Governor’s budget would close youth prison in Warrenton

Published 5:20 pm Wednesday, November 30, 2016

WARRENTON — The North Coast Youth Correctional Facility is on the chopping block.

Gov. Kate Brown’s proposed two-year budget would close the youth prison by next fall to help the state reduce a $1.7 billion shortfall.

“It’s heartbreaking,” said James Sapper, the facility’s superintendent. “We’ve got a lot of heart and soul into this place.”

The 50-bed facility in Warrenton, which currently houses 45 inmates, serves males age 14 to 25 and specializes in substance-abuse treatment, gang prevention and parole violators.

“We met with North Coast staff, including school staff, earlier this week, and we are committed to doing all we can to support them,” Oregon Youth Authority Director Fariborz Pakseresht said in a statement. “It is too soon to tell all of the impacts this proposal could have, but given the current budget climate, it is hard to imagine a scenario where we could avoid closing North Coast.

“We are working with our labor partners to help every affected employee at North Coast who wants to stay with OYA find a job. We also are connecting with other agencies to identify employment options in the Warrenton area for OYA staff who are unable to relocate.”

The Youth Authority provides the equivalent of 45 full-time positions at the facility, with an annual payroll of about $2.5 million. The Northwest Regional Education Service District employs two teachers and five educational assistants at the facility’s South Jetty High School, an option for the incarcerated to earn diplomas, take the General Educational Development exam and learn trades.

Sapper, the superintendent of the North Coast facility since last year, helped open it at Camp Rilea in 1997, and at the current location near the Clatsop County Animal Shelter in 1998.

He said up to half the population at any given time is gang-affiliated. The facility helps wean inmates off drugs and out of the gang lifestyle.

South Jetty High School has been lauded as a success, with one of the highest graduation rates of any youth correctional facility in the state. Sapper said 30 incarcerated students earned their diplomas last year, with another 15 completed so far this year. The Warrenton-Hammond School District had operated the school throughout most of the North Coast facility’s history, but ended the contract earlier this year.

Brown’s proposed budget would increase the Youth Authority’s funding over the next biennium from $398 million to nearly $416 million. The North Coast facility had a budget of $9.7 million over the past two-year cycle.

The governor’s budget calls for an increase in the agency’s staff from 1,022 to 1,041. But the expansion would largely be among part time workers, with a proposed decrease in the overall number of budgeted staff hours equivalent to nearly 20 full-time positions.

The budget cuts, and the potential closure of the North Coast correctional facility, are tied to the failure of Measure 97, a controversial corporate tax that voters rejected in November. State economists estimated the tax would have created $3 billion a year in new revenue.

The facility previously closed amid budget cuts in 2003 after the failure of Measure 28, which would have created a 1 percent increase in the state income tax to help bridge the state’s shortfalls.

At the time, the facility housed 75 youth offenders from surrounding counties, incarcerated on charges from sexual harassment to homicide. The closure cost 100 positions and $3.5 million in local payroll. Many of the youth offenders were transfered to MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility in Woodburn, with some sent to smaller facilities or released.

The North Coast facility reopened one housing unit in 2003 and a second in 2004, albeit with a smaller population and a specialization on serving offenders with substance-abuse problems.