Schaumburg Township defends closing Spectrum center

Despite a public outcry Wednesday over the closing of the Spectrum Youth Center, Schaumburg Township Supervisor Mary Wroblewski remains convinced the services can be replaced in a more cost-effective way.

At a township board meeting Wednesday, teens, parents, alumni and laid-off staff of Spectrum protested the township's decision to close the center earlier this month. The township has begun contracting for counseling services with Elk Grove Village-based Kenneth Young Center.

“My heart went out to them, but the business part of me said I can create that again in a way that's kinder to the taxpayers,” Wroblewski said.

She expects to save hundreds of thousands of dollars annually by contracting with Kenneth Young Center, which will eliminate the salaries and benefits the township was paying its own 17 employees at Spectrum, as well as cutting down on duplication of services, she said.

Meanwhile, four governmental and nonprofit agencies have approached the township to help reopen the teen center itself. Wroblewski said this will happen before the end of the summer.

“We need to clean the place up and let the whole thing calm down a little bit,” Wroblewski said.

While she said she understands the public's passion and loyalty for the known commodity that was Spectrum, she believes the services that will soon resume at the township will resolve current concerns within the year.

But Todd Ruder, the former chairman of the township's Committee on Youth who resigned along with his fellow committee members Wednesday, said he believes the township board still doesn't grasp the impact of its decision.

He said the current and past participants at Spectrum who spoke Wednesday were marginalized teens who either ran with gangs or were bullied at school before the center helped turn their lives around.

“It's the marginalized teen that Mary (Wroblewski) and the board showed no interest in,” Ruder said.

He continued to criticize the way the decision was made — without warning and without even the input of the advisory committee on which he served.

Wroblewski said the board long discussed the possibilities of how best to serve local youth, while the financial non-sustainability of Spectrum was something that had been building up for years.

She said there was no good way to discuss in public the possibility of layoffs, and when the decision was made it was felt best to enact it as rapidly as possible.

Wroblewski added that the Committee on Youth misunderstood its role if it believed it would have input on the financial decision of dropping a whole department from the township.

“It's probably the biggest decision we made during our time,” she said of the current board of trustees.