Berks County July 30: youth detention center renovation

The Berks County Board of Commissioners meets Thursday, July 30, 2026, at 10:00 a.m. at the Berks County Services Center, 633 Court Street, Reading, with a Microsoft Teams option for watching and commenting from home. It is a light agenda, and the item that carries the most forward is the county's plan to reopen its old juvenile detention center.

Next step on the youth detention center

On the meeting's contract list, the board will authorize hiring Dolan Construction Inc. as the project manager for "the Youth Detention Center renovations project," a contract capped at $20,000 and running from July 30 until the work is finished. The county is paying the full cost.

The dollar figure is small, but the contract is the first construction-side step on a project residents have been hearing about for weeks. On July 23 the commissioners voted to reopen the former Berks County Juvenile Detention Center in Bern Township as a shared facility run with Dauphin, Delaware, Lackawanna, and Lehigh counties. That building, on County Welfare Road, has sat closed since 2012 and took about $1.25 million in water damage when a pipe burst in December 2022. Hiring a project manager is how the county turns the agreement into an actual renovation.

The same day the county votes to manage its own future detention center, it will also renew a contract to pay another county to hold Berks juveniles now. A separate item on the list engages Chester County for juvenile detention services at $741 a day for a detention bed and $530 a day for a shelter bed. County officials have pointed to a statewide shortage of juvenile-detention beds as the reason for the regional project.

About $2.5 million in budget moves

The board will vote to shift $736,383 between existing budget lines ("budget transfers") and to add $1,730,611 in new spending authority ("appropriations"). Most of it is mid-year housekeeping tied to grants and utility bills, but the attached explanations name a few concrete purchases:

• A new state grant to Adult Probation, from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, would pay for staff training, replacement tasers, monitors for the office's waiting area, and what the county's paperwork calls "an AI coaching suite." The document does not describe how the coaching software would be used.
• Contingency money would cover a vandal-resistant board at the Berks County Youth Center after what the county calls ongoing vandalism.
• Berks Heim, the county nursing home, would tap its own fund balance to build a smoking shelter.
• Several transfers cover unbudgeted utility costs at the county's South Campus under a lease amendment.

The rest of the agenda

• GoggleWorks grant support. The board will adopt a resolution backing the GoggleWorks Center for the Arts' application to the state's Multimodal Transportation Fund, a grant program that pays for sidewalks, crossings, and similar improvements.
• More county internet. A resolution authorizes the county's chief information officer to order added bandwidth from Zayo, the county's fiber provider.
• Children and Youth placements. Most of the contract list is annual per-day agreements with foster care, group home, and shelter providers that take county-referred children, along with a graduate-school agreement for a Children and Youth Services caseworker.
• Presentations. The meeting opens with the America250PA Berks "Youth Voices of Independence" contest winners and a presentation on human trafficking from the North Star Initiative and the county's Human Trafficking Task Force, introduced by an assistant district attorney.
• July 23 minutes. The board will approve the written record of last week's meeting, which is now posted inside this agenda packet.

How to attend or comment

• In person: Berks County Services Center, 633 Court Street, Reading. Doors open well before 10 a.m.
• Online: a Teams link is posted with the agenda on the county meetings page.
• Comment rules: give your first name, last name, and municipality; one comment per person; online comments go through the Teams Q&A and are read aloud; the entire comment period is capped at 30 minutes, with in-person speakers first.

First time? Read how to speak at a commissioners meeting, and for what the county runs versus the state and your township, see how Berks County government works. A recap will follow once the county posts the meeting video or minutes. The next board meeting after this one is Thursday, August 6 at 10 a.m.