FAIRMONT — Martin County commissioners on Tuesday approved a proposed prosecution contract with the city of Fairmont for a period of six months at a rate of $150 per hour.

County Attorney Terry Viesselman was on hand to discuss the terms, the work involved and answer questions from the board.

“We’re currently handling [Fairmont’s] prosecution on an interim basis just until we can get this short-term contract agreed upon,” he said. “The city asked that this contract only be for a six-month term, and in that time they’re going to explore all their options. When it does expire and if the city decides to contract out their services, we will submit a proposal to do their prosecution.”

Viesselman noted that his office already does the greater weight of prosecution for the city.

“People don’t realize that just because the citizens are paying us through the county,” he said. “We do all the felonies, all the juvenile prosecutions and all the gross misdemeanors, except for DWIs and thefts. The only thing that the city does is the misdemeanor stuff. So this is relatively easy for us to pick up and we can do it pretty efficiently. I think [the contract] is a good idea.”

When asked by Commissioner Elliot Belgard if he would require another attorney to help with the workload, Viesselman said it would not be necessary.

“Savings is savings,” Belgard said, “but if they’re getting rid of theirs (attorney) just to cost us more money, than that doesn’t wash out very well with me. But if we can take it on and do that, we should help all the cities in the county.”

Belgard then asked about the need for more support staff.

“We’ve needed that anyway,” Viesselman said. “We’ve always wanted to do that. We never foresaw all the meth cases and how court administration keeps changing and making things more difficult.

“We spend so much time monkeying around with electronic filing, it’s just frustrating. So we really do need the staff whether or not we do the city contract; we do need help there. As for the attorney, it would be nice but what we’re doing is a public service.

“We can do this better than anybody else and though the taxpayers would no longer be paying through the city but through the county, it should still be cheaper just because it won’t take us as many hours to do it as anybody else. I also think it’ll be better quality because this is what we do.”

Viesselman went on to say that his office is not yet ready to talk about adding another attorney and taking over Fairmont’s other legal matters.

“I think we could do it more efficiently than anybody else, but it’s too much for us to take on right now,” he said.

“So in six months you’ll have a pretty good idea whether that $150 is accurate, and then they could assess whether that’s costing them more than it was before,” Belgard said. “So this is kind of a probation thing.”

“I was initially against it,” said Commissioner Tom Mahoney. “But I’m OK with a six-month trial.”

Viesselman again noted that his office has been handling Fairmont’s prosecution on an interim basis.

“It hasn’t been much of a problem for us,” he said. “I’ve already had some Fairmont police officers say that it’s nice to just have one spot. It was confusing because they get reports and they have to figure who it goes to and spend a lot of time running back and forth.”

The contracted services with the city call for the county to provide the prosecution of statutory gross misdemeanor, misdemeanor and petty misdemeanor violations, other than liquor licenses or permits issued by the city. The county also will provide for prosecutions of municipal traffic and parking ordinance violations. In addition to paying the county $150 per hour, the city will reimburse for out-of-pocket expenses, such as filing fees, witness fee and investigation costs. The city has yet to approve the deal.