presenting all right come on down good evening welcome i'm gonna turn it this way okay  good evening mayor paul and city council it's an honor to be with you this evening and i'm excited to share with you some highlights from our annual head start annual report for last school year two thousand and seventeen two thousand and eighteen i'm cheri peterson the head start administrator and i just want to let you know i'm not going to go into all the detail that's in this report but i'd like to just give a good snapshot of some of the highlights and some of the things i think you'll enjoy seeing about the community that were involved in so key facts is you know it probably heard for me many times that head start really is a a poverty level program where families have are a hundred percent poverty level we have a current funded enrollment of a hundred and ten children and last year we touched the lives of a hundred and fifty children so we did see a turnover rate of forty children last year the staff who support or provide these services includes sixteen teachers and assistants three families support three early headstart home visitors and seven content experts to support the staff and their everyday work like rd our registered dietitian also our nurse i just wanted to tell you i don't think i've ever shared with you that five of our staff are actually former head start parents who chose to work in this profession and moved up through the ranks to become a part of head start programming which i think is a nice success story and last year we had a staff member who was just working with us two hours a day doing a food prep position she actually went to school completed her cda which is a credentialed degree or certificate and she moved into one of our bilingual assistant positions this year and now is in a fully benefited position so we really do encourage our staff our staff and our parents to move up within nothing ever happens without a budget so here is our budget moving into two thousand and eighteen two thousand and nineteen as i've talked about before we have our federal base funding and then our non federal share is that twenty percent match that we have to match to our federal grant and so we also have our total program budget a little over a million five now that's really grown over the years that we've had the program that also included a two point six cost of living increase that came through in june of this year so two program highlights is that we did go through a federal review this last year and we were a finding free in our focus area to review which means for next steps is it will be qualified to write for our next grant our five year at two thousand two thousand and twenty we also had a wonderful surprise visit in august from doctor deborah bergeron and her picture is here she is our newly appointed director from the office of head start in washington dc she commented on the creative use of our classrooms our outdoor facilities and the passion the staff showed when talking about their work with children and families she also brought her guitar and played out in our outdoor classroom and the children gathered in a circle type very hands on a new director so we're very excited to have her in washington dc to support our programming so our program is built on three strong components our staff our family and our community built on a foundation of school readiness our staff are trained and they provide a quality environment materials for exploration and they engage with the children on a daily basis everybody likes to see the outcomes so i have the fall outcomes from two thousand and seventeen and the spring outcomes in the six areas of development that we measure take a look at mathematics these are children who are going to kindergarten when they entered our program they were a thirty seven percent rate equal to their peers and when they left they were at eighty eight percent very significant increase due to just to the exposure  materials in classroom and staff involvement so we always like to look at these wonderful outcomes and that way children feel and families feel that they're ready to go to kindergarten and of course we wouldn't be here without the families family involvement is definitely the key to success for our children moving forward last year we had a hundred and forty five parent volunteers who supported our policy coun which is kind of our our governing piece with the parents classrooms and field trips one parent shared the following statement with us i learned from head start how to ask questions and how to be an involved parent in my son's education because i never had a role model to do that in my life so now i know what to do as a parent that's just a great statement about our families the famil the children have goals but the families have goals and each of our families work with the family support team coordinator to create a personal or family goal sometimes families do goals like i need to do job training or need to attend school sometimes it is i need to look for stable housing but a group of four moms led by jose rivas actually trained for the colfax marathon and what they got out of it was i want to be an example for my children and family for a nutritional and healthy lifestyle so here's our pictures was very exciting to see them do that and they finished it which was great and where would we be without our community members community partners are the next key to our success from the kiwanis club who comes in and volunteers to do maintenance in our outdoor classroom to our community partners like the fire department who offer field trips for families and children to enjoy and that's one of our little early headstart little girls there who's tried to hold the fire hose so many thanks from the staff this is a picture of all our staff from last year a lot of us crammed together things to the city of lakewood the mayor and city council to our liquid advisory committee to our head start policy and if anybody would like to see an electronic copy of this report we have it at liquid org or you can request a paper copy also so that's the fun stuff we've been doing any questions or ideas right thank you very much always a great time it's usually a dual report once and the fall once in the spring and the spring is much more lively when you bring in all the kiddos but this was great information so i'm gonna first turn to our headstart committee members staus very involved and the kids are just eager you can't say a lot more about it and we deliver these services for i believe less than the yes and and really thanks to sherry for all the hard work always so detailed she keeps us well informed we have all the information i appreciate how much you not only take care of obviously the operations side of the numbers but just the passion that you guys bring to the to the work and it's just for us it's amazing to watch how they the kids grow each year and improve and that's really what it's all about is getting them ready for kindergarten and that's that's the goal and you guys really do a wonderful job so we appreciate you for vincent yes i just like to echo everything that everybody else has said and i think i've always made it clear that that my favorite part is the outcomes because that is just so incredible what happens every year and i would like to congratulate head start because they did get a team together for the colfax marathon just saying  making and the people who need it the most so really appreciate everything you do thank you i actually have one question that has to do with the future of federal funding and kind of where you see this program could be in the next two to three years do we feel that those dollars will continue to come in will we see an increase