Inflation Leads Sparta Increase In Court Costs

Sparta will increase ticket costs for court sessions, to combat the inflation of court materials.

The previous court ticket cost is $133.75 and will be increased to $180.00. Sparta Police Chief Nick Dunn said the city was losing money performing court sessions.

“It’s been slowly creeping up on us,” Dunn said. “With the way everything is going up, paper, computers, just the cost of even regular ticket books, they have all went up significantly in the last three to four years.”

Dunn said the court ticket costs have not increased in 15 years. Three new fees factoring into the increase are a $25.00 courtroom security fee, a $30.25 technology fee, and a $1.00 municipal training fee. Dunn said that the courts will be switching to E-tickets instead of using paper tickets.

“The E-Tickets, they will cost a little bit less,” Dunn said. “But the costs of the equipment, the computers, the printers, it takes a special thermal paper, all that stuff is pretty expensive for what it is.”

Dunn said the fees were implemented to cover maintenance costs of the computers and software.

“The technology fee, that’s to keep and update the software that we use,” Dunn said. “Municipal training fee of course there are some state taxes and of course, the fine, some of that money goes directly to the state, but part of the court costs is going to just upkeep the equipment and software that we use.”

The aldermen unanimously approved the ordinance. The increase will take effect immediately.