County Administrator Judi Boyko told the Journal-News the commissioners want to “explore the office market to see if there is a cost effective alternative when consolidating the two courts.”
“The volume of activity in Area I Court is not as high as the other courts and the Area Court in the Historic Courthouse is not logistically and functionally ideal,” Boyko said.
The county has paid the city of Oxford $24,000 annually to lease space for the Area I Court since 1995, according to City Manager Doug Elliott. The county owns the Historic Courthouse so there is no separate cost for that court. The county pays West Chester Twp. $39,999 annually for the Area III courtroom.
The RFP has very specific requirements for the potential lease space, it must have “at least two constructed courtrooms with ancillary space for front office and security operations” and approximately 12,000 square feet of space. It states the county is looking for “turn-key office space” in central Butler County.
The city of Hamilton has vacant courtroom space in the Government Services Center it shares with the county, since Hamilton Municipal Court moved to the new $32 million Hamilton Justice Center earlier this year. The city will be responding to the RFP, which has an Aug. 22 deadline.
“With the completion of the new Justice Center, we now have two available courtrooms and are happy to respond to Butler County’s RFP for courtroom space,” Finance Director Dave Jones told the Journal-News.
The Butler County Area Courts handle most of the misdemeanor and traffic cases, as well as domestic violence cases, OVI (Operating a Vehicle while Intoxicated) cases and civil actions up to $15,000 that arise in their respective geographic jurisdictions, according to the court website.
The Area I Court gets much of its “business” from Miami University students and it does have the lowest case count of the three. There were 1,456 filed in Area I over the last five years, compared to 2,667 in Area II and 2,109 in the West Chester location.
Oxford City Manager Doug Elliott isn’t pleased with this development, “I feel strongly that it should be kept here in Oxford as it has been for the last 30 years.”
“It would be a huge inconvenience for the students to have to go to Hamilton, many of the Miami students don’t drive a car, they don’t have a car, so they’d have to get on the bus to go to Hamilton and so would other residents that need to go to court,” Elliott said. “We’d like to see it stay here in Oxford, we’re going to basically look at that RFP, maybe we’ll submit one.”
When asked about relocating, Area I Court Judge Rob Lyons, who maintains his private legal practice in West Chester Twp. while not on the bench in Oxford, told the Journal-News “the commissioners determine what’s in the best interest, it’s their call, they take care of facilities. I’ve never picked my location, I’m told where my court is and that’s where I preside.”
Court relocation became an issue earlier this year when the judges informed the commissioners some changes were needed based on a security assessment from Ohio Supreme Court. At that time Area Courts Administrator Jeannette Bullard told the Journal-News “we are in talks” about a possible move but there are no solid plans. She said the main concern was to move the Area II Court out of the Historic Courthouse.
“The Historic Courthouse, we want to keep it historic and aesthetically pleasing and we want to maintain the beauty of it and the historic part of it and that doesn’t really jibe well with modern conveniences and it is relatively small,” she said. “The Supreme Court did a security audit in April of 2024 and felt we needed a bigger space.”
Bullard said the judges on her court would not release the Supreme Court audit for security reasons. The high court told the Journal-News the same thing.
Consolidating the Area Courts isn’t a novel idea, Prosecutor Mike Gmoser has been pushing for complete consolidation — not just locations as is the case here — for many years. The perception of impropriety when a part-time judge rules on a case one day and then represents a client on the same charge the next has caused Gmoser to seek the end of part-time judges.
In 2017, Oxford commissioned a study into creating its own municipal or mayors court when Gmoser began pushing the issue. The study showed a mayor’s court could cost roughly $346,649 and reap $359,450 in revenues.
A municipal court system would cost considerably more at an estimated $1.45 million. Revenue projections were not offered, “since that is a function of the law enforcement protocols of the Oxford and Miami University police departments.” It noted however some other municipal courts are heavily subsidized by the local jurisdictions and it could have amounted to $1 million-plus.
Elliott said “we decided we wanted to stay with the status quo, leaving the Area I Court here in Oxford, it was going to be too costly to have our own municipal court, at that time we didn’t favor a mayor’s court.”
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