will we see a decrease we're gonna keep our fingers crossed either maintain the cost of living increases have been consistent and i've been in head start twenty years and we saw fifteen years without cost of living increases so the fact that we've had cost of living increases over the last three to four years has been phenomenal because that goes right into our base funding which really helps support the program and then i believe year before last we did they did expansion of hours and days and we were able to tap into that for two hundred and twenty thousand so right now it's been consistent and strong but even if we saw cost of living increases fluctuate a little bit i feel like where we are with the number of classrooms the number of children that we provide services for and where we're forget the cross streets and then we have one at lasley which is right across annalise lee elementary school and then we have when the daniel's community area which used to be our daniel's community center here and i believe it's th great and for some of these kids do they get breakfast and lunch or requirements for the day and i didn't bring it out but in the report we actually have at patterson head start which is our full day year round we actually they're doing food bags for the weekend like they do in the public schools we did a trial over the summer with snacks and now children are getting like two or three meals and a food bag for every weekend to take home which has really help i'll open up the public input portion for that i had nobody signed up i will close public input and go to that our next presentation which is the state of the courts judge havoc good evening you okay great thank you mayor paul council and members of the lakewood community i very much appreciate your support and and the encouragement and feedback that you've given to us both personally and as a court we really very much appreciate how much you do do for us the state of the court is strong  we continue to be a leader among the municipal courts in the state with innovative programs and work and approaches that are based on the latest research we're really looking to the root causes of the antisocial behavior that we're looking at and trying to use the latest research in addressing that our goal is to keep lakewood safe and healthy by enforcing the laws ordinances helping people and families make changes in their lives so they can lead better and happier lives i want to introduce the people that have come along and let let you know that i continue to be very grateful for our talented and hardworking staff judge dan ramsey is not here tonight he's actually at a family reunion he's been with the court for twenty eight years and we still very much appreciate his wisdom and his experience judge corr is here she has now been with us for four years and she's very much become a leader not only in the courts but in the state she's on the colorado municipal judges board now and has been really spearheading some special projects around the state and also in the county and so she's become a leader very very quickly we have nine part time relief judges they aren't here but i just wanted to mention that many of them are retired district and county court judges so they bring a wealth of experience and then most of the rest of them are retired district attorneys and public defenders and so it's a tremendous some group of  judges that have criminal law experience we also have a brand new judge that i just hired last month who most of you know he's very familiar and this judge scott bear away and he was with us took a brief leave of absence and we're really pleased to have him back my new court administrator is scott hefty and most of you know scott because he was the probation manager chief probation officer for over eight years and he's really instrumental in putting our whole probation department together he's the one that really got the programming and and all the energy together and so he's done a great job and now he's bringing all those organizational skills and she's got a great start she has a lot of enthusiasm she's jumped in and and she's come up with a lot of new ideas and new ways of doing things and so it's really been great to have her her with us and then we have chief mark deedle many of you know mark who's been with us for eight and a half years in the courts and he was with the lakewood police department for twenty five years and so his experience is just tremendous mark has been a real problem solver and really great being innovative and trying to address some of the the challenges we've had particularly with some of the legislation and the jail numbers and so he's really been a tremendous asset for us we appreciate him i'm tammy smith is unable to be here tonight i bet she's watching on tv and she's been in the courts for twenty six years she knows everything about the courts she does the work of about three full time people she can answer every question she can solve every problem and so much revolves around tammy right now when i say that she's been doing the work of three full time p well we're about to go paperless so we're taking all the court files so some eighteen thousand or so a year and putting them on the computer and she's been instrumental in and making sure that that happens  she's worked just hundreds of hours with it and i do need to say that the support of the city with this has been great i t particularly olga and wayne have been just amazing to work with but they with tami have really put together what looks like it's going to be a great system i've been a little nervous about it but i'm getting more and more excited as we see what it's going to look like we're gonna have public portals so that defendants can actually pay fines and see the status of their cases just by getting on the computer they can look and see if they have upcoming court dates they can check to see if they have any active warrants we're still trying to figure out how much we're gonna let them do with those warrants on the computer because some of them maybe don't want to come into court but we're able to do an awful lot more through the through the public portals those will also be used for attorneys who want to it should make it easier for public defenders to get their discovery for defense attorneys to be able to do electronic filing and i think overall it's just gonna be very exciting to go electronic the judges will be able to pull up everything whether in chambers or in court or i guess even from home so we'll see see how all that goes but it really is quite exciting we've most of you have heard a lot about the programs that we've had over the years and i want to focus on some of the new things we're trying to respond and evolved in response to some of the needs that we have in lakewood now we don't do felony drug cases we don't do possession cases but we see an awful lot of addicts and what when we tend to see them as when we have shoplifting cases or disturbances and then they often end up having drug paraphernalia them or they just admit to us that the reason that they're troubled and committing these crimes is that they've they've been addicted to opiates jennifer's oobleck is one of the things that that she really spearheaded got together a group of over twenty agencies and these were treatment providers community community advocates on the department of health has very involved probation officers judges and we had a stakeholder meeting to try to introduce ourselves to everyone introduce them to each other and this is i think a very important movement there there are various groups around the county that are trying to do this sort of work but jennifer's idea was to really try to get everybody at the same table and coordinate efforts we're excited about the possibilities it's we are going to have a pilot program with one probation officer who's going to be specially trained and who already has some pretty good experience dealing with drug issues and he's going to take a very small caseload at first probably eight to ten and try to just really focus resources and attention supervision on and some of the ones that are more willing to get help but but also really struggling with it probation also will take a number of cases but to tell you the truth we just we have a lot of people that that need these resources and so the courts and the city attorney's probably supervise most of the people that have these kinds of issues and i do want to thank the city attorney for the city attorney's office has really been quite amazing on what they're willing to do from what i understand around the state that a lot of city attorneys offices don't get involved in the monitoring and checking on whether or not people are actually doing the treatment that they're saying they're doing and our city attorney's office is very careful they want to make sure they verify everything and that really holds up the standard of integrity and make that people are following through so i appreciate them a lot we have to look at a variety of approaches with this some people need more residential treatment which is actually pretty hard to find these days others just need transitional housing before they get into certain programs we're trying to get better information on resources the department of health has come out with some new lists of resources and ways to access those and and so it's actually been a very exciting kind of movement it's it's a problem we're gonna have i think for a while so we just want to make sure that we're addressing it as best as as we can and then the courts i think are still very important because punitive sanctions and even the possibility of jail could also often be what needs to happen we had a woman just a number of months ago who was actually with us on a domestic violence charge and she had every good intention and so we kept giving her pr bonds so that she'd go do treatment and she kept running out and getting high again and not coming back to court so it was just an in and out in and out and she kept failing to appear finally we just said you know you you've got to just sit in jail until we can get a bed opened up and it did take two months to get that bed opened up and then talking to her after she came back to court after treatment she said you know jail saved my life and i'm so thankful that you didn't let me out again and that's that's the approach that we just have to use for some of the the ones that are so desperate and so addicted that they they sometimes do you need that and so we're we use it sparingly but when it's needed it's it's really important to have that that option for us and so we are going to continue to host the stakeholders the lakewood police are very involved in this i should let you know that there they have a lot of creative ideas and we're working very closely with them in that group and then also with the community resources group the the smaller group of officers i believe you all gave money to the their hitting the ground running you approved a number of new officers and they've they've already been effective and they're already really looking at some of these issues so so they're much  district best practices team that decided to that got a grant actually to look at whether minorities were over represented in the juvenile justice system and i have to give real kudos to the lakewood police department because they offered and we the court offered to be the guinea pigs on this i think number of you have mentioned this too in the last couple of years and it's finally getting to the point where we have the data that the courts have collected and that the police have have collected and so now we're really looking at what we can do and whether there actually is an issue it looks like awareness training enhanced communication are going to be really important in all of this but we're also we have made some changes so now ethnicity is actually reported on every summons which is important just to be able to even see whether there are problems probation officers are now to meeting monthly with school administrators with an eye toward trying to identify at risk students and families so that they can try to get services in place before there is any trouble we're really trying to do prevention through this group and there are a lot of a lot of new ideas i think right probably next year i'll be able to tell you about some of the programs and ideas that they're putting together and how they're spending that grant money be invited to join the court support jeffco and court support jeffco is the nonprofit that supports specialty courts and so we did a presentation with them a few months ago and they welcomed us and so they are going to be supporting us with just some funds to give for rewards and and to help us get activities for the kids this is the program and a lot of you have heard a lot about this that agent fred peter lakewood police department really thought up i mean he was working as an sro with a sobieski academy with the at risk kids with mental health diagnosis and fred peters came to the court and asked us if we could do something so that these kids who were really acting out because of their mental illnesses whether we could do something to give them sanctions and guidance and plans without having them reoffended get deeper deeper into the criminal justice system and so we we have this program which involves ten kids and they do tend to be challenging kids but kids that just really need that support and what is fun is that fred peters left the lakewood police department and he's now in our probation department and he's actually the probation officer in charge of these kids and in charge of this program which which has been great  and so we've had seventeen kids on that program in the last year and again a lot of them have been quite successful we require mental health treatment they have to be in school what what we look at is success is really to be avoiding further criminal behavior be in treatment and be in school and as basic as it might sound shits can be pretty challenging for some of them we've had a fair amount of success we had a girl last year who refused to get out of bed to refuse to go to school refused to go to counseling treatment wouldn't go to the doctor and anytime anybody including her family members would try to get her up she would attack them she actually became quite violent it was through this program and through in home therapy and then the the whole consequences and rewards and you know working with her for a few months that finally got her to a point where she is now in school in therapy getting medication and really functioning and i think that as much as anything sometimes the parents need help putting a plan together and they need help with somebody who say no i'm gonna give you a consequence and i'm ordering it and so we were really pleased with her and often really pleased with with how the program works again liquid has been very supportive community resources agreed to support what we call our yes program and what they do is give us passes to the rec centers for free we send our probation officers with the kids and they do basketball hiking they can do i guess drumming and some non athletic kinds of things too but it's just been a really nice resource for us to have now the court support  co also supports the lakewood veterans program and many of you are familiar with that and this is the the program that was really started because of a fairly small group of  