Sacramento County has spent $2.3 million on vacant ranch near Rancho Murieta since 2015

For the last five years, Sacramento County has spent more than $2.3 million on the vacant facilities of the Boys Ranch, the shuttered campus housing long-term treatment programs for troubled youths near Rancho Murieta.

For 50 years, some of the area’s most troubled youths were sentenced by the courts to stay at the Boys Ranch. There, the teen boys took academic and vocational classes, and received substance abuse treatment and therapy. Its closure came as juvenile incarceration rates in California began, and continue, to decline.

The 140-acre compound off Scott Road – which has more than a dozen structures including classrooms, a kitchen, a swimming pool and a barn – has sat empty since 2010, when the juvenile facility closed after county budget cuts.

Now, the fenced compound surrounded by acres of rolling fields and grazing cows is used “maybe once or twice a month” by police K9 or SWAT units for training, said Jeffrey Gasaway, the county’s director of general services.

The county has spent nearly $700,000 since 2015 on property and grounds maintenance alone, according to county records obtained in a California Public Records Act request. Another $1.44 million in the last five years has gone to debt payments for significant improvements made to the property shortly before it closed, such as a “million dollar fence,” according to a Sacramento County grand jury report published in 2014.

That 2014 report found that the county has spent $2 million between 2009 and 2014 on the Boys Ranch and the Warrent E. Thornton Youth Center, another juvenile facility closed the previous year.

The county is incurring these costs on vacant property while it made deep slashes across departments for last year’s budget. Additional cuts are anticipated for the coming year as well.

Those cuts are largely for unfilled jobs. The county is also facing millions of dollars in new expenses related to upgrading its jail facilities and the county’s ongoing appeals case against a $107 million ruling in favor of a gravel-mining operation.

And when the belt tightens, discussions on how to reduce wasteful spending only get stronger, said County Supervisor Don Nottoli, whose district includes the Boys Ranch.

“There’s been discussion about selling the property and it will probably come back up in about six months,” Gasaway said.

Gasaway said that none of the inquiries into repurposing the property have come to fruition over the years. Initial discussions about leasing the property to private correctional facilities drew sharp outcry from nearby residents.

In 2015, there were talks of leasing the property to a nonprofit group for equine rescue, rehabilitation and therapy programs, but plans never materialized because of the high costs of altering the property. The same goes for proposals for a nonprofit agriculture educational research center and a dog rescue group in 2017 and 2018, respectively.

“It’s had a useful life and it still has useful potential, but it’s about finding the right fit,” Nottoli said.

Nottoli said he still maintains contact with the owner of the dog rescue group, Sacramento Shelter Pets Alive Inc., as they work on potential liability coverage.

He said, however, that none of the proposed leases would’ve been large returns for the county — maybe $500-$600 a month.

“Obviously there’s a cost to mothballing a facility like that,” Nottoli said. “It’s positioned in such a way that it’s an asset, there’s potential. But there’s been attempts to go to the so called marketplace and I think there are challenges — as close as it is to Rancho Murieta or Folsom, it’s still a little bit distant.”

Occasional flooding along nearby roads also makes the property a difficult sell, Gasaway said. In the meanwhile, the county has refinanced the debt for a lower rate.

There are two other county-owned facilities that are currently vacant, said county spokeswoman Kim Nava: the Business Environmental Resource Center moved out of its first floor offices in October, and the Sheriff’s Office vacated three floors in its G Street building in December.

The county is also attempting to sell Linda Creek Park, an undeveloped piece of land in Rio Linda, per county records.