By Ashley M. Casey

Staff Writer

It’s tough to gain the trust of a teenager. Nobody knows that better than Toni Brauchle, youth services coordinator for the CanTeen.

“They don’t warm kindly to just anybody,” Brauchle said.

With a revolving door of part-time mentors — 11 different employees in the past five years, according to Cicero Parks and Recreation Director Jody Rogers — it has been difficult for the adolescents who visit the CanTeen to build relationships and find someone to confide in. Last year, 464 eighth- through 12th-graders, almost all of whom are students in the North Syracuse Central School District, passed through the teen center’s doors.

“There’s no consistency for the kids to come to the program, create a relationship, build trust with an adult and be able to have that knowledge that tomorrow they’re going to be back, the following month they’re going to be there,” Rogers said at the June 28 Cicero Town Board meeting. “Our program is built on relationships.”

In an effort to stop the staff turnover, share the workload and prepare for Rogers’ and Brauchle’s inevitable retirements, the CanTeen has decided to restore the full-time staff position it was forced to eliminate in 2010. The center has posted a job listing for an assistant youth development program leader (available at ciceronewyork.net/employment). Rogers said the annual salary for the assistant youth development program leader would be about $50,000 plus benefits.

While the Friends of the CanTeen will fund the position from late August through December 2017, the teen center is also appealing to the local municipalities that provide part of its funding. Two-thirds of CanTeen visitors are residents of the towns of Cicero and Clay; along with the village of North Syracuse and the town of Salina, the municipalities are one of three main sources of funding for the CanTeen. The other two streams of revenue are the Friends of the CanTeen and the state of New York, which funds the program through Onondaga County’s Office of Children and Family Services.

Shouldering the load

Toni Brauchle has been with the teen center since its inception in 1999, when the American Red Cross operated the program. She was there when the town of Cicero took over the CanTeen in 2002. She was there as the CanTeen bounced among locations until it found its permanent home near Cicero-North Syracuse High School.

But she won’t be there forever, and neither will Jody Rogers. Having another full-time staffer at the CanTeen will ease the transition when Brauchle and Rogers retire.

“There’s no one to take this program on once Toni leaves,” Rogers said. “I’ve seen it multiple times where the spearheading person leaves and the program dies, and we don’t want that to happen.”

Brauchle said the CanTeen had had another full-time employee for the majority of her tenure there. Until the recession hit, the CanTeen director handled the youth programming, while Brauchle focused on grant writing and coordinating resources with municipalities and other agencies.

The economic downturn forced the CanTeen to eliminate a full-time staff position in 2010, so all of the duties of the CanTeen’s operations fell to Brauchle. In 2013, Contact Community Services stepped in, offering the services of Coordinator of Youth Engagement Rachel Tarr. But in 2016, the partnership ended because Tarr’s responsibilities at Contact grew.

“We realized that it’s an important, integral piece that we have two full-time people,” Brauchle said.

While many of the part-time staffers have been young 20-somethings who can relate to their teen clients, those employees eventually go on to find full-time positions after college.

“The very people that the kids can relate to need a full-time job,” Brauchle said.

Kids who visit the CanTeen need someone youthful who can counsel and commiserate with them about the challenges of relationships, social media and other issues that come with the turbulent teen years.

“They can relate to me in the mom capacity, gearing more toward the grandma capacity,” Brauchle said. “That’s not going to keep the CanTeen afloat.”

Finding the funds

Outside municipal funding, the CanTeen’s major moneymaker has been the Gus Macker 3-on-3 Basketball Tournament. While the annual tourney has raised more than $120,000 for the CanTeen since it came to Cicero in 2010, sponsorship revenue has been on the decline for the past few years. The 2016 Macker tournament raised a little more than $8,000.

“The money we raised is nothing to sneeze at, but we’ve dropped a lot,” Brauchle said.

Sponsorship dipped in 2015 when Macker moved from Driver’s Village to C-NS High School. Fortunately, Sun Auto Warehouse and Cumulus Radio have stepped up as sponsors, and Brauchle is looking forward to this year’s Macker tournament, which takes place Aug. 12 and 13.

“It’s a lot of work, but it’s a great community event,” Brauchle said.

Beyond Macker, the CanTeen has another fundraiser in the works. Brauchle said she has been in talks with the Rochester Institute of Technology to coordinate a Cicero stop on the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour next year. Sponsored by the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Alberta, Canada, the festival presents the best entries from its international competition of films highlighting mountain sports and culture.

“RIT brings it to their campus the second week in February, and we’ve been talking to them to pick their brain a little bit to figure out how to bring it to the Syracuse area,” Brauchle said.

If RIT and the CanTeen’s plans come to fruition, the Banff film festival will be held at North Syracuse Junior High School.

“They’ve been more than cooperative in helping us,” Brauchle said.

The Friends of the CanTeen will be able to fund the assistant youth development program leader through the rest of the year, and Brauchle and Rogers are reaching out to the municipalities that support the CanTeen. They met with the Clay Town Board at a work session, but Clay has yet to make a decision on the issue.

The Cicero Town Board voted June 28 to increase its annual contribution to the CanTeen from $16,000 to $26,000 next year.

“We’re talking pennies for people’s assessments,” Rogers said.

“The town of Cicero has been very supportive, and we appreciate that a lot,” Brauchle said. “That’s huge.”