A collaborative cross-county initiative aimed at bringing a 32-bed juvenile treatment and detention facility to northern Michigan is moving forward with the full backing of the Leelanau County Board of Commissioners.

At an executive board session yesterday morning (Tuesday), the board voted unanimously to adopt a resolution in support of efforts by the Leelanau and Grand Traverse family courts to pursue state funding for a local juvenile justice center. No such facility exists in northern Michigan, and proponents say one is a desperately needed component of the region’s law enforcement and mental health systems. The resolution comes just weeks before a cadre of local players will take a trip down to Lansing to meet with state legislators, in hopes of drumming up financial support for the ambitious project.

As reported last month by the Traverse City Ticker, the Grand Traverse County Family Court and the Leelanau County Family Court are researching options for where to put – and how to pay for – a juvenile justice facility. Per family court administrators, the project has been spurred by a “dramatic lack of detention and treatment beds for youth involved with the court system.” That shortage creates dilemmas for local courts in situations where youths “are acting in an unsafe manner to themselves or the community.” In those cases, administrators say, “there is often no place for [kids and teens] to stay pending court hearings, or to go for treatment in the cases where longer term services are required.” The closest facilities are in Ottawa and Midland counties, and sending youths to those facilities or other far-off spots creates substantial costs for local courts.

The tentative plan is to build a new local justice center with 32-bed capacity and a focus specifcally on the youth demographic. If built, that facility would be available as a resource for both Leelanau and Grand Traverse counties, as well as other northern Michigan communities in need of bed space for struggling youths. The challenge? Paying for the project, which administrators say is likely to carry a $21-25 million price tag.

The leaders of Leelanau County’s family court – Judge Marian Kromkowski and Family Court Administrator Cameron Clark – were at Tuesday’s meeting to present the latest developments to the board of commissioners. Clark – who also serves as president of the Northern Michigan Juvenile Officers Association and as a member of both the Michigan Association for Court Administrators and the Governor’s Juvenile Justice Task Force – told commissioners there are several efforts underway at the state level to improve court funding around juvenile cases. Those efforts will help counties pay for things such as juvenile court officers and other family court needs, but securing funding for a true juvenile detention center will require more targeted state funds.

On that front, Kromkowski, Clark, and numerous other local players are headed to the state’s capital to make their case. That group will include Grand Traverse County Administrator Nate Alger, Leelanau County Administrator Deb Allen, Grand Traverse Family Court Administrator Kristyn Brendel, Grand Traverse Probate and Family Division Judge Jennifer Whitten, and Tribal Court Judge Kenneth Akini of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians.

“We’re heading to Lansing at the end of the month to continue to talk to a number of representatives and senators,” Kromkowski said. “I think we have almost a full day of office-to-office. And we’ve also met with 4-5 before via Zoom and in Grand Traverse County.”

To bolster these efforts, the Leelanau County Board of Commissioners voted to pass a resolution in support of the efforts “to develop a plan to acquire necessary funding” for the proposed juvenile justice center. The board joins a lengthy list of groups and entities that have formally expressed support, such as the Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police, the Michigan Association of Family Court Administrators, the Traverse Bay Children’s Advocacy Center, Northwest Education Services, and various county sheriff’s department throughout northern Michigan.

In addition to the Lansing trip, Clark reported that project leaders are in the early stages of looking at vacant land where the juvenile justice center could be built, as well as at properties where existing buildings could be renovated or repurposed to suit the detention center need. “Grand Traverse County has some land that may be viable, and we have recently looked at the Pugsley Correctional Facility as a potential renovation site,” Clark wrote in a report to commissioners. Since the youth population of Grand Traverse and Leelanau counties tilts significantly in favor of Grand Traverse (83 percent versus 17 percent), Clark said the facility will very likely be built in Grand Traverse County.

Also underway within local family courts is an effort to establish more universal rules and systems around truancy. “COVID really threw all of our K-12 schools a curveball,” Clark told commissioners, noting that he had recently hosted all local school superintendents for a meeting where truancy was a core topic. “The level of transparency was wonderful,” Clark noted of the meeting. “And [the superintendents] all agreed that a common methodology for handling truancy [in our region] would be in everyone’s best interest. So, I think we’re closing in on an agreement so that all the schools will handle things the exact same way – from having the exact same wording on the five-day letters to parents…to when [the schools] should finally ask for court intervention.”