Budget Move Could Cause More Trouble Than It Saves : Spending: Facing a big deficit, supervisors have voted to delay staffing three expanded facilities to serve troubled youths. If spring brings its usual boom in juvenile problems, the strategy could backfire.

SANTA ANA —  When the County Board of Supervisors voted last week to defer expansions of three facilities that serve troubled youths, it saved taxpayers nearly $1 million. But the board’s action also set up what could be a more difficult dilemma next spring.

For reasons that officials can only guess at, juvenile crime, child abuse and other problems affecting the county’s youth subside each winter. But just as predictably, those same problems surge in the spring, almost inevitably breaking the previous year’s record caseload.

“We talk about it a lot, but we don’t know why it is,” said Tom Wright, director of the county’s Juvenile Hall. “It defies all social laws, and it happens every year. . . . We see the problems go down around the holidays, and then start increasing in February and March. By the time we hit April, we are bulging at the seams.”

If that happens again next year--and virtually everyone expects that it will--county officials will be ready with the buildings they need to absorb at least part of it. But, because of the budget plan approved by the supervisors last week, many of those buildings will probably be empty shells until next summer. A seven-story Juvenile Court complex will probably still be empty, as will a 60-bed juvenile jail that is desperately needed to siphon off the overcrowding that peaks every spring in Juvenile Hall.

The result: More young offenders will be turned away from the juvenile justice system. They will be sent home with a ticket and told to appear in court. When they get to court, they’ll find it crowded and backlogged. And many of the offenders who do go to jail can expect to be released early or placed on home-confinement programs.

Not that any of that pleases county supervisors, but they are wrestling with a deep and expanding budget problem. After eliminating more than 200 positions last year and making its first layoffs in more than a decade, the county still expects to come up short in this year’s budget by $15.5 million to $21 million.

Keeping the new juvenile facilities closed for as long as possible will help ease that crunch--not much, but at this point, county officials are grasping at every straw. In fact, the delayed openings even have a potential risk to the budget: If the upsurge in juvenile crime or child abuse puts new pressure on the existing facilities before the county is ready to staff their expansions, it could force officials to pay for extra overtime.

That can run up big bills in a hurry.

“We’re taking a chance,” said Ronald S. Rubino, the county budget director. “But we have a serious situation.”

Butting heads with the budget woes, however, is the unusual and unexplained phenomenon that finds young people in trouble every spring.

“This is a pattern that we see in all areas of juvenile justice,” said Michael Schumacher, the county’s chief probation officer. “We certainly don’t have any reason to think that it’s going away.”

The reasons for the spring surge--which is paralleled by a smaller fall upswing--are mysterious. Many officials offer theories and observations, but all of them concede that they have few solid answers.

What most agree on, however, is that the pattern seems to be related to the school year, since the increases come just after school opens and again just before it ends.

Robert Theemling, executive director of the Orangewood Children’s Home, said he believes that’s because many child-abuse reports come from teachers. The fall increase, he said, may be because teachers are seeing their students and noticing suspicious bruises, cuts or other injuries.

Then come the holidays, when teachers see less of their students and families may make special efforts to get along.

But by April or May, “teachers who have built these relationships are worried that they’re about to lose sight of these children,” Theemling added. Reports of abuse shoot up.

In addition, spring brings warm weather, which means youngsters who have been bundled up all winter suddenly start wearing short sleeves and short pants. Bruises and cuts that would otherwise be hidden then come to view.

Theemling acknowledges that those theories are unproven, but the pattern is clear: For the past three years, every May has brought waves of young children to the Orangewood Children’s Home. The number of children at the home has reached its annual high every May during those years, stretching the staff to its limits as it works overtime to tackle a population level of more than 200 youngsters, far more than the home’s 166 beds.

County supervisors, who have given strong support to the Orangewood project, agreed on a compromise budget plan last week that will open a new 24-bed cottage at the home on April 1, rather than July 1, as had been proposed. But they made no such concession for a juvenile Intake and Reception Center, a 60-bed jail designed to relieve overcrowding in Juvenile Hall.

That building, though already completed, probably will not open until July, and Probation Department officials expect to be inundated long before then. Juvenile Hall, which was built to house 314 young offenders, typically holds more than 350.

The whole Orange County juvenile system was designed to hold 624 offenders, but it’s an extraordinary day when the inmate population drops below 650. In the late spring and early summer--May through June--it’s not unusual for the juvenile facilities to house nearly 700 youngsters.

And that’s after scores of arrested youngsters have been turned away and told merely to appear for a court date. Or released to a home-confinement program. Or simply granted early release to free up their bed.

Again, the reasons for juvenile crime increasing in the spring are baffling. Some experts suggest that it could be because of Daylight Saving Time. Youngsters stay out later at night but are more visible to police. Others speculate that the approaching end of the school year makes youngsters yearn to be out of the classroom, so they skip school and get into trouble.

Some experts believe that it’s a part of an even more established phenomenon.

“Maybe it’s just the old spring fever thing,” Wright said. “I don’t know, but whatever it is, it keeps happening, and it’s only going to get worse.”