Chickamauga, Rossville and LaFayette may soon use new software to manage citations and court cases.

McDonough-based Courtware Solutions Inc. provides courtroom management software to municipalities at no cost to the government or its law-abiding citizens, according to the company’s website at www.courtware.com.

“We simply pass the cost on to the offender,” states the website. “We do this by adding a small fee to each ticket. This fee is determined by the number of tickets that you process in your court per month.

“And this fee covers installation, support, maintenance and upgrades. This means that you can get our Court Management System immediately without the need for budgeting. It only requires approval by your City Council to increase your fine schedule by a nominal amount.”

Chickamauga will be the first city to begin using the new program, which is expected to save untold hours completing paperwork by hand.

“Hopefully, we’re going to be online with (the new

software) within two weeks,” Chickamauga Police Chief Jerry Parrish said. “What we are doing is sending (Courtware Solutions) the title of the ordinances and their ordinance numbers. It should help us tremendously.”

“Everything is done by hand,” he said. “All of the citations are turned in at City Hall, where they are physically processed and sent to court, and on to the state once court is over. The software automates everything.”

Rossville City Councilman Nathan Bain said the council is also mulling over the installation of the courtroom management software. Representatives from Courtware Solutions met the council during a Tuesday work session to describe the software.

“They said if we agreed on it, they could have the software ready soon,” Bain said. “The way I saw it — and the way the council, mayor and city employees talked about it — I see us going with it.”

The option to implement the software in LaFayette came before the City Council during its regular February meeting, but the council tabled the matter until it more closely investigates the contract.

LaFayette city manager Johnnie Arnold said the council is working with LaFayette Public Safety Director Charles “Dino” Richardson, city attorneys and the software company to negotiate some terms of the contract.

“(The contract) was a little more stringent than we have become accustomed to in normal licensing agreements,” Arnold said