veterans you know most veterans come in and are very successful and they thrive in our community and they contribute tremendously but we do have the small group of veterans who struggle and so this program is really meant to stabilize them reintegrate them help them to be law abiding and we've had believe it's fourteen veterans in the last year on this program and six of them have been successful this year that we've actually completed and i guess i want to just emphasize what six means when i say six out of fourteen five of them are still on the program out of that fourteen but we're talking about people who are coming back often from multiple tours of duty we have one guy who was did three combat tours two in iraq and two and one in afghanistan two thirds of them have been actually in combat situations and the the people who are in the vet court are tend to be the highest risk and the highest needs so this group came in homeless severe mental health issues most of them were actually very suicidal with a number of suicide attempts couldn't hold down jobs addicted to drugs and alcohol and really very desperate so the program is really focusing on those that that really feel like they've they've reached the end and so when we talk about success we're talking about the vets who are now able to get housing six out of the fourteen are now in housing  six of them have been absolutely successful and then most of the ones that are on the program participating are doing much better we get them hooked up to the va and so they have to be sober they have to get get jobs or have something that they're they're doing that's a pro social activity and and then the mental health treatment of course is is really significant and it's the people the mentors from the police department our probation departments  still really involved in that he said he couldn't leave that even if he came became court administrator's so he's he's still very involved in that program and and it's just it's exciting to see see what happens many of you are aware of the west metro veterans fair that we put on each year or helped coordinate and we had the six west metro veterans fair just last month and it had more people than ever lots of positive feedback and and really it has been a good outreach and a way to help the the various stakeholders get connected we've also had a number of people who have come to us because they want to start their own veterans programs so it's been municipalities actually even some people from out of state and some district courts from around the state so we we've had a lot of visitors and a lot of people that that want to try and learn what we've done and we were happy to share what we've been able to learn so far i would love to talk to you about the probation programs that we have and i know most of you have heard a lot about them so please come see me and i can talk for long times and answer questions we can show you around and i know that you are aware of what what we do again probation monitors compliance with court orders for several thousand of our criminal adult and juvenile defendants and so they're they're very busy and again looking at substance treatment mental health treatment school attendance community service and then making sure that they don't commit more  crimes i should note that the domestic violence cases are still our highest priority again i've talked to you a lot about what we do with domestic violence cases the more serious cases always have to go to the the county court and that's appropriate but we have the the less serious but still you know significant domestic violence cases and i think municipal court does a good job and and we're the appropriate place for them we don't give up on them we we may give them quick sanctions but we want to see them through the domestic violence treatment committing no more crimes and then having sobriety and we do come up with a fair amount of success on those the juveniles we still base our juvenile sentences and consequences on the risk assessments and now that we've been doing this for a number of years we actually have three years which can show us that the the what the research predicted was right that these evidence based assessments really don't do show riah fens and who doesn't and so this has given us much more confidence that that we are doing the right thing on really focusing our attention on the medium and higher risk kids and then the low risk kids are basically in and out with appropriate small consequences just looking at either the crime or whatever issues they have that led to the crime and most of them come out of court with with no criminal history the vast majority of kids come through municipal court and they get diversion and that really does mean that we can focus on the higher risk kids  again i appreciate your support with the juvenile cases you've all given us extra support for they're there you ways for one thing the work crew is no longer residential and so a lot of the the money that that we've used for that is being used for testing and uae's and and basically the the kind of treatment that the kids need so i i've appreciated that that you all have have chipped in you filled some gaps there though that we really needed filled so so thank you for that and we're still doing the girls circle teen court graffiti cleanup we've still got a lot of kids going through that and shane littleton runs this program one thing that that i think is  really interesting about that they do a lot of good work shane also mentors and really spends time talking to the kids and trying to give them a pro social experience so he does a good job with with that on top of trying to trying to keep things cleaned up we're still doing the youth educational team program we created a second spanish court day so that and put that in the afternoon so that kids wouldn't miss school and we almost never use detention these days so it's very much the last resort and we're finding that the other consequences and and really focusing on the positive and and trying to get kids into treatment  most effective we did a school supplies supply drive and this was our new chief jennifer's oobleck sai dia and came up with a hundred and thirty backpacks full of school supplies that we were able to give out to kids at the beginning of the year that was a fun idea and just very appreciated we hope if they get little treats they won't miss court so that was a good way to start the school year we had an expungement of records law and this was a two thousand and seventeen  bill and basically what what the expungement bill does is that it expenses all juvenile records once the kids have successfully completed their sentences and don't have any other pending cases  records are expunged and what that means is that if somebody calls us we tell them we don't have record of this case now law enforcement probation courts all of those kinds of agencies human services schools all of those agencies can still get these records they'll still find out that there was a the case because so often they have to know what kid's backgrounds are so that they can effectively give interventions but this actually really does fit with our philosophy of promoting good behavior because colleges and bosses landlords even the military are all going to be seeing the kids or they don't know about the records it really does give kids a second chance we also have the sealing of records that came up both these laws were passed last year and this is for adults that have no prior criminal history and so once the case is dismissed through a deferred judgment the the case can be sealed and so it's the same idea that we're trying to give them another chance to start another law and this is what chief doodles been