Judges say Lee’s Summit population has grown bigger than its courts can serve
As the city of Lee’s Summit continues to grow and expand, the pair of municipal judges who oversee the city’s courts say the system is too strained, behind the times and not able to keep up with an increased demand.
Now, the judges are asking the city to double their salaries and triple their availability in trial court, changes they say would help them better accommodate the last several decades of population growth in Lee’s Summit and provide services that are more comparable to neighboring cities.
In a presentation to the Lee’s Summit City Council last week, Judges Venessa Maxwell-Lopez and Dana Altieri argued that the municipal court’s role in upholding public safety standards in Lee’s Summit is underappreciated by city leadership and residents, and that the court’s current operating hours are wildly insufficient for their level and breadth of responsibilities.
“You want to be heard, and a courtroom is a very important place for you to be heard,” Altieri told the City Council. “It’s not only that we’re doing a disservice to our citizens, the judiciary — we’re doing a disservice to people who come to Lee’s Summit.”
As more people move to Lee’s Summit, court dockets also grow, Maxwell-Lopez said — and the city’s legal system has not kept pace with its other forms of expansion.
“Our current court structure is outdated,” Maxwell-Lopez told the Lee’s Summit City Council last week. “Lee’s Summit has changed a lot in the last 44 years. We have more jobs, more industry. We have more investments in the cities.
That’s great for our population, but the reality is, it’s also putting a strain on our court system.”
Council members, meanwhile, questioned whether large changes to judges’ compensation and court structure could be made without a public vote — and without additional evaluations of how the municipal court system is currently organized.
“There are parameters that we have to live within — we can give you additional pay for additional duties,” Councilmember Trish Carlyle said. “I have to be able to tie that to something, not just how I feel about how busy you guys are.”
Leadership and compensation
Judges in Lee’s Summit are elected and are not supervised by the office of the city manager. However, judges’ compensation is set by the city.
“This is a prime example of the three branches of government working together to figure out what we should do in this case,” Lee’s Summit CIty Manager Mark Dunning told the City Council last week.
Judges’ current compensation level in Lee’s Summit was set in April 2016, Dunnings said. Maxwell-Lopez and Altieri are each paid $38,325 per year by the city, at a total annual cost to residents of about $77,000 for the two positions.
In January 2024, the City Council approved an ordinance setting a $51,000 annual compensation for judges starting next year, “plus their allowances,” Dunnings said.
Instead, the judges are asking for $105,502 each, with three court dates each per week. Altieri and Maxwell-Lopez proposed having two separate days, each with full dockets, and one day of overlap focused on internal meetings, allowing residents and petitioners to come to court five days a week.
“We’ll be able to provide better services to our citizens,” Maxwell-Lopez said. “It will allow us appropriate time to supervise and manage our court staff and collaborate with community partners.”
If the increase in funding is approved, the two judges have proposed bringing back specialty dockets with some of the new courtroom time, including specific time set aside for animal control, retail theft, probation violation and domestic assault.
These specialty dockets have long been common in nearby cities and towns, Altieri said.
“We’re so far behind,” Altieri said. “Independence has had a mental health court docket for 30 years. So has Sugar Creek. Raytown’s had one for 16 years.”
Judges receive some employment benefits through the city, but are not currently eligible for retirement plan funding. Maxwell-Lopez and Altieri have also asked to be included in the same “market-rate” retirement plans which other city employees are eligible for.
Behind other cities
Trial court has been in session two days a week in Lee’s Summit since 1981, according to Maxwell-Lopez and Altieri. Each judge presides for one day, which they say does not provide enough time to get through ever-increasing criminal and civil dockets.
Nearby cities like Independence, Shawnee and Olathe also have one or two judges each, but typically allow each judge to preside for four or five days a week instead of one, Maxwell-Lopez and Altieri said.
“Our judiciary has not kept up with the growth of the city or the additional duties imposed on judges,” Maxwell-Lopez said. “We’re being spread way too thin.”
Dunning, the city manager, said that the number of days that Lee’s Summit municipal court operates is not regulated by city law.
In 1980, Lee’s Summit had about 29,000 residents, with about 34,000 by 1985, according to court data. Now, the city’s population is over 107,000, and city leaders expect to have 138,000 residents by 2040.
Tourism has also increased in Lee’s Summit in recent decades, Altieri said – and some of these new visitors get stuck on the docket when they are hit with municipal citations like parking tickets while downtown.
Since 1985, the police force in Lee’s Summit has nearly tripled from 60 to 173 sworn officers, Maxwell-Lopez and Altieri said, referencing city data. The Lee’s Summit Fire Department has also seen significant growth over the years, they said, from 54 full-time firefighters in 1985 to 172 this year.
