$2.9 Million OKd for Low-Security Youth Camp Plan

Orange County supervisors on Tuesday approved spending $2.9 million to design a low-security camp for troubled kids that would be built next to the Joplin Youth Center in Trabuco Canyon.

Area residents vow to continue fighting the proposed camp. They say the county retreated from promises that detention facilities in the canyon would not be expanded. They’ve also had to put up with juveniles occasionally escaping from the Joplin Youth Center.

“I don’t like it and a lot of my neighbors don’t like it,” said Lico Miranda, 59, owner of a local restaurant and a Trabuco Canyon resident for 27 years.

Expansion plans have also been fought by local residents who say an old access road is unsuited for more traffic on Rose Canyon Road, which leads to Joplin’s entrance.

The proposed camp is being labeled a leadership academy, modeled after a New York institution that, when built in 2003, will focus on bolstering the character of young offenders in an effort to turn their lives around.

Rod Speer, a spokesman for the Orange County Probation Department, stressed that the academy is only in the planning stages. A consultant has yet to be selected and an environmental impact report still has to be prepared on the project proposed for the county’s 330-acre site in Trabuco Canyon.

The plan also needs approval by the Foothill Trabuco Specific Planning Review Board and the county Planning Commission. Ultimately, the Orange County Board of Supervisors will decide whether the project will be built, Speer said.

The department has proposed spending nearly $12 million to build a 90-bed academy to meet a shortage of beds for juvenile offenders, Speer said.

According to department projections, more than 500 additional juvenile beds will be needed by 2005.

Probation officials want to be good neighbors to canyon residents, Speer said. “[We’ve] heard the complaints from the residents, and we’re very concerned about them,” he said.

Joplin operates as an open campus with a high school and no fences.

The dormitory has 60 beds for boys. The proposed academy would provide another 60 beds for boys and have 30 beds for girls.

Since 1996, there have been 13 escapes--four since March 1999--and all runaways were captured.