The city of Maple Valley is projecting that jail costs will finish the year up 144 percent over 2012 while court costs are estimated to be nearly 70 percent higher.

Prior to this year the city had interlocal agreements for both courts and jail services with the city of Enumclaw. This year Maple Valley moved to interlocal agreements with Kent for those services.

In 2012 Maple Valley spent $237,379 on court costs, according to city documents. In 2013 the budgeted amount for court services was $328,000. As of Sept. 30 the city spent $278,195 with a year end estimate of $403,233.

In 2012 the city spent $83,427 on jail costs. In 2013 the budgeted amount for jail costs was $139,000. As of Sept. 30 the city spent $132,870 with a year end estimate of $202,065.

Maple Valley City Manager David Johnston attributed increased court and jail costs for the city with paying current rates and growth that comes with being a growing city.

Johnston said in a phone interview Tuesday that Enumclaw gave Maple Valley notice and terminated the courts and jail interlocal agreements because Maple Valley had outgrown Enumclaw’s facilities.

“It (Maple Valley’s court traffic) was overflowing their municipal court facilities,” Johnston said.

When the interlocal agreements with Kent were proposed to council members in August 2012, Johnston told council that an increased cost was to be expected because Enumclaw undercharged the city.

“The issue that we need to understand is that we should have been paying a heck of a lot more to Enumclaw,” Johnston told council at the Aug. 6, 2012 meeting.

Under the interlocal agreement for jail services with Enumclaw, Maple Valley paid a rate of $60 per prisoner per 24-hour period.

Under the terms of the current interlocal agreement with Kent, Maple Valley pays for two guaranteed spots for prisoners at the Kent Corrections Facility every day at a rate of $220 per day, or a total of $80,300 a year. Maple Valley pays for those guaranteed spots regardless of whether or not there are Maple Valley inmates using them. In addition, Maple Valley pays $135 per additional inmate per calendar day.

Those who are doing alternative programs — like electronic monitoring — are also counted as inmates. That means that if one of the two guaranteed spaces that Maple Valley pays for is open an inmate who is electronically monitored, for example, is counted as one of those spaces, or if there are more than two Maple Valley inmates at the jail then those on electronic monitoring are billed as additional inmates.

Johnston said other than the increased costs expected from paying current rates explained there is one other reason which accounts for a significant amount of the increase in jail costs.

“The volume of electronic monitoring is up, and I don’t think that when we negotiated this thing anybody thought it would be as high as it is,” Johnston said Tuesday. “That’s the driver.”

On the courts side, Maple Valley previously paid $654 per hour for use of the Enumclaw court facilities.

As part of the current agreement with Kent, Maple Valley pays $14,583.33 per month — or $175,000 a year — for two court days, one overflow court day, and one jury day per month. In addition, in any month where more than 333 cases are filed, Maple Valley pays an additional $4,000. Also, Maple Valley receives a quarterly invoice for other costs including witness, jury and jury summons and language interpreter fees as well as the cost of printing court forms.

As for why court costs were over even the anticipated and budgeted increase for this year, Johnston chalked it up to the flaws of developing a city budget.

“That type of service is one you have to provide so you do your best guess, it’s where budgeting is more an art than a science,” Johnston said. “Sometimes you’re under, sometimes you’re over. No one should be alarmed about that. People commit crimes and you have to prosecute them.”

When city officials searched for a new site for both jail and courts, Johnston said that the city looked for a court that was near a jail to reduce costs of transporting inmates and that Kent and Issaquah rose to the top, with Kent being the first choice.

Johnston added that at the time when Maple Valley was looking for services, the South Correctional Entity Multijurisdictional Misdemeanant Jail — also known as SCORE — didn’t have what Maple Valley needed.

“The time that we were looking at SCORE, they did not have a way to link up court to their jail facility and therefore it was one of the reasons we were really looking for a jail that was close to a municipal court,” Johnston said. “Now SCORE has video court arraignment and stuff like that which we’ll be investigating.”

The current interlocal agreements are set to expire at the end of 2014.

“We’re seeing what it really costs to have a court facility outside of an Enumclaw situation,” Johnston said Tuesday morning. “We shouldn’t be surprised because we had a sweetheart deal for 12 years with Enumclaw.”