When I asked a black kid who had recently moved from Riverside to North Cambridge what the Bureau had done for him, he paused for a long time, shook his head, and finally said, "The Bureau never did nothing for me. They tried--they said--but I can't think of anything. They're not even hiring the kind of people the kids want. I used to hear them talking about all the cars being stolen in North Cambridge but they never send anybody down to help stop it. They're not offering any alternatives."

None of this seems to touch the well-insulated Mr. Saravelas. When I walked into his office two Thursdays ago, I mistakenly sat in his large black chair. Accommodatingly, Saravelas insisted I remain there, and began to expound on his agency in the most fluent bureaucratese: "Our big emphasis for '73 will be on working more cooperatively with existing agencies and on trying to influence them to reallocate their resources," he began. "Basically, we have concentrated on a direct service approach, but now we're moving into forming coalitions with other groups to effect systems changes." (He failed to mention that the GCLE had directed all state YRBs to emphasize systems changes for 1972.)

"In our two-year history, we have had an uphill battle with the police department," he continued, dreamily oblivious of the impression created by riding in a police car during the Largey riots. "But today, we are beginning to be recognized by some of the people who thought we were awful, some of the people who had to compete with us. Now they are saying, 'They certainly have a good relationship with the kids.'

"We also have been very fortunate in our relationships with the courts. One judge who is on our board (Feloney) has interceded on our behalf, and this has filtered down to the probation staff. I consider these accomplishments major. We feel that we have a solid working relationship with kids in every area of the city. We also feel that with the kids we've come in contact with, we have excellent relationships with their parents."

BUT, LIKE THE KIDS, many parents feel left out of the Bureau's decision-making process, and alienated from the Bureau's administration, though again, some said they liked individual staff members. Also like the kids, parents I spoke with asked to remain anonymous, usually for fear that one of the administrators would make their kids suffer for any criticisms they might have.

"I was very turned off by Kerry," a Bay Street parent said. "I haven't seen any programs in my area, and I only live a stone's throw from the office. What's more, every time you'd call down there, they'd be in a meeting. But what good's a meeting if the parents aren't coming? After all, the neighborhoods are what's going to hold this country together. So you should work with the neighborhoods, not just in them."

One East Cambridge mother was critical of the entire Bureau, from the administrators right down to the street-workers. "My general impression is disgust," she said. "They make promises, promises, promises, and never follow through. Some of the kids around the Towers call them backstabbers. When the kids call them up, they come out and act like they're doing the kids a big favor. But it's their job--they're getting paid for it."

Then there are those who don't know enough about the Bureau to comment, even though their son or daughter had extended contact with the YRB. Councillor Saundra Graham goes further. "You could call up every mother in Riverside, and I'd bet only one or two of them knows anything about the Bureau," Graham, herself the mother of five, said last week. "They may know some of the street-workers, but they were around before the Bureau ever started."

"We believe very much in the confidentiality of kids," Saravelas told me; "we have never talked to any authorities without consulting the kids first." In fact, the Bureau was planning at one point to compile extensive records on kids in every neighborhood in the city. They wanted to know where the kids hung out, who the leaders were, what kinds of things the kids were doing. But to their dismay, the staff protested over the possible misuse of such records, and the idea had to be abandoned. "When I heard about that, I called up Kerry and told him ain't nobody filling out anything on my kids without me knowing about it," Saundra Graham says.

"I told Sonny Cox and Livvy Jones [two Riverside streetworkers] that the kids in Riverside need two things: they need education and they need jobs," says Graham. "But it seems like the proposal for a job bank in Riverside got killed. They have no programs for black people. Kerry wanted to set up an alcoholic program; he wanted Livvy to bring in alcoholics. But the kids in Riverside aren't drinking, they're popping pills. They need drug programs."

WHEN I ASKED Saravelas what the Bureau was doing about drugs in Riverside, his answer was simple enough. "That's a can of worms. It's not tough for us, but the political climate is a can of worms. The Cambridge Coordinating Committee on Drugs is in a state of limbo. There's $1.5 million waiting to come into the city for heroin addiction, and some of the black groups aren't sure they'll get a piece of it." In short, drugs, according to Kerry Saravelas, "are not our mandate."

What is the YRB's mandate is to emphasize systemic change. Last spring, Saravelas gave the go-ahead to four staff members who were preparing original programs designed to meet that need: silk-screening, legal, and newsletter projects, as well as long-range plans for a bail fund project, a medical program, a youth union, and a guerilla theater group.

But after giving them the word to proceed, after having them submit timetables and fairly detailed descriptions of their proposals, Saravelas told them that there was no money to implement their projects. Fed up with such treatment, three of the four staff members left the Bureau a short time later.

No money? Sources inside the Bureau said last week that approximately $40,000 of the YRB's budget has been left unspent and that it may now be too late to recover the funds. If true, the situation at the YRB becomes even more appalling. Not only will staff members have been deceived, but the kids of Cambridge will have lost a huge chunk of money that is rightfully theirs.

LAST WEEK RON SILVA, the Bureau's program administrator, showed me a list of twenty-odd programs that were "on the slate," but when I spoke to Saravelas he could name only four programs currently in operation (excluding the Bureau's two $50,000 satellite projects and an educational census conducted in conjunction with the schools and a number of other city agencies). They were a Junior Advocate program (which trains youth to do counseling work), a psychology program, an alcoholism program in conjunction with the hospital, and the cosmetics program.