working so hard on that was passed last year and started up january st is the  label and this basically says that once a person in custody has been arrested and they're being held on a municipal charge only this doesn't apply to state charges they have two days to be days to get a little bit more of a cushion but it has been challenging the the responsibilities and duties of the marshals have have really gone way up it's easy when people are arrest jefferson county what happens though is that they're arrested all over the state and then the we have to either transport them or we've been doing a lot of video and phone advisement s and this is complicated by the public defender bill which requires that there be a public defender for every first court appearance we used to have court or public defenders at the jail when needed or on our public defender days now we have them every single day and it's because of this bill that passed in two thousand and sixteen but just can't became effective this year when you combine the jail delay bill where we're doing video and  phone advisements this this does get challenging at times we've got a great public defender's office and they've made themselves available basically by phone if we have somebody or we're doing video or telephone advisements they'll be available by phone so that they can make sure that the defendant talks to them and gives them full legal advice and then they'll appear on speakerphone basically and so the electronics have really helped in trying to protect those rights you can see that there are a lot of counties in this state and so each one of these pretty much has a jail and each one of them arrests our defendants and so at any given time we have between seventy five and one hundred prisoners somewhere around the state outside of jefferson county and so that's what chief deedle has to keep track of  as all those prisoners and when they're ready to be transported when they're just our prisoners and so it's it's actually been very complicated but they've done a really good job on it it's gone much more smoothly than i actually imagined  we're also trying to just keep our our jail bed numbers down we have caps now with the jefferson county jail we've worked together with the other municipalities to share caps which has been nice for us because we're the biggest user of the jail out of fifty beds like what has twenty one and then we we share the other twenty nine or so and we do sometimes use other people's beds actually fairly regularly and what we're what we're really trying to do is to avoid coming to having people come to to jail at all and most defendants and municipal court don't need a jail sentence the reason that we have so many warrants and so many arrests is that they don't show up for court and so that's when the warrants go out it looks like we're gonna have about four thousand six hundred and fifty six arrest warrants in two thousand and eighteen and as hard as we're working to keep those down the the numbers of people actually making it into the jail are  much much lower the marshals interns actually call every defendant before the warrant actually goes on the system so we order the warrants and then the interns call so every person has a chance to come in and take care of the warrant and this year out of those forty six fifty six it looks like we've kept one thousand five hundred and thirty seven defendants from going to jail the marshals have been bringing them straight taken about a hundred and ninety to jail itself but that used to be it used to be a much larger part of the thirteen twenty three people with warrants and that was only a hundred and ninety going to the jail projected for for two thousand and eighteen and so i i'm proud of how well we're using our resources you can see that those jail beds are so expensive and this really leaves leaves those jail beds for the people that that need it we've done video four thousand two hundred and thirty six arraignments over video and then we're also judge ramsey and i take turns one of us is on call every weekend to be called when somebody's arrested first of all to make sure that there's probable cause that they should be in the jail but then we can also adjust the bonds when we hear they've just been arrested over the weekends too so we're we're working very hard trying to keep those numbers down and and keep our use of the jail very efficient pretrial services f jefferson county has actually been calling on the people who don't even have their court hearings yet on every court appearance they've been able to call eighty three percent of the defendants and those are the ones with working telephones and so they've been making four to five hundred calls a week because that's how many hearings we have and that we're hoping we don't know the numbers yet we're hoping that that's made a significant impact on the failures to appear again our numbers are completely dependent on what's happening with summons numbers so we we have what the police department gives us the specific offenses and i'm usually give these to you every year again the traffic numbers are are the most summonses we process right around nine thousand traffic cases parking three thousand six hundred infractions fifty one thirty six judges only get involved in any of those if they want to fight the charges at trial so i don't even see the parking and infractions very often and the violations bureau really really handles most of those the no proof of insurance or also traffic though the judges do look at those because they're they're much more serious and they can possibly go to jail if their repeat offenders but we spend most of our time on those adult penal the dv the juvenile zoning you can see that there are only thirty six projected for two thousand and eighteen but it's surprising how the zoning and the animal control cases tend to be very time consuming and there are a high priority they tend to be ones that take take a lot of our time the numbers have been even with the numbers down the the revenue has been fairly consistent over the years the violations bureau they're collecting just over two million dollars in fines i'm always proud of how little they make mistakes this year as of september th it was only nineteen dollars and mistakes which apparently is pretty good it sounds good to me and then they've they've handled records requests six hundred and sixty of them and then just under ten thousand traffic and parking cases and those really are tammy's most violations bureau clerks that handle all those and then we're looking at twenty six hundred or so cases to be paid online and eighteen hundred and some by phone and that's before we our new system so we're expecting those numbers to go way up and then like i said we're looking at probably having seventeen thousand seven hundred summonses this year the new computer system it's hard to know how that's going to affect the the staffing and the jobs and we'll just have to see what happens with that we do have interns helping it's been wonderful having basically free help six or seven college interns seven high school interns and that's been really great for them and great for us six of our full time staff right now started as the unpaid intern so it's been a great way to get to know people and and then get them hired this is a little hard to see but it's a snapshot basically of the kinds of hearings that we hold and these are the ones that the judges do handle and  as you can see it's sixteen thousand seven hundred and four hearings in many cases go to a number of different hearings such as why there's so many compared to the number of summonses you've got trials to the court in fact i had to stop one in the middle to come over and do this and we're