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F. CHARLES E. SMITH Q#� Tubjda &Tuff CIRCUIT JUDGE September 5, 1986 Charles Vitunac, Esquire 1840 - 25th Street Vero Beach, Florida 32960 Dear Mr. Vitunac: 239 COUNTY COURTHOUSE VERO BEACH, FLA. 32980 PHONE: (305)'387-8000 EXT. 828 I have previously scheduled criminal trials on Tuesday, September 9 and will therefore be unable to attend the County Commissioners meeting. The only thing that I would add to my letter to you of August 28, 1986 was that I was hoping from the Court Facilities Fund to be able to accumulate a substantial amount to be provided for the next, fifth courtroom that we will need next year. Archi- tect fees for the planning and renovation of a courtroom and the renovations and equipment for another courtroom could be paid from the non -lapsing court facilities fund. At the present time we have three circuit judges who regularly work in Indian River County and the two Indian River County judges, for a total of five judges who regularly work in this county. In addition to these five judges we have visiting circuit judges from our circuit to temporarily handle cases in Indian River County due=_ to conflicts and overloads that the judges in Indian River County are handling. Additionally, we use retired circuit judges to -"han- dle specific cases from time to time. The Grand Jury meets on a regular basis at least once a month and sometimes as much as three times a month which ties up a courtroom. Occasionally we have the Department of Transportation, Department of Agriculture, and judicial referees for Bar Disciplinary hearings who use the courtroom. - - Our court administrator has recently projected the 1986 -felony criminal case filings to be 46% increase over 1985 case filings. Traffic criminal projected as a 23% increase over 1985 traffic criminal case filings. - We will have an additional circuit judge in our circuit beginning January 1, 1987. We anticipate requesting from the Supreme Court and legislature at least one additional circuit judge in July, 1987 for our circuit. The shortage of courtrooms creates bottlenecks in disposing of and trying cases both in civil and criminal. This can result in the increased stay for defendants in jail adding to the jail population. In short we need to immediately start budgeting and planning for the hiring of an architect for an additional fifth courtroom and for additional judges office and hearing room. The upstairs, west side of the annex would be ideal space for these court facilities. Therefore, we would request the county employ an architect and authorize him to proceed to draw up plans for these court facilities. --and to budget enough funds so that it can be completed within one year or sooner. Yours truly, krles/ :"'S th " 25 �E� sibbb BOOK 65 F'.1Cr 645