The cities of Medical Lake and Airway Heights will soon be joined together — at least at the municipal court level.
At its July 7 meeting, the Airway Heights City Council voted unanimously to approve a four-year interlocal agreement providing court services to the city of Medical Lake. Medical Lake has contracted with the city of Cheney municipal court for services for several years, a contract that is scheduled to expire at the end of 2025.
Medical Lake Mayor and former Cheney Municipal Court Administrator Terri Cooper told the council she and Airway Heights City Manager Albert Tripp have been working for a while about “regionalizing” the court two courts. She added the Medical Lake City Council has already approved the interlocal agreement.
“We’re looking forward to this,” Cooper said. It’s been a vision of mine for 15 years.”
Both courts are courts of “limited jurisdiction,” handling cases such as traffic and non-traffic infractions along with criminal and gross misdemeanors. Other services include some civil cases and probation related functions.
Under the terms of the 18-page agreement, which begins Jan. 1, 2026, some of the services Airway Heights court will provide include necessary staffing, including prosecuting attorney, public defender services and presiding judge along with being responsible for collecting all fines and fees for Medical Lake cases. Among the services Medical Lake will provide and pay for are domestic violence advocates, incarceration, prisoner transport and warrants and records.
For providing its services in 2026, Medical Lake will pay a fee to Airway Heights of not to exceed $1,542 per each criminal citation filed. For each traffic or non-traffic violation, Medical Lake will pay a $25 fee and $15 for each parking violation filed.
Additionally, Medical Lake will pay Airway Heights $200 an hour, billed in tenth-of-an-hour increments, to transition all current cases and files to Airway Heights.
For 2027 and each subsequent year, all filing fees will be invoiced to Medical Lake based upon Airway Heights estimated costs for those cases. Airway Heights will notify Medical Lake by email “on or before” Sept. 30 of each year what those costs will be.
Medical Lake will receive 100% of all “local court revenues” for its cases, with the exception of any revenues excluded by statute or court ruling. Local court revenues include all “fines, forfeited bail, penalties, court cost recoupment and parking ticket payments derived from Medical Lake Municipal Court cases after payment of any and all assessments required by state law thereon.”
“We felt like we landed in a great, mutual agreement,” Cooper said of the discussions with Airway Heights.
The interlocal agreement terms begin Jan. 1, 2026 and expire Dec. 31, 2029 unless other arrangements are made or terminated earlier per a specific section of the agreement.
Also at the July 7 meeting, Airway Heights City Council voted unanimously to accept a $300,466.70 grant from the Washington State Administrative Office of the Courts for the city municipal court’s Therapeutic Court. The court had originally applied for $355,370 for fiscal year July 1, 2025 through June 30, 2026.
“We do believe we can work with this amount,” Airway Heights Municipal Court Judge Angelle Gerl said.
Airway Heights Therapeutic Court began in April, 2022, and has been largely supported by grant funding since. The court received a $316,724 state court grant in December, 2021 and running through July 2023, a $480,871 grant through June 2024 and a $237,288 grant ending June 30.
Gerl said most of the funding, $266,000, will go towards supporting court personnel. Just over $14,546 covers training and travel, $9,000 each to treatment and recovery supports and $1,970 to staff equipment.
Also referred to as Community Court, state RCWs specify that Therapeutic Court shall “Use funding to identify individuals before their Therapeutic Court…with behavioral health needs outlined in their application and engage those individuals with community-based therapeutic interventions within the Therapeutic Court’s jurisdiction in accordance with the Court’s funding
application.”
According to the city’s website, Airway Heights Community (Therapeutic) Court provides assistance with substance use disorder treatment, mental health services, job training, housing, identification, health care and legal assistance. It also helps with gambling issues along with veteran, women, victim, education, family and library services.
Additionally, participants can appear in court in person, via phone or video. Court takes place every Wednesday from 1 – 2:30 p.m. in the City Hall second floor chambers, 13120 W. 13th Avenue, with lunch offered to any participant appearing in person.
“It is a program that we’ve been running since April of 2022,” Gerl said. “I think it’s working great. We enjoy it. It’s been a wonderful partnership with the community and law enforcement.”
The Washington Courts website describes therapeutic courts as specialized courts that give participants the opportunity to address the reasons for their involvement in the criminal justice system through closely monitor programs. While many therapeutic court types, each court is comprised of interdisciplinary teams led by a judge that collaboratively support and provide supervision to participants “through behavioral health challenges that contribute to their court involvement” that address individual needs.
The goal of each court is to “build lasting whole person health and recovery” in order to have participants charges dismissed and avoid further involvement in the criminal legal system.