gonna finish it up tomorrow about sixty one a year jury trial numbers are down and i curious about why that's happening but we'll look into that i don't know and and then these other hearings are just kind of for for your information  the we're continued we're continuing to have scrutiny from a lot of outside groups the courts criminal justice reform as i've talked to many of you about is really still a focus of a lot of politicians and and very much is in the news these days and i can just assure you that we're working very hard to make sure that the fairness and consistency are really primary parts of the lakewood municipal court and again we're we're watching ourselves but we're also really trying to train its courts around the state were involved in active trying to share what what would be the standards of best practices and trying to stay on top of those we meet very regularly with state jefferson county and and many judges the issue often comes down to local control and i think you all are very involved  all of this there are a lot of county state and even federal government entities that would like to do more of what we tend to do in the municipalities and certainly there are a lot of crimes and cases that that are more appropriate handles handled by the county or even the state but the cases the the municipal court handles i believe are handled very well i think that just as in some other areas of local government we're able to respond to the specific needs and personalities of our our city we often know the people and the the citizens we definitely know the resources and know the the people and the other the other agencies involved and and so in a situation where we're more focused on intervention and treatment and trying to really take these quality of life crimes and help the people to to stop doing them and to have more pro social lives and activity the the municipal courts are ideal for that kind of treatment and intervention  the least serious cases in the county court are the most serious cases in the municipal court and and i think we have a lot of success just very quickly we we did another survey on if we're the judges court clerk's and in general if we're courteous and answer questions and professional and i do want to remind you that these are people who don't want to come to  place so so we always get a few pretty negative ones so i just want to remind you that they're under duress and ashley scott broke this down into percentages which i think actually is easier to look at which shows that we're right there in the you know eighty to eighty three percent of people gave us threes and fours the top to the top two scores for judges and court clerks and they were a little less happy with the time and comfort of the courthouse the parky and that sort of thing but i i think it's still pretty good for for a place where nobody really wants to be we did get a few comments that were kind of fun  defendant saying well done courtesy and affirm dignity of the accused on paying a ticket i appreciate detailed instructions of the judicial process the staff and the judge seem very helpful comment from the defendant was treated very well despite my circumstances not having money to pay today somebody was surprised at how fast the process was though a lot of people have not had that same experience from the other judging from the other  responses prosecutor is understanding window staff excellence and so i just shows a couple of comments so you could say that even some of those offenders come in and and are not too terribly unhappy with what we're doing so so anyway thank you and i wanted to encourage all of you to come visit anytime so in fact if you let us know we can tell you the more interesting time so we always love to have visitors so great thank you very much very nice and thorough presentation i really want to thank you and your staff you do a lot with little and you're always trying to look for new ways to innovate and and really build a community asset that isn't so much based on just putting people in jail but trying to help people in this somebody who went through the courts here in lakewood as a juvenile i think you've always had that kind of ability to do that and the veterans issues you're leading the way so many different areas and you're also doing this while getting beat up at the legislature and it's interesting these outside groups you know rightfully so you see some of these reforms that need to take place but you'll hear them well we're not worried about lakewood right you're doing it right however attorney i've had some experience in other jurisdictions with the veterans courts and i must say that's really gratifying the city lakewood kind of on the leading edge on that i think you're on the right track i really do you know just from the few cases that i've seen work with the surprising thing is they come up out of the blue i mean sometimes they're you know it's not like these are returning veterans that are coming back right now a lot of them are been around for a while and then all of a sudden the wheels fall off and in problems arise and it could be five years ten years down the road so and then this really helps them get to the resources they've maybe been holding things together and you know with rubber bands and finally they they need to step up and find the resources that they need which is what your program does so it's not something that's gonna go away even if we're not at war it's gonna be something that's gonna be needed in the you know indefinite future i think and i just wanted to mention that the other thing i wanted to just ask you i know there's been some changes in the last year from our legislature some new requirements on you can you kind of maybe share with us a little bit with the impact of those who've been on your on your court well the the public defender bill certainly was big that has cost us quite a bit of money i know that you're aware that our budget went up because of having to pay extra for for the public defenders with there is a law giving two million dollars to be shared among all the courts in the state and actually i'm going to a meeting on thursday to find out how they're gonna divvy up the two million dollars to two million dollars and and so so the expenses of of the public defender defender bill have been significant our listen may not know what that means and i'm sorry yeah thank you i appreciate that what happened is that there were some groups that really push the legislators to pass a law that basically said that there should be public defenders at every first appearance now the united states constitution has tended through the years to look at the first appearance as being a time when a person comes in and can request a public defender and that was always what lakewood and and really many courts have have done is that we'd wait for the requests we try to get them the public defender right away and the law actually said within a reasonable time but the state legislature decided that they wanted to have attorneys with the defendants right away immediately before they ever asked for attorneys and they wanted to make sure that that they had somebody to advise them in case they wanted to plead guilty andor wanted to argue bond and the big things are arguing bonds or deciding that they want to take responsibility for the crime and it is true that there are offenders who want to just plead guilty right away and get it done with and so now they have an attorney at every every single he the issue was that it looked like an unfunded mandate and so that's why there was a law passed to to appropriate the two million dollars but like i said i'm not sure how that's going to be divided up yet be nice if we had our costs covered but i'd be