SAN ANDREAS - Tuolumne and Calaveras counties are considering teaming up to build a 40-bed regional juvenile hall the two counties would share.

The Calaveras County Board of Supervisors as early as today could vote to order county staff to draft a partnership agreement with Tuolumne and move ahead with applying for state juvenile hall construction funding.

Right now, Tuolumne and Calaveras are among only nine California counties that do not have their own juvenile halls and rent bed space elsewhere.

"We end up spending close to $350,000 a year running people all over," said Mike Kriletich, chief probation officer for Calaveras County.

According to a report that the Calaveras County Board of Supervisors will review today, however, it would cost Calaveras an estimated $1.4 million a year to pay its share of the cost to staff and operate the proposed regional juvenile hall.

Still, the change to a local juvenile hall is worth considering, Kriletich said.

"The advantage is that we have control over the programming, that parents can start attending services that are in the hall," he said. That, in turn, increases the odds that families will succeed in turning young offenders around, he said.

Thousands of hours of probation officer work time are lost each year as those officers drive wards to juvenile halls as far away as South Lake Tahoe, Nevada City and Sutter County, and then fetch the youths again when they need to return to Calaveras County for court dates. According to the report, Calaveras officers logged 65,186 miles transporting juveniles in 2007 - the equivalent of more than 21/2 times around the Earth at the equator.

Kriletich said he recognizes the current economic hard times and tight government budgets make such a program a hard sell. But he is pitching it now because state funds are available to pay the construction costs.

The Local Youthful Offender Rehabilitative Facility Construction Funding Program, also known as SB81, makes $100 million available to local governments to build or expand juvenile halls. Of that, $32 million is reserved for small-population counties such as Calaveras and Tuolumne.

Lode officials think they would be at the top of the list among small counties because it would be the only cooperative effort in counties without juvenile facilities.

Small counties such as Calaveras and Tuolumne would be able to get 75 percent of the construction cost funded by the state government. The counties would have to match at least 5 percent of the cost with cash and could match 20 percent with in-kind contributions, such as the land where the facility would be built.

The regional juvenile hall would be built at a proposed Tuolumne County Law and Justice Center to be built in the coming decade in Sonora or Jamestown. Tuolumne County officials have not settled on a site yet but are considering purchasing more than 40 acres at Highway 108 and Old Wards Ferry Road southeast of downtown Sonora.

A decade ago, Calaveras, Amador and Tuolumne counties united in a similar effort to build a regional juvenile hall. In 1998, the California Board of Corrections awarded $5 million toward the cost of constructing the project.

That regional juvenile hall was proposed for several sites, including federal land near Angels Camp. But the deal fell apart because of none of the sites proved viable. The $5 million was returned to the state.

In 2007, the state Legislature passed SB81, making a new round of funding available for juvenile halls and reviving local hopes.

That funding for construction, however, does nothing to change the reality that county officials don't have extra money to fund operation of a new juvenile hall.

"On the short term, this is really hard for me to swallow," said Supervisor Merita Callaway, who was on the board a decade ago and took the lead in securing state funding for that proposal.

Decades from now, however, Callaway says Calaveras County will be better off if it has a nearby juvenile hall and more control over efforts to rehabilitate young offenders and reunite them with their families.

"I really want our kids in our neighborhoods to work with re-entry into our communities," Callaway said. "But I don't know that that is going to happen now."

Contact reporter Dana M. Nichols at (209) 754-9534 or dnichols@recordnet.com.

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