“Just as the city is providing resources for police and fire, so that they can maintain their part of the public safety triangle, we also need the city council to help partner with us so we can also do our part,” Maxwell-Lopez said
Cramped courtrooms
But the Lee’s Summit court system has not seen a similar swell in its ranks. Instead, the judges say the court has become overcrowded and inefficient, with long wait times for services. On the days that court is in session, Maxwell-Lopez said, it’s often standing room-only as residents wait hours for their case to be heard.
“We have people standing along the walls in the back,” Maxwell-Lopez said. “We have attorneys standing behind the prosecutors waiting to be seen.”
At times, Altieri said, she’s cut through a packed day of trials with what she refers to as “cattle calls,” bringing residents with similar charges up to the bench in groups to debrief them on trial proceedings and expectations.
“It’s so embarrassing to do that, but if I don’t do that, I’m going to go underwater fast,” Altieri said.
Altieri said it gets difficult to separate opposing parties in each case, often putting Lee’s Summit residents face-to-face with the people who have allegedly hurt them.
“There are people in that courtroom that should not be mixing,” Altieri said. “You could have someone who’s been hit by someone else, and they’ve got angry family members here… and we’re having them all hang out and sit together for an hour or two hours.”
A public safety resource?
Maxwell-Lopez said that the increase in strain on the municipal court’s resources prevents the city’s court system from working symbiotically with law enforcement.
“Generally when you hear the term public safety, you think of fire and police,” Maxwell-Lopez said. “But the court is an integral part of public safety in our community, and making sure it’s a safe community for all of our citizens.”
Along with an increase in crime, Maxwell-Lopez said, population growth creates more paperwork, with more tickets being written and more debates around the best use of limited detention facilities. She and Altieri argue that from a budget standpoint, they should be treated similar to Lee’s Summit’s more-resourced police department.
“We preside over a lot of criminal cases involving dangerous activities,” Maxwell-Lopez said. “...We have people that are engaging in high-speed chases throughout the streets of Lee’s Summit, trying to avoid our police officers. We have threats to shoot up our schools. We have assaults on our law enforcement officers as well as other citizens.”
During non-court days, judges are on-call, Maxwell-Lopez said, and are asked to weigh in on bond levels, triage jail overcrowding and issue warrants. The judges’ other responsibilities include meeting with law enforcement and recidivism groups including mental health provider ReDiscover and the Kansas City Organized Retail Crime Association; hiring and managing court staff; and regularly meeting with jail staff and police.
“We have duties imposed on us by legislation,” Maxwell-Lopez said. “We’re in constant contact with the jail and the prosecutors.”
Councilmembers react
City officials said they generally empathize with the need for additional resources for Lee’s Summit municipal courts but aren’t sure how quickly they could legally overhaul the system, focusing on potential clashes with the language of the city charter.
“We need to be really specific about what this is — additional duties, I mean — if they’re going to get paid more for it,” Lee’s Summit Mayor Bill Baird said at last week’s council meeting.
Shields said that changing the number of days in court would be an alteration to structure but not to duty, and that she doesn’t consider this a large enough change to warrant increasing judge compensation without a public vote.
“The growth in population from 1980 to 2025 isn’t a new duty since you were elected to this office.” Shields said, addressing the pair of judges. “What has changed since these honorable judges were elected is additional administrative duties.”
Dunning referenced a similar state law barring municipal officers, including judges, from taking raises during their term. However, the city’s lawyers say it’s possible that additional funding could be approved if it’s framed as a change in judges’ duties, he said.
Dunning also said that a formal city audit of the municipal court system and its operations was initiated in October. Shields proposed waiting until the conclusion of the court audit to discuss creating a ballot measure around judge compensation.
A similar process took place for the recent raise scheduled for 2026, she said.
Council members also noted that in arguing for more compensation, the judges compared their salaries to appointed judges in mostly Kansas cities including Olathe, Topeka and Lawrence. The city’s 2024 compensation study focused more on Lee’s Summit’s geographic neighbors and other places with elected judges; Harrisonville, Raytown and others.
Councilmember Trish Carlyle said that the proposed changes would mean the Lee’s Summit municipal judges no longer functioned as part-time employees, which she said could contradict the city charter.
“I don’t feel comfortable turning our judges from part-time - as the charter puts them, that was voted on by the people, who also vote for us - and turning them into full-time and increasing their pay to over $100,000,” Carlyle said.
Councilmember Faith Hodges, meanwhile, suggested adding a third judge to take on some of the work the current pair described.
“We need to make sure we grow with the times in every division of our city.” Hodges said.
