The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors Tuesday postponed a decision on whether to close the Sierra Youth Center, the county's probation camp for teenage girls.
The move came under pressure from advocates pushing to save the 33-year-old Valley of the Moon facility, which has been threatened with closure through county budget cuts since 2010. They touted Sierra's record helping hundreds of troubled girls and cast doubt on the efficacy of alternative treatment options.
"Juvenile hall doesn't help you. You just sit there," said Melanie Maloney, a 2009 Sierra graduate who credited the program with turning her life around.
The board split on the issue in a two and a half hour hearing, finally voting 4-0 to authorize further study and community input. Supervisor David Rabbitt was absent Tuesday, attending a family church trip in Mexico.
The move drew cheers from Sierra advocates, heartened the program will continue at least another three months. The matter is set to return in mid-June after a primary election involving three board seats but before hearings to address the county's fourth consecutive budget deficit.
Still, the postponement came after supervisors Valerie Brown, Efren Carrillo and Mike McGuire signaled they may back Sierra's closure.
They said the camp's $1.6 million annual cost, equal to about $200,000 each for the center's current population of eight girls, could no longer be supported.
"We don't have any other program where we spend like that. None," said Brown, the veteran board member who is retiring at the end of this year.
The county has slashed roughly $100 million in spending and 600 filled and unfilled jobs in the past three years.
"We have to look at alternatives," McGuire said. "We have run out of choices with the pool of money we have available."
The board trio voiced support for several lower-cost options, including the use of a nonprofit-run group home that could cater to six to eight girls.
But Supervisor Shirlee Zane, who sided more with the Sierra advocates, used her power as chairwoman to push for further study of the issue, including another option: expanding the center to take out-of-county girls and offset local expenses.
She echoed advocates who claimed cost figures for Sierra did not account for other savings, including the benefit to Sierra's young mothers and repeat offenders eased out of the justice system.
"We need to remember we're talking about lives here," Zane said. "This is a successful program. The problem is, once we shut it we'll never get it back."
Zane, one of two supervisors up for election this year, stunned the board at one point by appointing herself and Carrillo - who is also up for re-election - to a two-person study committee for the issue.
Brown, whose district includes the girls' camp, muted her protest of the apparent slight, and later took Zane's spot when the chairwoman took herself off the committee.
Sierra volunteers, community group leaders, county union officials and Santa Rosa Councilwoman Susan Gorin, a candidate for Brown's open seat, were among the nearly 20 speakers who voiced support for the center.
Some critics repeated assertions that county Probation Chief Bob Ochs had intervened in court and probation decisions to divert girls away from Sierra to justify its closure.
"They are systematically strangling the facility," said Frank Sites, president of the Valley of the Moon Rotary Club.
Ochs called such claims "silliness," pointing to county, state and national trends showing a decline in juvenile arrest rates. The same trend, Ochs argued, has led to a 54 percent drop since the fiscal year 2009/2010 in the number of girls requiring court-ordered supervision, Sierra's candidate pool.
"That's the kind of thing you celebrate," Ochs said.
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