DuPage County to cut nine jobs at youth home

Nine employees at the DuPage County Juvenile Detention Center could lose their jobs as part of a proposed downsizing of the facility.

County officials say the youth home in Wheaton, which has been underutilized in recent years, is facing a roughly $442,000 budget shortfall.

So a plan to reduce operations to match the nearly $3 million in revenue DuPage receives to operate the youth home has been added to the county's proposed 2011 budget.

Unless there is a change, the restructuring of the facility will be approved when the roughly $444 million spending plan is adopted in two weeks.

“I feel badly for those folks who are being laid off,” county board member Linda Kurzawa said. “That's difficult, especially in this economy.”

But officials say the center, which was built in the mid-1990s to house 90 youths, had an average daily population of 22 youths last year.

Kurzawa says it's because efforts to deter juvenile crime, including neighborhood resource centers, are working.

“Though it looks like we're downsizing a facility that's no longer needed,” she said, “it's really a good day when we have come so far that we only have 20-plus children who actually need to be incarcerated to get their lives back on track.”

If the scale down is approved, the youth home will be reconfigured to have 32 beds. It's 64-bed “tower” then would be used by the sheriff's work release program.

“I am comfortable that this solution will allow the youth home to continue to provide its services at the same high level of quality that it has been regularly recognized as providing,” board Chairman Robert Schillerstrom wrote in a letter to county board members.

The youth home restructuring plan would bring the total number of employees working at the facility down to 29.

Another way the overall budget holds the line on spending is by having no raises for most county employees for the second straight year. Only union workers and sheriff's office employees will receive raises as part of their contracts.

A final public hearing on the budget is schedualed for Nov. 16 at the county complex in Wheaton. The county board is expected to vote Nov. 23.