People sentenced for drunken driving or other infractions once again have a place to go for the community service part of their court-ordered penance.
A new, state-funded alternative sentencing program began operating Tuesday from the Serenity Center, a volunteer-run 12-step program already serving recovering alcohol and drug abusers in a small, unpretentious building next to the Talbott Springs swimming pool on Basket Ring Road in Columbia's Oakland Mills.
Using an existing $85,000 state grant, the program will get help from the county detention center staff and from state parole and probation officers to screen candidates for the program referred for community service by county judges. The county's old, more expensive program run by the sheriff's office stopped operating July 1, and since then people sentenced to community service have had to arrange their own with various nonprofit groups, said Bobbie Fine, coordinator of the Howard County Drug-DUI Court.
"We use community service as much as anyone else. It was a selfish reason for us," said K. Frank Turban, founder of the nonprofit Serenity Center. He explained to County Executive Ken Ulman, County Council Chairwoman Mary Kay Sigaty and Del. Elizabeth Bobo, among others, how the center's building was renovated and painted by people doing community service. Lots of nonprofits use that kind of help, he said.
"To me, this is a great story of partnership," Ulman told the small gathering. As an economy move, he cut $289,723 in county funding for the old program after Sheriff James F. Fitzgerald said few judges were using it anymore. He had already diverted juvenile cases to state juvenile authorities.
But several County Council members, including Sigaty, strongly urged the program's revival, and Turban volunteered to run it on the small state grant.
Jack Kavanagh, the county jail administrator, will administer the money, and his officers will do some screening along with state parole and probation, he said. Turban, himself a recovering alcoholic, has hired Brent Horney, a retired probation agent, and Malcolm "Chip" Thomas, who helped found Serenity Center in 1993, to operate the program during the day. Turban said he'll fill in whenever needed.
Sigaty reminded everyone as the ribbon was officially cut, however, that the need hasn't been filled completely.
"We need this same program for juveniles," she said.
Bobo had another thought.
