The Bainbridge Island Municipal Court will stay on Bainbridge Island rather than move to Poulsbo City Hall.

While the proposal was well-intentioned — it would have provided a new home for the court and generated lease revenue for Poulsbo to help pay for the new City Hall — it wasn’t the right thing to do for Bainbridge Island.

As Bainbridge Island City Councilman Barry Peters said, a municipal court is “one of the basic functions of local government, and it should be located in the community it serves.” The Bainbridge municipal court has 10,000 visits a year, Peters said. A one-way drive from south Bainbridge to the city courthouse is 5.8 miles; from south Bainbridge to Poulsbo, 12.9 miles. Moving the Bainbridge court to Poulsbo would have meant more time and money to those who needed to visit the court, and it would have meant more vehicles on our roads too. As proposed, the move would have also cost Bainbridge about $9,000 more in rent annually, money that could be better spent closer to home.

In the end, the Bainbridge Island City Council had to be responsible to the wishes of its constituents. Peters said 800 residents signed a petition calling for the Bainbridge court to stay in Bainbridge. In all of the meetings he’d attended, “I couldn’t count even a dozen who have asked us to move the court.”

On the bright side, Bainbridge Island and Poulsbo have options. Citizen groups have offered to finance necessary improvements to the Bainbridge courthouse. And Poulsbo’s police department could move into City Hall.

Cities should look for ways to collaborate and share resources in order to cut costs, and Poulsbo and Bainbridge officials remain committed to identifying ways their two cities can work together. Poulsbo assists the Jefferson County Planning Department, and the public works departments in Poulsbo and neighboring municipalities have shared equipment.

“We have a good working relationship,” Poulsbo Mayor Becky Erickson said of her city and Bainbridge Island. “There are multiple ways we can share.”

We encourage both cities to continue the collaboration.