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On a mercifully cool late August afternoon, Melissa Potrawski and Robert Simmons take a long walk around Austin Gardens. With the summer sun peeking through the park’s lush foliage, it’s a gorgeous day to be outside for any reason.
Then they walk past a park bench, and Potrawski leaves the path. Brushing her foot through the grass, she turns up a couple of objects that she finds all too often in Oak Park: an empty plastic pint of liquor and a tiny plastic bag with a few green crumbles inside it.
It’s an empty dime bag, one of the smallest units of distribution for marijuana.
“I’ll write the report on this one,” Potrawski says to Simmons. “This is my park.”
Unlike most of Austin Gardens’ patrons, who are sunning themselves or walking their dogs obliviously, Potrawski and Simmons are at work. As Oak Park Township’s Youth Interventionists, they’re on the front lines of the fight to keep Oak Park and River Forest’s kids from getting into trouble – and to pull kids already in trouble back on track.
Almost anyone in Oak Park and River Forest who’s dealt with the interventionists has heaped glowing praise on the team. But as the economy has crashed, some of the village, school and park boards that fund the interventionists have started to question whether it’s a worthwhile investment.
The River Forest Park District has pulled its funding for the program, River Forest Public School District 90 narrowly voted to keep paying for it, and the village of Oak Park wants to review how much it pays for the program.
The proposed budget for the entire program in 2011 is $246,544. The park district in River Forest was due to contribute $4,117 to fund the interventionists.
With so many people questioning the program, what does it actually do? Who are the interventionists and why do we pay for them?
Starts with a bang
Since the interventionists’ inception, John Williams has been leading the charge. Even before he joined Oak Park Township as its youth services director in 1994, he was working with a group of community activists on a plan to fight rising gang activity in the area.
But the rest of the community wasn’t always so supportive.
“There was a view that kids in the area were kind of gang members, but they weren’t real gang members,” Williams recalled. “So, a smaller group of us got together and started talking about the things we were experiencing.”
They put together a 15-part plan that hit on a myriad of local problem points, including race relations and the achievement gap. At the center of their plan? The interventionists.
In 1995, the landscape changed. The previous school year had seen an increasing number of mob action arrests, and things only got worse when school got out, Williams said.
One night in late August, a group of alleged gang members playing basketball at Julian were shot at by another gang. In retaliation, they chased down two members of the gang and beat one of them to death.
That night, Williams and the Prevention Committee had an emergency meeting. This was their opportunity – it was time for action.
That next spring, the interventionists were born. Oak Park and River Forest’s 11 taxing bodies all pitched in and signed an agreement: Both townships and villages, the park districts, libraries and school districts 97, 90 and 200. While youth services are normally the prescribed mission of the townships, it was clear to everyone at the time that gang violence was an urgent issue – one that needed to be dealt with collaboratively.
In April 1996, the township hired its first two Youth Interventionists, and the program was off.
But in River Forest, why pay for it?
No one in Oak Park is questioning the interventionists’ powerful influence: officials at the Park District of Oak Park, the village of Oak Park and OPRF all praise Williams and his staff.
River Forest, however, is a slightly different story.
River Forest’s taxing bodies – the village, the township, the library, the elementary schools and the park district – used to pay only a combined total of 18 percent of the interventionists’ budget. But in April, the park district decided to cut its funding for the program, and the Dist. 90 schools almost did the same in July.
Michael Sletten, the River Forest park district executive director, said his board’s vote wasn’t about the interventionist’s usefulness. Instead, he said, it was simply about the park district’s mission.
“Our job is to take care of the parks,” Sletten said. “They [the park board] think it’s a valuable program – it’s no reflection on the interventionists’ value. We don’t finance the police, but we work with the police as much as we can.”
The township, he said, is specifically authorized to tax for youth services. The park district, Sletten said, is not.
The River Forest school board took a bit of a different tack, though. Some members of the Dist. 90 board weren’t sure if River Forest was getting what it needed from the interventionists. In 2011, it will be assessed $9,048 as its share of the program’s cost.
Dist. 90 board member David Latham, in particular, didn’t think the schools were getting their money’s worth out of the program. Many of the interventionists’ services, he said, overlap with the schools’ social workers.
“Between what we have and what they’re offering, there’s a redundancy,” Latham said at Dist. 90’s July board meeting. “We’re already offering 90 to 95 percent of what they can offer, which is what I prefer. They [Dist. 90 social workers] are here every day, they know the kids better, and we’re already paying them.”
But fellow board member Kristen Coe rebutted Latham.
“There’s a need for a holistic approach when it comes to the issue of substance abuse and gangs,” Coe said. “I think we have a superb social work staff, but the way I look at this, if I break my arm, I don’t go to an internist, I go to a specialist.”
The Dist. 90 board eventually voted to keep paying for the interventionists, though, with a 4-2 vote.
‘An incredible bang for the buck’
Gary Balling, executive director of Oak Park’s park district, couldn’t disagree more with the River Forest Park District’s decision to stop funding the interventionists.
“It’s difficult for me to understand,” Balling said in an interview. “Working with the interventionists allows us to focus on our mission – the things we’re really good at, and that’s maintaining facilities and providing recreation. When we run into a difficult situation with youth, they’re there to assist.”
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The roughly $250,000 annual budget for the Youth Interventionalist Program is split by percentage according to the original agreement. The breakdown included 11 taxing bodies with roughly 75% coming from just Oak Park. The River Forest Park District has since dropped out. |
It baffles John Williams, as well, why anyone might not want to take part in the interventionist program. The interventionists, he said, are one of the best deals around for government.
“My belief is that this is an incredible bang for the buck,” Williams said. “We came in 10 percent under budget this year, and we only bill for what we spend.”
While Sletten said he wants to keep working with the interventionists, Williams said that’s simply not going to happen if the River Forest Park District isn’t paying for the program.
“When it comes to [River Forest’s] parks, we’ll do what the police ask us to do. Beyond that, no, nothing,” Williams said.
There are other solutions on the table for taxing bodies that are unhappy with the amount they’re paying for the interventionists. Oak Park’s village board requested in June that a review be made of just how much each taxing body is paying.
“To me, it’s almost unimaginable not to have a program like this in an urban setting like ours,” said Oak Park Village Manager Tom Barwin. “But every few years, this should be reviewed and recalibrated. I think the thinking is that District 200 might be able to pick up a little bit of a larger piece of the pie.”
The village of Oak Park currently pays the biggest chunk of the interventionists’ budget, at 28.24 percent, or $69,624. Dist. 200 pays 11.95 percent, or $29,462.
“This is a youth program,” Barwin said. “It’s just kind of a common sense solution.”
Williams is open to the idea of looking at contributions again.
“I don’t have any issue with that. That’s more the politics of the funding model, and conditions have changed – the amount of resources that people have has changed,” Williams said. “I think it’s more than reasonable to sit down and talk about that.”
On the streets, doing good
Leaving Austin Gardens on that late August day after his colleague Melissa Potrawski had picked up the empty marijuana baggie, interventionist Robert Simmons just happened to bump into two of his old clients, Timothy Howard and Danyell Eaker.
Hugs and back slaps were exchanged, and Simmons asked Howard “When you two gettin’ married?”
“We’re engaged,” Howard replied over his shoulder.
Walking away, Simmons brimmed with pride. Both had a rough time in high school, and Howard had briefly been in jail, Simmons said. Seeing them walking together was inspiring, he said.
Now, they were both arranging job interviews and strolling hand-in-hand down Marion Street.
“It’s great to see they’re doing so well and having a relationship,” Simmons said. “A lot of times we don’t get to see what the end result of our work is.”
