York County closed its juvenile detention center earlier this month. On Wednesday, six York County youths were sitting in Lancaster County's Youth Intervention Center.

Also on Wednesday, Dauphin County commissioners heard a proposal to close their juvenile detention facility.

If that happens, Dauphin officials said, at least some of their juvenile offenders would be sent to the Lancaster YIC as well.

Relieving taxpayers of the burden of juvenile detention centers by shipping offenders to Lancaster County helps taxpayers here bear the burden of the YIC.

"It's an economic benefit for Lancaster County," Commissioner Dennis Stuckey said. "We have the space. We have the beds. (Other counties) don't have proprietary ownership of them. They're ours.

"If we have the need, we can tell them to go elsewhere."

Lancaster County has agreements with 21 counties — including Dauphin and York — to take in juvenile offenders because those counties either have no detention facilities or they don't have enough beds to meet their needs.

Drew Fredericks, director of the YIC, says there's plenty of room here.

"Today, we have 32 residents in detention and we have 72 beds," he said. "If we can fill those beds, it helps out taxpayers here, and it's also a good-neighbor thing to do for these other counties.

"They were there for us when we had Barnes Hall with 23 beds and we had 30 kids to house."

Barnes Hall was the county's old juvenile detention center located at 900 W. King St. It was replaced by the YIC, located on Sunnyside Peninsula, when the YIC opened in 2002.

"I think we were smart in planning for the future when we built ours," Scott Martin, chairman of the board of county commissioners, said. "We have enough room to help offset the cost to the taxpayers."

The YIC's operating budget for 2010 is $6.7 million. It funds the detention facility as well as the shelter area, which provides temporary and emergency housing for alleged and adjudicated dependent and delinquent juveniles.

State and federal funding covers about $4 million of that total. The rest must be paid by the county.

In 2005, the county's annual bill for the YIC grew by $1.9 million, when the federal government drastically reduced its payments for juvenile detention. That's the year the county began offering bed space at the YIC to other counties.

Fredericks said he cut the county's tab for the YIC by $357,000 last year through detention-bed-space rentals to other counties.

With the closing of the detention center in York, the YIC already has increased its projected revenues for the current year. If the Dauphin center closes, Fredericks expects those revenues to grow even more.

For the current fiscal year, counties each must pay $275.50 per day to Lancaster for secure detention. That's a bargain for many of them.

In York, the county was paying $507 per child per day to house juvenile offenders in its own facility, according to published reports. The state reimbursed half that amount to the county.

By sending juveniles to Lancaster, York County officials nearly halve that per diem cost and they still receive 50 percent reimbursement from the state.

Why is Lancaster's cost so much less?

Primarily, Fredericks said, it's because the York County center's employees were unionized. They tended to earn more money and there were union rules in place that held staffing levels firm.

"If they only had six kids in detention, they might still have 10 employees on duty," Fredericks said. "We are not unionized, so we can fluctuate our staffing levels to go up and down with the population."

It also helps that Lancaster County has the ability to take in out-of-county residents to help pay the bills.

Due to the closing of the York detention center and the possible closing of the one in Dauphin, Fredericks said he expects to hire and train a new class of YIC employees in late summer or early fall.

Should the YIC one day fill all 72 detention beds, Fredericks said there would be sufficient staff ready to handle the population.

"There will always be a need for secure detention," Martin said. "There are some people who don't believe that. They don't like to lock up children. … But we will always have people, regardless if they are teenagers, commit very serious offenses and pose a direct threat to others, to their communities and to themselves."

• In other county business this week, the commissioners on Tuesday approved the emergency purchase of a rooftop air-conditioning compressor for $12,500 at the county prison last week.

Warden Vince Guarini said a 20-year-old compressor, which cooled the prison's medical housing unit, quit working July 17.

As temperatures outside reached into the high 90s for several days in a row, the mercury and humidity quickly climbed inside the medical unit.

Guarini said the inside temperature was in the 90s, while county officials tried to get the compressor repaired.

Fans and ice were provided to the unit — the only air-conditioned inmate area in the prison — and medical staff closely monitored patients, according to Guarini.

Two inmates stricken by the heat were taken to Lancaster General Hospital while the air conditioning was not working. Guarini said they were treated and released back to the prison.

"They weren't even admitted," he said.

Normally, the county is required to solicit bids to buy anything costing more than $10,000. The warden said that process could have taken up to two months, so he sought and won approval from the commissioners to buy a compressor without soliciting bids to get it up and running as fast as possible.

The unit was installed July 23 and Guarini said it took three days to get the temperature in the medical unit down to 76 degrees.

Because the commissioners did not meet last week, they had to approve the non-bid purchase of the compressor at their meeting this week.

preilly@lnpnews.com