good day

http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x1296.xml?ReleaseID=1017

http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x1296.xml?ReleaseID=1060

In fact unless to drive by it having a prison in town never entered into my mind. The State does give the town pilot money for the prison. Which is a nice bit of tax relief.[/quote]

I still live near 5, count them 5 prisons including a super-max facility and CT’s death row. I feel I should clarrify my feelings at this point.

As of right now, I feel safe in my community, even living just over 1 mile from the prisons. I am on a cul-de-sac in a largely wooded area and you would never know that a prison is just around the corner. The wardens do a good job keeping the community in the loop about the going ons and our police department does an excellent job protecting the public’s safety in our community.

My concerns in regards to any expansion to the campus of prisons that we host is much different than the safety of our community. First, is the infrastructure of our community. The prisons currently discharge all of there wastewater into our treatment facility. While we are paid by the state for that use, we have been screwed by them once when they went over their contracted usage. Our current facility has the capacity for increased usage but we intend to use that for potential increase in our commercial and industrial properties, not the increase in beds at the prison campus. Our roads are also affected. More inmates equals more traffic. No bones about it.

Next, the prisons are smack dab in the middle of prime commercial/industrial real estate. It’s flat, its dry, and it has easy access to the highways. To be clear, why we do get PILOT funds, there is now way that those funds outweigh what the community would get out of that property if it was used for commercial or industrial use between the tax dollars to Enfield AND more importantly, the private sector jobs that that use would create.

Finally is the social impact that the host community experiences. While there is study to date, it is undeniable that the host community faces social impacts as family of inmates move into the host community. This in turn hypothetically increases the community’s budget from, at the very least, an educational perspective if the family has children, and thus taxes, as PILOT figures does not consider the social impact the prisons have.

As host to the largest prison population in Connecticut, we are carrying our fair share and then some. Flashing PILOT money in our faces isn’t going to change that. If we are going to expand prisons in Connecticut, and I don’t think we should, it should be somewhere else.

The Dems had no final proposal on the table at the time of the Q-poll but nice spin BTW UT.[/quote]

Wasn’t the Appropriations Committee budget a Dem proposal? As I recall it, the poll was for which of the three budget “proposals” was preferred.

The Dems had no final proposal on the table at the time of the Q-poll but nice spin BTW UT.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scared_Straight!

P.S. Healy has done nothing to build the party. He has taken it way to the right. And the budget that passed last time around hardly belonged to Cafero et. al.

In fact unless to drve by it having a prison in town never entered into my mind. The State does give the town pilot money for the prison. Which is a nice bit of tax relief.

Next, before I would want to see another prison built I would prefer to see us revert back to sending inmates to private facilities. I would reserve this for longer term inmates that are less likely to be rehabbed.

I guess what I’m getting at is that this is more than “more crimes, more prisoners, need more prisons”. We should be looking at this from the bottom up, not the top down. Crime prevention, rehabilitation for those who need it and are “rehabable” and so on… And this shouldn’t be a hasty partisan decision. Take the time to deliberate this properly, take all information and opinions into account, and then together craft a new, fair policy for the good of our fine state.

And finally, to Mr. Lawlor, I ask, where do you want to build this prison? I’m sure it won’t be East Haven but as an Elected official in the “host” community for the largest prison population in Connecticut, I certainly hope you won’t be considering Enfield either. I think it’s fair to say that we are carrying more than our fair share here.[/quote]

I remember that during the Rowland administration, they would ship excess prisoners down to Virginia. Whatever happened to that?

Would it be possible for the state to build a prison out of state? In Wisconsin, land’s selling for $3000 an acre. For that kind of money, you can buy many, many acres of prison land, permanently eliminating this problem.

Honestly, I feel like Lawlor and MacDonald are exploiting the situation in Enfield for partisan purposes, with Kathy Tallarita and Karen Jarmoc as willing henchmen.

First I get a letter in the mail signed by Tallarita and Jarmoc saying that there’s going to be a public hearing on the situation at the prison. This letter comes in the mail, hours before the hearing.

The first thing that struck me was that Senator Kissel wasn’t in on it at all. Everyone in Enfield knows that crime and punishment is one of his signature issues. Of course the senator was present, but the hearing was convened for Kathy and Karen’s promotional purposes.

People who go tell me that the whole thing was little more than a sob-fest staged by Democrat Party apparatchiki that accomplished very little.

So last week, I’m sitting back reading a story in the JI about crowding in the prison. Smack dab in the middle of the story is a picture of Kathy Tallarita. And this just serves to illustrate my point. What does Kathy Tallarita have to do with a story on the prison when it isn’t even in her district?

Honestly, I find this kind of third-rate attention grab rather insulting. Do these gals think I’m stupid or what? CT voters are tired of being pushed around, talked down to, and inappropriately manipulated by power-seeking pols. Lawlor is a poster child for it, trying to rewrite his biography in Wikipedia.

We need a lion like Churchill or TR who will stand up and fight the good fight, not another politically correct wimps.

If so, then who’s the latter day Savanarola?

Chris is doing a superb job as chairman.

He’s attracted and kept a strong team; where on earth he finds some of the young people we have on staff is beyond me, as much as whatever he must be putting in their food – they work like they’re possessed.

As for Healy; first he is Party Chair and he was doing his job. Secondly he is, as am I, a believer in Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment.