Detroit’s 36th District Court is asking the city for $1.8 million more than Mayor Mary Sheffield’s proposed budget would provide, with Chief Judge William McConico telling City Council last week that the court’s civil division is “crashing” under a surge in cases and that dozens of employees still earn below a living wage.
McConico made his case during a March 23 budget hearing before council. Sheffield’s proposed 2026-27 budget already gives the court $34,384,326, a 3% increase over this fiscal year. McConico says that’s not enough.
The request breaks down into four areas: staffing for the overwhelmed civil division, a living wage bump for lower-paid employees, sustained funding for a specialty court program that treats addiction and mental health, and general operating costs that have climbed with inflation.
The civil division is drowning in cases
The biggest driver of the request is a surge in civil filings that the court says it simply doesn’t have the staff to process.
Over the past three years, the court has absorbed nearly 40,000 additional cases that were not on its docket in 2021 and 2022. McConico described those cases as largely involving credit card companies suing Detroit residents and vehicle foreclosures. Both categories hit working-class households hard, and both generate substantial paperwork that has to move through the system regardless of staffing levels.
McConico told council he didn’t ask for additional civil division funding in last year’s budget cycle because he expected the caseload to level off. It didn’t. It grew by another 30%.
“We did not ask last year because we were hoping that there was going to be a decrease, but there was a 30% increase from that number where we were already, and the system is really crashing right now,” McConico said.
To address that backlog, the court wants $300,000 to hire five new civil division employees. At roughly $60,000 per position including salary and benefits, that’s a lean ask for professional court staff in a major metro area. Without them, filings pile up, hearings get delayed, and residents on both sides of those cases wait longer for resolution, whether that’s a judgment, a payment plan, or a dismissal.
The 36th District Court handles more cases than nearly any other district court in the country. Its civil docket includes disputes under $25,000, landlord-tenant cases, and small claims. When that pipeline slows down, it affects landlords, tenants, small businesses, and individual residents across the city.
73 employees earn below the new living wage threshold
Sheffield’s proposed budget includes a minimum wage increase to $21.45 an hour, equivalent to $44,616 a year, for full-time city employees. The court is asking for $500,000 to bring 73 of its employees up to that standard.
Of those 73 workers, 43 are Detroit residents. McConico framed this as a matter of basic alignment: if the city is setting a new floor for what it considers a living wage, the court’s own workforce shouldn’t fall beneath it.
The $500,000 request covers the gap between what those employees currently earn and what they would earn at the new minimum. Council members didn’t push back on this portion of the request in available accounts of the hearing, and it’s the kind of line item that’s politically difficult to oppose when the administration itself is simultaneously proposing a higher wage floor for other city workers.
The specialty court is on pause
Judge Shannon Holmes, who oversees the court’s specialty division, told council that her program has been forced into “pause mode” because of a $500,000 federal funding gap.
The specialty court covers four distinct tracks: drug treatment, mental health, veterans’ treatment, and an empowerment docket for women who have been involved in sex trafficking or exploitation. These are not traditional adjudication programs. They’re treatment-first alternatives that keep people out of the standard criminal pipeline and connect them to services.
Six case managers are currently over their maximum capacity, Holmes said, and rising need is colliding with frozen resources.
“There have been individuals who have not been able to access our services and certainly that’s not something that I enjoy doing, but it is just the current state of our program,” Holmes told council members.
Additional funding would support a seventh case manager, drug testing costs, and tethers for program participants.
There is a possible exit from this particular bind. The day after the March 23 hearing, two major federal grants were released that the court believes it can apply for in April. McConico told BridgeDetroit that if the court receives those grants, it will notify council and return the $500,000 in city funding. But the application hasn’t been submitted, the grants haven’t been awarded, and the program can’t operate on optimism in the meantime. The $500,000 city request stays on the table until there’s something more concrete.
The implications of a paused specialty court aren’t abstract. People who could have been diverted into drug treatment are instead moving through standard prosecution. Women fleeing exploitation who might have connected with support services through the empowerment docket are instead navigating the court system without that specialized attention. Veterans dealing with trauma-related charges lose access to a track built specifically for their circumstances.
Operating costs have climbed
The final piece of McConico’s request is $500,000 for general operating expenses, covering utilities and postage among other line items. McConico cited inflation as the driver.
Postage may sound minor, but courts run on paper and certified mail. Notices, summonses, and orders have to be physically sent to the right addresses, and the cost of doing that has gone up. The same applies to energy costs in a large courthouse that runs extended hours. These aren’t discretionary expenses.
What happens next
City Council is currently working through the full budget process. Sheffield’s proposed budget is the starting point, but council has the authority to amend line items before final adoption. McConico’s hearing appearance was an attempt to build a case directly with the members who hold that power.
The $1.8 million request is not yet approved. Council members didn’t take a vote at the March 23 hearing, which functioned as a budget presentation rather than a legislative action. The full council will weigh these requests alongside competing priorities from departments across the city before finalizing the 2026-27 budget.
What’s clear is that the court has documented its case numerically. Forty thousand additional civil filings. Seventy-three employees below the new wage floor. Six overloaded case managers. A federal grant gap that has effectively shut down a treatment court. McConico came to the hearing with specifics, and the ask of $1.8 million on top of a $34 million baseline is modest relative to what the numbers describe.
Whether council agrees is another matter. City budgets involve tradeoffs, and every department head who appears at a budget hearing believes their request is essential. But the 36th District Court handles a volume of cases that touches hundreds of thousands of Detroit residents annually. Delays in its civil division and gaps in its specialty court don’t stay inside the courthouse. They follow people home.
