The committee overseeing the decision on where to place the county’s juvenile offenders said it’s waiting to hear back from the Board of Supervisors before making a housing decision, officials said Monday.
During their 2 p.m. meeting, Juvenile Justice Coordinating Council — Juvenile Justice Block Grant Subcommittee members said they didn’t have a decision yet regarding the location for where they will place the county’s most violent juvenile defenders as a permanent location.
“At our last meeting, we did have some really good conversation about the facility, and of the work that everyone did deciding, discussing which facilities will be feasible (and) which will be sort of in a non-feasible category,” said Adam Bettino, chair of the JCC and chief deputy at the Probation Department. “We had some subsequent conversation with the board offices as well. And we’re kind of waiting to hear some final decision from the board offices at this point.
“We’ve had some preliminary discussion but we feel like there’s a good amount of movement towards the sites that were selected on the feasible list, with the caveat that we need to continue to do some work around how the various sites will work together,” Bettino added.
Bettino also said more work needs to be done analyzing each site’s feasibility in terms of housing, safety and security.
On Oct. 15, officials announced that Camp Scott had been placed on a short list for suitable places for the Department of Juvenile Justice population, after officials had looked at nearly a dozen different sites across Los Angeles County.
While sites such as Los Padrinos scored higher than Scott — the local camp had received the worst rating possible for “Resiliency for Potential Fire/Flood Hazards” — Scott was placed on the list of four possible sites.
The only site recommended for the female population was Camp Dorothy Kirby in Commerce.
The city of Santa Clarita, as well as residents near the proposed site, continued to voice opposition to the local camps being selected during the public comment portion of Monday’s meeting, expressing their concerns over the safety and fire risk of having the population at the camps.
Officials said two weeks ago that a motion on the issue would probably be presented to the L.A. County Board of Supervisors as soon as early November.
