Probate judge looks to increase budget

CELINA - Mercer County Probate/Juvenile Court Judge Mary Pat Zitter is looking to increase the court's budget by about 8.2 percent in 2019, an uptick she credits in part to a return of a full probation staff.

County commissioners are reviewing departmental appropriation requests for next year, having scheduled sit-downs with elected officials this month.

The probate/juvenile court is seeking $621,051 next year from the county's general fund, compared with $574,012 this year, county documents show.

"There are increases, and that's because we've gone back to full staff," Zitter told commissioners. "About five or six years ago … we didn't replace an employee because (of) budget restrictions and the county was having tough times."

Zitter said fallout from countywide crises faced by the sheriff's office and the common pleas and municipal courts has trickled down to her court.

"We get the children, and it was just really stretching us pretty hard," she said, noting the court wasn't able to carry out as many programs and preventive outreach initiatives with the children under its jurisdiction. "So we went back to full staff."

Zitter was asked by the newspaper if her juvenile caseload is on the upswing.

"The complications of the cases are really on the rise," she replied. "All of those people that are arrested through law enforcement, they generally have children and then the children have to come to the juvenile court."

In those cases, they are referred to as abused, neglected or dependent children, she continued.

"If parents are both put in jail, then you have the children … and that comes through the juvenile court," she said. "We have to place them (in foster care)."

Detention costs, too, are on the rise. The probate/juvenile court had sought $89,554 this year. Next year it is requesting $108,288. Most juvenile offenders are sent to the the West Central Juvenile Rehabilitation Facility in Troy, which serves Auglaize, Mercer, Darke, Miami, Preble and Shelby counties. The center offers rehabilitation, education and training, she said.

Those convicted of the most serious acts are sent to an Ohio Department of Youth Services facility,

"We keep our children in a local detention center (in Troy) because they come from like places - smaller communities, farming communities," Zitter pointed out. "And we try very hard to keep our children out of DYS because that's close to what prison is like. When we send a child to DYS it's the last thing that we want to do."

Yet the court seeks to bypass sending children into detention, if possible, by dealing with them in a non-adversarial way through programs, Zitter said.

"We're focusing really hard on trauma-based therapy with the kids, trying to find alternatives to incarceration," she said. "We're really working hard on that, getting more training on it, local training as a matter of fact."

"The children we deal with, they've had a lot of trauma in their life, a lot of them, and so they face different challenges and so we have to come up with different ways of dealing with their rehabilitation," she continued.

For instance, the court likely again will assign a few kids next year to a 90-day drug treatment program in Stryker that costs $7,200 per child.

"Some of them come from homes where the parents are doing those very same things and therefore we punish the children for what their parents are doing also, so we have to go at it a different way," Zitter said. "And that's why when we find a program that will help them adjust to what their going home to again, we try to utilize it."

The juvenile court system has an exercise program that finds minors a few times each week running on the bike path and in other areas in the summer and a gym in the winter. The runners' club, overseen by probation officers, is a court-ordered program in which participants are able to improve their self-image and get a much-needed boost in self-esteem, she said.

"In Mercer County I don't want my probation officers in the court. I want them out at the schools and in the homes so they know that they are to be out there reaching out to the kids so that they keep a relationship and a bond with these children," she said.

Another successful initiative for the at-risk youth is the Ripple Program, created through a partnership among officials from Mercer County 4-H, Mercer County Fairgrounds, Wright State University-Lake Campus' ag program and the juvenile court.  

Launched in the summer, a group of children took tours to observe various aspects of the agricultural industry, including dairy and poultry farms, and raised their own animals.

The group was responsible for feeding and caring for 25 broiler chickens hosted at the Mercer County Fairgrounds.

"That was so good to see the kids when they were judged (on their chickens) … to watch the pride that our kids took in that and how they listened very carefully to what they were told during the judging. It was amazing," Zitter said. "We see all these things that the kids are making progress with. Anything that gives them a sense of self worth, something to be proud of."