a little surprised you know any other change and then the the jail delay bill is the one that is the to day and for day and this is one of those that mayor paul alluded to that there were some jurisdictions that were leaving people in custody for you know sometimes up to a week or sometimes ten days and there were even some horror stories that maybe there was something longer though those were very far and few between we had trouble finding those but there there were some horror stories and so the idea behind the jail delay bill was that municipal offenders really ought to get to court within two days of their arrest which is pretty automatic when they're arrested in county but it's it's been challenging when they're arrested out of county because it really is the same two day requirement and so that's that's been somewhat challenging and so the the overall goal to make sure that people weren't sitting without being advised by a judge without having a chance to handle their cases as certainly a good one the the requirements of the law have been somewhat challenging but we're we're doing it so and then the expungement bill and the sealing bills the ceilings actually been pretty pretty simple to to work with  giving kids another chance and really wanting to make sure that their you know that these these crimes these offenses don't follow them around but in the thirty some pages of conflicting provisions and deadlines and hearings advisements and i wish i'd brought in the chart that's got hefty put together i mean it's just a massive chart of all the different requirements and ways things can go and so we've i bet we've had two employees worth full time employees worth of hours that we've had to put in just to get these kids cases expunged and and for example they've they want us to look back every november first to see if kids who weren't eligible for expungement in the past year are now eligible for expungement because all their pending cases are taken care of and it does that mean that in september their case is done and then november st we have to go back and run criminal histories on all of the kids that have happened in the in the year before and so they're just provisions that have have made it difficult with reporting requirements that have been really difficult so so it's been huge and and and very time consuming for the staff just huge amounts of paper that we have to hand deliver to the colorado bureau of investigations and i understand i've heard rumors that that it's gotten back to the legislators that this has been hugely expensive and cumbersome and that we actually could do it much more easily if they would just let us figure out how to do it or just come up with some more simple procedures so the goal was great the thirty some pages of deadlines and reporting requirements have been legislation having to do with municipal court so i know another big one i didn't even talk about we now have to do basically felony level advisements and felony level advisements on guilty pleas and so it it means i believe that there was was concern that some of the courts weren't really explaining to the defendants what they were facing and what what the choices were the elements of the offense and finding factual basis all this kind of thing and so we we now have basically a felony level plea for every open container charge and that was spilled out by law that it needed to be that that thorough so we're protecting the defendants rights and i'm certainly a proponent of that but it's they were so specific about the requirements that it's it's added a fair amount of court time i guess if i were just a gas probably a good hour hour and a half each day just because there are so many things that we have to cover sometimes the defendants i don't know if i should say all the defendants get a little frustrated and say i just want to play guilty can you ask me all these questions it's like sorry i'm required to i think again the intent was really good but it just micro managed and the requirements are pretty demanding so so yeah  committee i'd really like to thank you of your leadership here in the city but above and beyond that you've been leader in the state regarding a lot of these bills and proposed legislation that has come down you've gone down and testified and i've always felt so comfortable knowing how involved you been i just would like to thank you because you are making a difference not just for us but for the entire state with some of the that's going on and frankly you bring some common sense to the table thank you i'd also like to thank you for your innovation and creativity and i believe the mayor mention this regarding some of the programs that your offer and i also want to thank you for your involvement in mental health as it applies to children i have a very dear cousin who has little girls there was something different about her and frankly if she would have been recognized and treated as a little girl she would not be in a psychiatric hospital as i speak she so i appreciate what you've done her life would have been very different if people would have recognized really what was going on with her and i do have one question you were talking about minority misrepresentation or over represent not misery but over representation and you basically have a type of a task force that's looking at that and dealing with it you said that your idea or identifying students that are at risk in in the school system that's awesome and that you're providing services could you please give an example of some of the services that you're trying to help these kids with and this is basically this is a federal grant and so the county applied with a number of different stakeholders and in the lakewood courts and the lakewood police department are the the the main police department the main cour that agreed to get involved with this and so the first couple years or so have been collecting the data as initially we weren't sure that that we would find a problem and  so we're at the point where it does appear that the the numbers suggest that there there is something we need to work on here and so the kind of intervention that we're looking at certainly human services involvement trying to make sure that before there any there's any criminal behavior or is there family therapy to parents need treatment drug treatment trying to just look and see you know the the kids not making it to school not actually when i hear about the head start it just warms my heart to it's so nice to hear about how the early intervention is so important and so it's it's looking at those kinds of issues and it's not criminal justice oriented it really is trying to make sure that any high risk families are getting the resources that they need and and hoping that that will will level the playing field in some ways so and they're just at the point of identifying this and then starting these meetings and the communication and i think they're they're going to be getting suggestions from the the professional group that's helping with the grant as to how to address a lot of the issues too so so i think i'll have more specific answers for you next year on  programs and but they're at least talking and and identifying at this point thank you i don't mean to not look at you i'm taking notes  thank you mayor judge again thank you very much for making a difference in our community i have so many things to say so i'll try to keep  brief as much as i can and do the important things one of the huge things that we looked at and i'm also a veteran by the way and the veterans court working together with  west metro veterans fair working with the va system which we have a facility here and i got to tell you a little story that's really interesting that'll probably