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Contractor hired for juvenile hall facility

Jeff Munson, Tribune city editor

A $6.3 million juvenile hall in South Lake Tahoe will be under construction beginning in May.

“This has been four years in the making; something … needed for many years in the South Lake Tahoe community,” El Dorado County Supervisor Dave Solaro said after the supervisors voted to hire the contractor.

United Construction of Reno will build the 40-bed facility at Al Tahoe Boulevard between South Tahoe Middle School and the jail. It is scheduled to open in October 2004.



The two-story building will be on a 4-acre parcel of land bought by El Dorado County from the Lake Tahoe Unified School District six weeks ago for $450,000.

The idea behind having a juvenile facility at the lake has been debated for several years, but finally moved forward with the help of Judge Suzanne Kingsbury.



The idea for rehabilitation at the juvenile level is to have parents involved in the process, Kingsbury has told county leaders and juvenile probation officers.

Although figures were not available, the majority of El Dorado County’s juvenile offenders are from the South Shore area, Solaro said.

With transportation as a factor, and the only juvenile program in Placerville, it made sense to bring the juvenile rehabilitation program closer to home, Solaro added.

“We’ve had transportation issues affect where we wanted to go with our family unification programs,” Solaro said. “Having the parents closer to the facility, along with educational treatment, we will have more successes.”

In other matters, supervisors:

n Signed off on the California Tahoe Emergency Operations Authority amendment for prehospital advanced life support and dispatch services for ambulance transportation for Alpine County psychiatric clients.

n Approved grant applications in the amount of $1.76 million to the California Tahoe Conservancy for the Apalachee Erosion Control Project and to the U.S. Forest Service in the amount of $200,000 for the Christmas Valley Erosion Control project.

— Jeff Munson can be reached at jmunson@tahoedailytribune.com


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