Youth Center Running Low on Operating Funds

A police-affiliated youth center is in danger of closing as early as November, with a one-time grant almost exhausted, officials say.

The center, which serves about 1,200 youths up to age 17, opened three years ago this week with a three-year, $120,000 grant from the Los Angeles-based Audrey & Sidney Irmas Foundation. It is down to its last $6,000, excluding a $20,000 scholarship fund, said Richard “Rocko” Friedkin, vice president for the West Valley Police Activity League Supporters, a booster group that oversees fund-raising for the center.

Robert Irmas, trustee and administrator of the family foundation that bears his parents’ name, said he was spurred to help West Valley PALS after seeing it at work in Operation Sparkle, a cleanup and graffiti-removal program at Balboa Park.

“We kept them afloat for the first three years,” Irmas said, adding that the foundation’s rules prevent it from being the sole source of revenue for any organization.

“It was their responsibility to think down the road three years to replace us as a funding source,” Irmas said. “They are a very meaningful and worthwhile program, but they are competing with other meaningful, worthwhile programs.”