when they need backup when they have conflicts when a judge is out at least on a prolonged basis we have a we have a regular travel kind of schedule that we have i've traveled to and oka county for example not long ago and took a week long calendar up there and we regularly have judges from other counties come down to washington good for experience and then i mean obviously you go up north it's going to be all kinds of different things it is it's good to see because every county does things a little bit differently and it also gives you a chance to talk to some of your colleagues in other counties that you may not have regular contact with that's great let's talk about the day branches in the district court ok in that the different areas that you would cover and i sumi would cover all of these but me concern since small claims court let's talk about that a bit sure once a week we have a conciliation claims are from zero to seventy five hundred dollars the legislature is considering actually increasing those claims in terms of the upper the upper side and those consist of neighborhood disputes sometimes we see things like rough or doesn't get paid or the homeowner is upset because of some job a contractor does those are pretty common we also see some small number or small level collections type cases in that area and it's conducted not unlike the way you might see a t v court show you don't necessarily put someone in a witness box it usually is the judge asking questions of the parties and then you make a decision sometimes on the spot but more often you take it under advisement give it some more thought often there's a lot that you need to look up or some cases that you want to take a look at and then you issue a written decision usually it's not as comprehensive as you might have in a full blown district court case  the beginning of conciliation court is try to settle your case because if you can reach a settlement a handshake and a promise to pay by someone is usually worth a lot more than the piece of paper you're going to get from district court once you leave conciliation court with a judgment you then have to go collect it and that involves finding out where their assets are where their bank account might be it's not as easy as it looks does the colony help at all if there are processes that the sheriff can can help levy on personal property if you're able to discover that where their bank account is you can serve you can serve a garnishment type of document on their bank or on their employer and get things withheld but it's a it's a process interesting ok then the court let's talk about that a bit well you know civil court is a fairly broad area civil court would include everything from personal injury cases to unlawful detainer zero housing court we have contract cases in that area and in washington county those cases are equally divided in general between all of the judges so we all get a piece of all of those  we don't have specialty courts in washington county right now hennepin county and ramsey county they actually might assign you as a judge to be in family court or criminal court for an extended period of time in washington county we have an equal kind of distribution of all cases so i will have same number of family court cases as the other judges and the same number of civil cases personal injury type case at the same number of criminal cases everything's kind of distributed on an equal basis and so if you're active in every field right does it doesn't it it makes every week that go goes by you don't get stale to write you don't you don't get burned out on one particular area you get some variety ok number one is a criminal court talks about that well and in criminal court we have several levels within washington county in any court you have kind of the misdemeanor gross misdemeanor cases that would be handled like by the oakdale city attorney and those are in one particular calendar and then we have the felony cases that are handled by the county attorney's representatives on another calendar and in district court we will handle everything from a trial on a petty misdemeanor speeding case up to a murder trial i mean there's a whole variety of cases within criminal four and a half years i've been on the bench it's been a handful of murder cases and most of them have pled out so they don't end up going to trial that's good is that it is good in terms of achieving an outcome that usually is just parties here ok and we have family court family court is a huge part of what we do in terms of the amount of time it takes takes up out of our calendars it's probably that in criminal law are the two most significant areas because family court disputes tend to will often be time consuming and messy and difficult not just for the judges but more so for the attorneys and the parties involved because you're asking if you've got to the point where you can't reach an agreement with your spouse or x files and you're asking a district court judge to intercede in you know in the lives of your families and it's very difficult for be a no win situation for you as it is and i will i try to i try to encourage people to engage in mediation and we've expanded our our different types of mediation processes we have in washing county so people stay out of court because a court decision is usually not one that works as well as one that people again reach sure outside of court sure ok and then juvenile court juvenile court is again another challenging area and that not only includes juveniles that commit offenses from minor to major offenses but that area also includes terminations of parental rights cases and what we call chips cases children in need of protective services and these are probably really the most difficult cases we deal with because