During the Elma City Council meeting on Oct. 20, Court Administrator Rose Carter announced that the Elma Municipal Court received two grants: $13,000 from the Foundation for Washington State Courts and nearly $24,000 from the Washington State Office of Public Defense. The former grant will be used for technology upgrades while the latter grant will increase accessibility for defendants.

Carter, who has been an employee of the Elma Municipal Court for a little over a year, shared that seeking the Foundation grant was prompted by the court’s computers being too old and incompatible with the new case management system that Washington State Courts will launch in May 2026.

“As soon as soon as we found out that we were actually going to be getting into a new system, that’s when I started looking for grants to see if there was anything that would cover equipment,” Carter said.

The second grant will improve access to justice through the availability of a dedicated public computer station outside the municipal court office inside the brand-new Elma Community Safety and Service Building.

“Some of the programs that [defendants] have to complete, depending on how their court cases go, is technology-based,” said Carter.

Her experience providing IT support for people, such as helping them access Zoom on their phone, prompted her to apply for the grant.

“Everything has gone so much online; there’s so many places that have moved away from in-person stuff, especially in a small area like Grays Harbor and, even smaller, Elma,” Carter said. “That’s been one of my main focuses, of just trying to get more streamlined to have better access to these needs. People can’t drive to Olympia or farther north for some of these services that are actually court-ordered.”

These two grants bring the total of grant funding that Carter has secured to almost $165,000.

“A pretty big passion of mine is finding money for the court that the taxpayers aren’t directly paying for,” she said.