COURT SERVED EVICTION NOTICE

By AmyJo Brown/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF

An attorney for the Board of Trustees for the Pine Bluff-Jefferson County Library System served District Court Judge Waymond Brown a legal notice Tuesday requiring him to vacate the lower level of the library’s main building at 200 E. 8th Ave. by Monday.

“There’s very little choice left,” the attorney, former Juvenile Judge Thomas Brown, told Waymond Brown and Mayor Carl A. Redus Jr. in a brief meeting Tuesday afternoon where he served the notice to quit and vacate.

The notice is the first step in a legal process that could force the District Court of Jefferson County, Division 2, out of the offices its staff has worked in since 2001. The court handles misdemeanor cases, preliminary felony cases and civil cases in matters of less than $5,000.

Thomas Brown said the library board feels city officials have not made enough of an effort to remove the court from the building since it sent the city an eviction notice in April 2007. He also said the city has failed to pay the $1 in rent it owes the library for 2007 and the $1,000 in monthly rent the board began charging the city in February, after the city failed to comply with the eviction notice.

“I deeply regret having to cause the court chaos and confusion,” he said.

Redus, after being served the notice to quit and vacate, said the city would abide by it — “no ifs, ands or buts.”

In an interview later in the day, Redus said he contacted lawyers at the Arkansas Municipal League to review the city’s options. He said he was making no plans to immediately move the court.

“They’ve got to do what they got to do,” he said. “My plan is to let the lawyers handle it.”

He said he felt the city had responded to the library board’s demands, by moving pre-arraignment proceedings for jail inmates to the jail and, most recently, by moving trials and hearings from the children’s theater in the library to the City Council Chambers. He said the city did not have the resources in this year’s budget to immediately move the court’s staff and all of their files from the library building, but that he had been working on a plan to have the staff out by the end of the year.

In the city attorney’s office after the meeting, both Judge Waymond Brown and City Attorney Carol Billings — whose office has the bulk of cases before Brown — said they were not sure what would happen next.

Waymond Brown said he planned to cancel pre-arraignment proceedings this morning, and close the court offices about 1 p.m. Friday to accommodate a children’s summer reading program the library is holding in the children’s theater. He said the library has demanded access during those times to restrooms in a locked part of the court’s offices.

About 20 people, the majority of whom were responding to traffic tickets, were scheduled to appear before him this morning, according to his clerk’s records. No cases are scheduled for Friday afternoon.

He said he would continue with pre-arraignments at the jail today and all scheduled cases the rest of the week.

He said he had not had time to discuss the issue with Redus.

“We have not decided whether to object or not,” he said.

Billings said that no matter what happens, “we’re going to try and maintain court as best we can.”

Billings had called for Tuesday’s meeting after she said she failed to get a response from Redus and the city’s aldermen regarding a proposed compromise she had worked on with Thomas Brown and presented more than a month ago to address concerns the library has about the court hurting its business.

The proposal called for switching the court offices with another department in the city and paying the rent the library was demanding — although this year’s payments would have been deferred until the city could budget them as a lump sum out of next year’s budget.

She said she was concerned that the city was putting itself at risk because of growing tension between the library’s director and the court’s staff over the unresolved issues.

No city aldermen attended Tuesday’s meeting.

First Ward Alderman Irene Holcomb, chairman of the city’s public safety committee, said she had a conflict with another meeting. Her colleague on the committee, Third Ward Alderman Bill Brumett, said he didn’t realize the meeting was scheduled, and that he was sorry he had missed it.

“I’ve had a lot going on lately,” he said.

The third member of the committee, Third Ward Alderman Derwood Smith, said he was on a fishing trip he planned weeks ago.

“I kinda wish I would have been there,” he said.