often you're put the position as a judge that you have to make a decision on whether a child going to be return turn to a home or whether a child put in foster care or in the worst cases whether the parental relationship between parent and child going to be terminated because a parent is unfit sure those are difficult cases because when you make that decision you're changing someone's life forever that's authority to a hearing after in the violations bureau and all of the various city attorneys have worked with that hearing officer to develop a criteria to handle petty misdemeanor traffic offenses so if someone is driving in oakdale and they get a speeding ticket and they bring it into the hearing officer and say well can you help me resolve this without any further court processes they don't ever go to court if they can work it out they have a short five or ten minute meeting with the hearing officer and they take a look at their prior driving history and the offen itself let's see how far over the speed limit it might be and they try to work out a resolution to keep the case out of court and that's i think that's done a good job of reducing the cost to cities because your prosecutor doesn't spend as much time in court and your police don't go to court as often and that saves over time ok just one last question we got about three seconds left here are you happy doing what you're doing is that a good good feeling is that make you feel good i am it's a it's a good job i enjoy serving the people of washing county i enjoy the people i work with it's just as i enjoyed working with the city of oakdale i have a whole new group of people that i work with on a daily and weekly basis and it's a good job generally speaking though all the people are coming from you are in crisis of some sort so does that work and you you know i like to think that i'm trying to do things to make their lives a little better and a little smoother you know one of the goals i always have in family court is to focus on the children involved and say what can we do to make these children's lives better and so i think that that's one of the goals and one of the things about the job that i like cook for you good in a tooth i want to thank you for joining us today in oakdale update thank you frank ok it's almost that time of year again for the city's home improvement fair here's some information about this one we've done will have hopefully sixty to seventy vendors from a wide array of home services and financial institutions and nonprofits to both assist people in making plans for improving their homes and also  potentially provide services to them in the future for improving their homes just a great event and same stuff as usual with kids activities and crafts and all that stuff and food for the family and should be just kind of a fun full family event it's really a one stop shop that's kind of the way we always like to sell it if you have any ideas or any hopes to improve your home or learn about potential projects in the future or what's new home of fruits and things like that we have some green building vendors coming and stuff like that so i t's you know all in one little area to find out anything and everything you want to know about improving your home we really feel like it's a great thing economic development wise as far as encouraging residents to continually reinvest in their homes oakdale is getting close to being built out as far as additional opportunities for single family new construction so what we focus on doing is investing in the building fact that we have right now so our housing stock is anywhere from brand new to thirty forty years old so it's important to keep giving  facelift and keep improving it so we build that tax base and that value for our residents in the city it's time for a short break but first here is this month's trivia question and our last trivia question we find out that pete grassley received the first outstanding volunteer award in the city our trivia question is what year did pete grass ky receive the first outstanding volunteer ward was it one thousand ninety eight two thousand two or two thousand and six we'll have the answer later in the show we'll be right back with more of oakdale update in just a minute where we'll be joined by this year's  or years the city of old feel on as a volunteer of the year this award is given to a member of our community who goes above and beyond by offering their time and energy to enhance the quality of life for others joining me now much on a farm or i'm a business but in the university of minnesota for a while studying engineering which was of no real help to my profession i ended up in were a young and growing community there was a lot of well young families and a lot of children and so forth so we did have a water system that's besides the one that sits on top of the hill across the rainbow that was our water system they had two basic developments one was at ft tanner's lake area so for us the other was between ten and seventy nine seventy nine you're still a kid i wish to say well listen i want to we're out of time but i want to congratulate you on being the one of the volunteer the year and thank you for doing it for your service because it's ok thank you we're just about out of time but first let's answer a trivia question we asked you what year did pete grassley receive the first outstanding volunteer award the correct answer was hundred eight pete was the first person to receive an outstanding volunteer award the city actually awarded for outstanding volunteer awards in one nine hundred ninety eight to peak grass wrestle in that order since then only one outstanding volunteer has been awarded each year that's all we have time for for everyone at the city of oakdale thanks for watching