70 Pages of Good Reasons

As I mentioned previously, there will be a public meeting about the proposed prison relocation on June 2nd at Frontier Middle School. The event will include exhibits from 4-9 PM, and question and answer from 7-9 PM. I have also learned that we can now expect participation from PRC members. I applaud their decision to be present at these meetings. In light of recent press surrounding this topic, I thought I would re-post the report that outlines the specific concerns we have with the Eagle Mountain site being considered. It should be noted that the infrastructure investment needed to relocate the prison to Eagle Mountain would be even higher than the estimates of $104,000,000 provided in this early report. We have since determined that our cost estimates for natural gas infrastructure were under reported. In recent news coverage, Prison Relocation Commission members have stated that they did not know why certain communities did not want the prison. One official even projected that the public should seek education about the prison facility and that doing so might change some opinions. If the PRC would read the seventy page report that Eagle Mountain produced, they would understand our opposition and they would see that our concerns can not be “educated away”. Education about the design of a prison facility that looks more like a college campus than a prison, does not address the doubling of traffic on local roads, or the significant burden of maintaining additional infrastructure without the facility paying property taxes. Nor will “education” account for the impact upon our emergency services or the consumption of tremendous amounts of our precious water resources. We are concerned about very real, and very significant financial impacts to our community. These concerns are well reasoned and are anything but a “knee jerk reaction.” With the legislative session now over, there really is no reason why they can’t spend an hour or two reviewing the document. I have committed a significant amount of time understanding the impact to our community, the needs of the State, and the dynamics of Utah corrections challenges. The least I expect is that those making this high impact decision would read the report. [pdf-embedder url=”http://cedarvalleysentinel.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/prc-indesign-final-v.pdf”]