The Town of Zionsville will consider taking over local court for the Town of Whitestown.

Zionsville Town Court is a limited jurisdiction court that handles local ordinance violations and infractions. Mayor John Stehr gave the Zionsville Town Council an update May 6 on ongoing discussions for Zionsville court to also handle those types of cases from Whitestown.

“Whitestown no longer has a town court, and if we take their docket, it would roughly double our caseload of ordinance violations and code enforcement actions to about 70 per month,” Stehr said. “It would be a public service to a neighboring court and also help make the Boone County courts more efficient.”

Stehr said that while discussions are ongoing, there are still several details to hammer out before such a switch could happen.

“Before we agree we want to make sure that it’s at least cost-neutral to us, that there is not a big backlog of cases that are all of a sudden going to clog our court and that no new days are added to our monthly court schedule,” he said.

Stehr added that Zionsville is not looking to make a profit on Whitestown’s cases but would need to cover costs. Adding Whitestown cases to the Zionsville court docket would require an interlocal agreement and approval from both town councils.

Stehr said if the details can be worked out, the issue would come to council for a vote in the next few weeks.

Learn more about Town Court at zionsville-in.gov/257/Town-Court.