RENSSELAERVILLE — A youth detention center that has stirred up a rural community will be closing in 2008.

The Cass Residential Center will close May 21, 2008, said Brian Marchetti, spokesman for the Office of Children and Family Services, the state agency that runs Cass.

Cass had been an all-male juvenile detention center intended to house non-violent offenders.
"In the interim, OCFS is planning to use the facility temporarily as a training center for the anticipated increase in staff that are being recruited to work in our residential services programs," says a May 21 letter from OCFS to Kenneth Brynien, president of the Public Employees Federation, which has workers staffing Cass.

Since a 15-year-old escaped in November, stealing a vehicle and money from a nearby house, many area residents called for the facility to close. A kitchen worker was raped and abducted at knifepoint by a youth at the facility in 2004. The Enterprise withholds the names of victims of sex crimes.

The rape survivor circulated a petition last winter that was signed by nearly 500 area residents, calling for the facility to close. It was presented to the town board in January.
In April, some of Cass’s 32 workers presented a petition to the Rensselaerville Town Board saying, "We want to keep our jobs working with kids, but not at the expense of our own safety or yours." Cass workers said earlier that the facility is safer than it has ever been and many security measures had been put in place over the last two years.

Cass was changed from a youth detention center to a training facility in late February.
The agency will "begin discussions with employees regarding options for the continuation for their employment at other OCFS sites," the letter from OCFS to Brynien says. "Over the next 12 months, OCFS will work with you and the various other public employee organizations, the local community, and our other state agency partners in an attempt to minimize any impacts this closure may cause."
"That’s good news," said Rensselaerville Supervisor Jost Nickelsberg yesterday. He said he’d been traveling town roads for three days to assess damage from a recent storm for federal aid. "Keep Camp Cass Closed" signs covered 70 of the town’s 86 miles of roads, he said. "So it’s a real issue in the town," he said.
"I got a chance to look at the state of the town," Nickelsberg said. "There are a lot of people," he said of those who want Cass closed. "A significant majority."

Cass workers could not be reached for comment.