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St. JOSEPH — Berrien County Commissioners tackled a number of topics at their meetings Thursday morning at the Berrien County Administration Center in St. Joseph.

      Commissioners spent the bulk of their Committee of the Whole meeting talking about the JWorks court software program. Commissioners expressed concern over what the lack of communication between the new JWorks system and other law enforcement systems means to staff and to the public.

The program which was implemented more than a year ago has been the subject of concern and controversy over the months as the court’s computers no longer communicate directly with other entities such as the prosecutor’s office and the sheriff’s office.

Trial Court Administrator Carrie Smietanka-Haney, Information Systems Director Chris Swihart and County Clerk Stacy Loar-Porter all addressed commissioners about how the new system is being implemented and what needs to be done for JWorks to better interface with the other systems as well as with state law.

Smietanka-Haney said that it has been an ongoing challenge. “We were so intermingled, it shouldn’t have been that way but we had done it for so long,” she said. “… We have continued management of the ongoing challenges, the staff has been working diligently and the fact that additional personnel will be needed is no longer a question but a reality.”

The three said the fact that it is a unified trial court brings additional challenges. Swihart said there is no standard template officials can pull from which means the county has to build the new system internally to make the different processes function.

Commissioners raised a number of concerns including making sure that police officers and other first responders have up to date LEIN (Law Enforcement Information Network) information when they are making traffic stops. Smietanka-Haney admitted that getting court information on LEIN is nearly a year behind.

“The unified trial court notwithstanding, I’m troubled by the fact that we are not able to communicate in real time nearly as effectively as we did 30 years ago,” County Board Chairman Mac Elliott said. “We spent a lot of money on something that is not as efficient as the old system … We wouldn’t have this in private business. We wouldn’t have this checkerboard arrangement.”

Elliott called it a “death of a thousand cuts” with the computers in the courts, prosecutor’s office and sheriff’s office not being able to communicate directly with each other and having to pay vendors more money to buy interfaces for the systems to communicate.

“The real risk that comes with this delay in reporting to LEIN,” he said. “It’s a danger to the public and to officers. It’s a public safety risk to officers to stop someone and they don’t know if someone is a bad hombre. I would think that people in Lansing would be working on this.”

In another law enforcement related issue, Berrien County Sheriff Chuck Heit reported that the county has entered into a warrant service officer agreement with ICE on immigration related matters. He said that the agreement follows the county’s longtime practice of honoring out of state and out of county holds on people in the county jail.

County Commissioners also heard an update about renovations to the Berrien County Juvenile Center and to the health department offices in the Niles courthouse. The latter is set to be done in coming months at a cost of nearly $1 million.

With the Juvenile Center located in Berrien Township, commissioners learned that it has been estimated to cost $5.3 million to make electrical, plumbing and other upgrades to the building on Dean’s Hill Road. Bids for the work are expected to be back by early June.

Commissioners questioned the price tag for the work with Commissioner Julie Wuerfel asking whether it would be cheaper to buy, develop or take care of another building. She said that the $5.3 million boils down to $378,000 for each of the 14 juveniles that can be housed there.

County Administrator Brian Dissette said the county board will have the final say on whether to go forward with the juvenile center repairs or look at other alternatives. He said the county is not locked in to repairing that facility, only for paying for the design work done so far.

The money for both projects are coming from the American Rescue Plan Act funds the county received. Dissette said the county has already spent much of its ARPA funds on broadband expansion and a number of deferred maintenance projects.