hit right to your heart counselor abel and i called me one day and and we went down on west colfax and there was a gentleman he was a vietnam vet a marine he was a tunnel rat and he finally was on colfax he was on the ground and he says look i'm willing to concede to society's rules can you please help me so we were able to bring him in through your system and bring him into valor point now that's an exciting system within itself but what's even better is that this gentleman and i'm going to call him james turn around and went through the program and graduated from the program but went back to where he came from and i call it in in the in the weeds and brought some of his fellow veterans back through the system so we were able to get him the housing able to get him the retirement the disability but he started bringing more people in to  bring our veterans home and i want you to know that and and your system is playing a very important role one veteran at a time and we're taking him off the streets the other thing that i wanted to mention  was diversion and about six seven years ago we had a strong in east lakewood especially in ward three we had  huge challenge on graffiti and with your help and your help with diversion with the kids with your programs and other programs together our graffiti was dropped by eighty percent so that's that's a good success in east lakewood but i wanted to also put out and shout out and i normally don't do this but i you know i have to sometimes take exception but there's  a staff member that you have shane littleton i have to tell you kudos to him give him a raise whatever you got to do keep him happy he has helped our communities our seniors like you wouldn't believe we had in in our community we have such diverse community everything from belmar to ranching you know ranches from forty thousand dollars modular homes to two five million dollars in there right next to each other and we have a lot of seniors that want to stay in place in their house and sometimes they're challenged this individual is about seventy seven years young and needed a little bit of love and the kids came over and they showed this this young lady a little bit of love and she wanted to make sure and let you know that she is very grateful and say thank you thank you thank you but i want you to know that and  last wanted to also say your programs that you're doing here is is second to none i'm excited we were did this morning i took a little short tour of your courts went with the constituent was a little bit of afraid that go in front of the courts so i just stood there with them for support and walked in he walked in he addressed his issue and walked out in the first comment he said was my goodness these courts are really awesome and that was his words and again he had his issues resolved everything moved forward but he was really satisfied with the way he was treated and his performance and the performance of of your staff and the judge so i just wanted to put that out there for you and i just wanted to say thank you public feedback period nobody signed up so i will close that and we will go into reports and i'm going to just ask a real quick question a council or the clerk so ballots are going and the big blue book's came out but has anybody received the small blue book so you did okay so those should be coming this week as well and the small one will address local with all the local issues i arrived before  before the weekend okay all right maybe it goes that way so good so ballots are out and are going out today and the white book which will handle the local issues should be arriving the big blue book should already be there they have had some issues with the blue book so i think reach out to your clerk's office if you have a question or if it was potentially sent to the wrong address i would urge you to start at the bottom of your ballot and work your way all the way to the top because it will be long a lot of fun things going on in the city and different meetings all that the different council members addressed those i will say this was a really cool opportunity that i  had the prince alexander and princess catherine of serbia were in town and they've been in town frequently but there's a serbian orthodox church off cedar in garrison and so they were in town for project here and stop lakewood to to visit and prince alexander's dad who was the king was actually pushed out by the nazis and so they have not been back until recently within the last five years to  serbia and kind of taken that back up but now it's a much more honorary role but they've always enjoyed their time here in the city of lakewood so i think that's all i have i'll go all the way down to my left no report variable report just a really quick one thank you to the community action team no that's not right community okay that's right gosh i got it right help solve a serious issue in ward five and i just wanted to make sure that they understood the neighbors are thrilled and they did a really neat neighborhood service would you pass along our thank  i would like to just thank councillor abel for tonight's workshop for the public that isn't aware they can read the second draft of the campaign finance update that we're doing and thank you to councilor abel who shepherded that along over the past six months or so so now the public can read that and also stay tuned for whenever we're having the first reading of that i don't know when that is but hopefully soon i think it's november t saw that the action center posted their progress on the seventeen thousand dollar grant match and they are at fourteen thousand two hundred and nineteen dollars so they're only two thousand seven hundred and eighty one dollars away and it would be great if we hit seventeen zero on the seventeenth so two days so if you have an employer match or you have a little extra cash just keep in mind they were going through some hard times and so if you can't donate cash they also certainly food items i keep reminding folks men's clothing i don't know if we're getting the word out i don't know that they're being inundated but please be sure to reach out the long term goal is to get them funded enough to where we can reopen the beds for the homeless shelter that's an important thing the cold weather is upon us it came quickly and so we just want to think about those folks that don't have permanent shelters so thank you and also when to say thanks to folks who stopped at our reward for meeting this past weekend we appreciate you always coming out thank you mister betta no report is vincent i'm just real quick for those of you who live in the two creeks neighborhood they are having correct sounds right and that will be at forty at the forty west building and that's it was johnson no report you know before and you brought something up about sheltering so there is an update i was in a meeting of the cyl see and mean streets had been struggling with their family shelter and where they were gonna put it there were some issues with west metro fire they have found four different locations so they're gonna be hopefully rotating the family shelter to three places in lakewood one and we ridge and the cy lc granted contingent upon those locations funding of about thirty five thousand dollars for their program director and so hats off to west metro fire who really tried to work with them so hopefully by november one the family shelter will be in operation and then they're still working on the severe weather shelter which takes adults to churches as well so piece mealing it but things are forward so thank you for mentioning that show anything greg cathy alright so we will adjourn at agent hunt thank you very much you got off easy tonight go home and go to bed thank you