Following a meeting this week where officials in Williamsport discussed ways to deal with the increasing issues involving juveniles, the Lycoming County Commissioners are calling members of the community, including parents, local non-profit organizations, school administrators, representatives of the local colleges and elected officials at all levels to come together to try to find a solution.

To facilitate this, the commissioners have announced a meeting at 6 p.m., May 27 in their board room, on the 3rd floor, at Third Street Plaza, for everyone to share ideas for solving an ever-increasing problem.

Referring to the city’s Council Committee as a Whole meeting Tuesday, where an earlier curfew was discussed as a first step in dealing with the problem, Commissioner Scott Metzger said, “There was quite a bit of debate going back and forth about whether this would be effective or not.”

“After watching that and seeing some of the comments-one comment really stood out at me-a member from the community, saying, ‘You can have all the ZOOM meetings you want, but until you have the people that are involved in this every day dealing with the juveniles, the problem’s not going to be solved-and there’s a lot of truth to that,” Metzger said.

After talking with others, including fellow commissioners Marc Sortman and Mark Mussina, Metzger said it was decided to get input from everyone who deals with this issue.

“We’re inviting the community. We want to invite parents. We want to invite school administrators, city council. A lot of them have already been notified. We want to invite all of the city council. I spoke to the mayor yesterday. He thinks this is a great idea. The district attorney thinks it’s a great idea. We want to bring everybody in this room to try to find solutions to resolve the issues going on with the juveniles in the community,” Metzger said.

Cautioning that government is “not going to solve this crisis” Metzger said, “We need effective parenting. We need community, and we need partnerships to solve this issue.”

“We’re going to invite everyone into this room. We hope to pack it that night to bring solutions to the community to help try to reduce the negativity regarding this matter,” he said.

Metzger, who had worked in the probation office before being elected as a commissioner, spoke about a program in the 1980s set up by the late Judge Thomas Raup which established a youth commission.

“What they did is they had three or four people sit on these commissions and the police, instead of taking the minor cases through the court system, would bring those cases to the Youth Commission, and the parent would come in with the juvenile for the lesser offense, and they would sit down and talk to them, and often community service was assigned,” Metzger said.

“They would do the community service, come back monthly and meet with the Youth Commission. It was very effective, and it kept a lot of those juveniles out of the system and committing more serious offenses,” he said.

He pointed out that area residents don’t have to live in the city to be affected by the problem. Last year the county’s budget for juvenile probation was under $2.6 million and this year, the commissioners budgeted $5.2 million an increase of almost 101 percent and Metzger noted that it’s probably going to continue to increase.

“It’s affecting that’s the largest increase of any county department out of our 27 departments. That was the largest increase. So it does affect everybody in this community, everyone in the county who’s paying county taxes,” he said.

“These are our kids. This is our future generation, which is even more important, you can’t put a price tag on that. So it’s time that we get together, the entire community, get in the room, figure this out, try to solve it,” he said.

Metzger admitted that the problem is not going to be completely eliminated, but that there are ways to reduce it.

“There’s effective thing out there,” he said, noting various organizations, such as Firetree Place and JUMP that work with youth.

“By having those agencies in the community, and by working together through partnerships, the community and having parents be parents for these individuals, we can try to tackle this issue,” Metzger added.

Sortman agreed with Metzger that parenting is part of the problem and “that’s a challenge all the way around,” he said.

He noted that some have called for the county to operate a juvenile delinquent center locally.

“We also have to be the stewards of the money of the taxpayers…Currently, the cost involved in doing something like that is way prohibitive compared to because what’s being incarcerated is very few. So it’s 7, 8, 9, kids at a time, possibly, or maybe not even that high of a number. So the program we have now that unfortunately sends the children to the Pittsburgh area, the cost is so small compared to if we try to do something here locally, but I just want the taxpayers to know it’s always in our mind, and we currently are doing what we feel is the best thing for the dollar amount,” Sortman said.

“We can’t stick our head in the sand and pretend this is gonna go away,” Metzger said.

“It comes down to accountability and responsibility. And for instance, that’s what the Youth Commission teaches. They teach accountability and responsibility by doing service, taking ownership of what they did, making amends for it,” he said.

“There’s so many organizations out there that I think if they join us on that evening, they can share that information more with the public, and connect with those parents that need the help, because it is not easy raising kids in today’s society, and they have many challenges,” he continued.

“I’m not saying it is easy, but we need to work as partners and community to resolve as much as this is possible,” he added.

Commissioner Mussina added to the discussion by saying that he thinks “it’s a really good idea, and I’m anxious to come to that meeting.”