Televised hearings take Tusayan court to next level

TUSAYAN, Ariz. - The Williams Justice Court has taken court services up a notch and plans to offer televised court hearings at the Tusayan Town Hall within the next month.

According to Williams Justice Court Magistrate Rob Krombeen, moving the court to Tusayan has been a long term goal and is a decision the town of Tusayan and the Williams Justice Court (WJC) are excited to offer.

"The town manager and clerk's office have been very helpful with us being able to administer and provide that service to them at their location," Krombeen said. "It is really going to be taking the court up there to the next level."

"We appreciate that Judge Krombeen is trying to provide greater service to our residents," said Tusayan town manager Will Wright.

The televised services will be held at the Tusayan Town Hall and will, most likely, be held once a week. A definite time and date has not yet been set.

"As far as the video link goes, I'm waiting for one more IT (computer information system) step to be done down here before we are ready to have the Sheriff's office start citing their tickets into the town hall," Krombeen said. "Which is going to be within the next month."

Presently court hearings for the Tusayan area are held at the WJC. Krombeen said hearings will be held once a week at the town hall.

"Basically every week of the month we will have a scheduled time, one day of that week, where customers and defendants in Tusayan can appear directly - by that video link, to the court house here (in Williams)," Krombeen said. "We'll be scheduling that with the town, as far as having it being a set time on Tuesdays."

In addition to televised appearances, Krombeen plans to travel once a month to the town hall to hold court.

"Particularly for trials and cases that can't be solved over the video link," he said.

After the town's incorporation in 2010, the town entered into an inter-governmental agreement (IGA) with WJC. Prior to offering televised court services, anyone summoned to appear in court from the Tusayan area had to drive to Williams to attend court.

"When the town first incorporated and when we identified the town as an incorporated community, they were going to have to provide their own court," Krombeen said. "It just made a lot of sense to develop this inter-governmental agreement (IGA), for us to administer and provide their court services."

According to Krombeen, offering a televised court to the town will be a benefit to the community and will help cut down on travel expensives.

"We've seen this need and the need just seems to continue to increase," Krombeen said. "Many times the case can not be resolved by one appearance in court. That increases the difficulties and challenges for folks to appear in court. You're looking at a 110 mile round trip - minimum, and we've had quite a few customers who have had implication issues. Whether they don't have a vehicle or they have an issue with their driving privileges."

Recent improvements to the town hall's broadband capacity also helped the court make a smooth transition to televised appearances.

"We had some IT challenges, but that's been solved with the broadband improvements and the town has an improved audio/visual system in the council chambers, which is going to be extremely compatible with our system," he said. "We are going to make this change with very, very little cost to the town and it's going to be a great opportunity to take our IGA to the next level."

Ruth Alvarado, Williams Justice Court specialist, will be coordinating all administrative services for the Tusayan court and will provide group services between WJC and the town of Tusayan.

In the future Krombeen hopes to see the court in Tusayan offer further services, including a kiosk/computer station where court customers can make payments to the court and to look up case information from the law library in Flagstaff.