ML council OKs electronic monitoring contract

In an otherwise light agenda at their regular September meeting, the Medical Lake City Council unanimously approved adoption of a contract for electronic home monitoring as an alternative to jail time for individuals sentenced through the city’s court services.

Medical Lake currently contracts its court services through Cheney Municipal Court, who utilizes the same contractor for home electronic monitoring that the council agreed to work with — Moon Court Services. City Administrator Doug Ross told the council that some Medical Lake individuals had utilized Moon Court Services as part of their sentencing structure through Cheney’s court, who once they were billed by Moon turned around and bill Medical Lake.

Ross said entering into its own agreement with Moon would make the current process less cumbersome.

“It would be (more) simple if we had our own agreement,” he added.

Services included under the agreement are continuous alcohol monitoring, continuous alcohol monitoring with a house arrest component, remote time breath testing with facial recognition, point of time tracking for individuals and point of time tracking of the individual and the victim being monitored due to a domestic violence charge or conviction.

The city or court of jurisdiction will email the set up referral for services to Moon. Moon will then report any and all information to the court of jurisdiction or city with regards to compliance or non-compliance issues.

According to information from the city, the contract with Moon Court Services is estimated to be one-tenth of what Medical Lake has been paying by utilizing similar Spokane County services on a per day basis. Pricing ranges from $6 per day for the remote breath testing to $28 per day for the domestic violence unit.

Ross said they already had one individual go through Moon’s services for electronic home monitoring. For 10 days of monitoring the city was billed $80, versus $160 for what Ross said were similar services from the county.

“It does save us a larger amount of money per day,” he said.

With only four council members present — Howard Jorgenson, Art Kulibert and Shirley Maike had excused absences — no other business or committee meetings were conducted.

John McCallum can be reached at jmac@cheneyfreepress.com.