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Rant

I predicted this

Jun 21, 2011 10:18AM PDT

My town built a prison...and it's still sitting empty costing $700K a year for nothing...no jobs, no prisoners, no income from visitors, nada.

http://www.correctionalnews.com/articles/2011/01/4/virginia-prison-sits-empty

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/new-virginia-prison-sits-empty-at-a-cost-of-more-than-700000-a-year/2011/05/25/AGXZqwEH_story.html

There are lots more articles, but these are the two I picked. There is also a $1M school in LA County CA that sits empty at a cost equal to that each year to let it continue that way.

Discussion is locked

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In VA
Jun 21, 2011 1:08PM PDT

because it is a Commonwealth, we don't have Mayors...we have from three to five Supervisors (rarely an even number in order to avoid a deadlock/tie). I ran for one of those positions and predicted that the prison was going to never open and that it shouldn't be built because it was going to drain our already dwindling economy. Our rural area in southwest VA was losing industry and our tax base rapidly for at least five years prior to this, and the supervisors saw this as a way to build up that tax base in addition to providing local jobs, have family with prisoners locked up move into the area and spend locally, visitors to prisoners renting space in a hotel/motel that was also being built to accommodate business people and those visitors, and that our local stores (maybe 12 and restaurants, of which we had one with three fast food types of 'no name' would benefit). We now have 9 local stores, which include a NAPA, a Dollar General, one grocery store, one gas station, one bank with two branches within 1/2 mile of each other, one motel that stays empty, two drugstores. We still have one restaurant (which is also a pizza place), one Subway, and one Aunt Bea's BBQ. Everything else is either an empty building, empty storefront, or bulldozed building on an empty lot. Both car dealerships closed down so you have to drive 40 miles or more if you need dealership repairs/parts. We have an unemployment rate of nearly triple what gets reported on even the 'local' news out of Roanoke....of course those local channels are all 'liberal' and always try to make things sound ohh so rosey and looking up. I stopped watching those channels years ago when I saw firsthand how they were manipulating the news and numbers....all I had to do was drive into my town and nearby areas, including the I77 hub in Wytheville.

Nobody listened to what I had to say...so now we have an empty prison, no jobs that were promised, no tax base to relieve the locals from rising property taxes to make it up, no help with the economy with families moving here or visiting, etc. All we have are maintenance bills on nothing...

The only good thing that came out of that decision was, after they tried to use eminent domain to acquire somebody's land to build it on near the New River so they would have a local water source and got sued over it, they made the decision to use land further east, so at least that local didn't lose their land over it.

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RE: The only good thing that came out of that decision was
Jun 21, 2011 1:23PM PDT

So there were no jobs created by/during the construction?

of course those local channels are all 'liberal' and always try to make things sound ohh so rosey and looking up

Are you talking about the same prison(my link in other post?) that was built by KBR?.. Haliburton? Liberal? Republican guy took bribe? Liberal?

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No local jobs, I know I said that
Jun 21, 2011 1:38PM PDT

I didn't say that liberals provided the resources (part of the money had to also be provided by our local government from 'matching grants', nor did I say that it was a liberal that took the bribe. I said that the local news channels are liberal and always paint our local situations in a rosey light, when the situations are bleak. DO YOU EVEN BOTHER TO READ EVERYTHING I POST OR DO YOU ONLY PICK AND CHOOSE YOUR 'ENJOYABLE ANNOYING' ONE LINERS TO TRY TO PLAY 'GOTCHA'? Once again, I will no longer post replies to your idiotic responses. WHEN you decide to have a real response, THEN WE'LL TALK.

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RE: I said that the local news channels are liberal
Jun 21, 2011 2:04PM PDT
I said that the local news channels are liberal and always paint our
local situations in a rosey light, when the situations are bleak.


I suppose the people that wanted to build the prison also painted a rosey picture? (and they weren't liberals? KBR?.. Haliburton? Liberal? Republican guy took bribe? Liberal?)

Did they just say...Hey!...We're going to build a prison, no one will stay there and you pay for for the rest of your lives, and there will be no spinoff from the prison.

Conservatives painting a rosey picture...any comment on them?

IF you didn't mention that YOU think the local press is Liberal (and painting a rosey picture) I wouldn't have mentioned KBR, Halburton and Republican. (Conservatives?)

When It comes to painting bleak pictures..I've been reading a lot of gloom and doom posts lately. Some of them need a bit of humour.

You don't get/enjoy the humour...I feel your pain.
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why can't the prison be used for something else?
Jun 21, 2011 10:23PM PDT

Maybe turn it into a "clinic" for recovering addicts? Admittedly, there's not much that can be done with a prison, if not used as one. Most older ones close to never become anything else, being torn down eventually. Alcatraz is a museum. Maybe use as an indoor farmer's market? Change the internal structure some and use as a wide area high school?

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Our stupid local politicians
Jun 21, 2011 10:36PM PDT

don't have any imagination at all....what you have suggested has actually been brought up by myself and others in the community and it all falls on deaf ears. They are hesitant to do anything for fear that the cost of revamping it to something else now and then possibly having to revamp it again later to a prison should that come to fruition finally would be 'a waste of taxpayer money', so they prefer to leave it empty and hope that there will actually be a need for it in its original form. We actually have politicians hoping for crime to go up so they can say 'I told you so'.....unbelievable, but the more the economy boxes people in, the more robberies, etc. will happen as people get more and more desperate, so I'm thinking they might get their wish.

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Also...
Jun 21, 2011 10:39PM PDT

one of the excuses they used for not being able to do any of those suggestions is because it would also involve rezoning it back and forth. Not sure how much rezoning would have to go into "housing for prisoners" vs "housing for the homeless", but they wouldn't answer that either....and rezoning something around here is nothing more than a swipe of a pen which seems to be a real hardship for them since their hands shake from choking up with tears.