Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

City To Welcome Prison Committee Tour On Thursday

Prescott will be the third stop on the Arkansas Department of Correction's site selection tour.

The ADC site selection committee will be in Prescott at 9:30 a.m. Thursday, July 29. The group will meet with city representatives either at the community room at Christus St. Michael Health Center.

The meeting will begin with a continental breakfast of coffee and doughnuts, followed by the presentation to include reasons the prison should be located here and a tour of the site. After the site visit, the group will have an early lunch, with the committee then heading to its next visit.

They will be given the city's presentation on what Prescott and Nevada County have to offer in the reason for the ADC to locate a medium security prison here.

According to Dina Tyler, with the ADC public information office, the committee has already visited Malvern and Parkin. Plans are for the group to visit Prescott and Camden Thursday, then go to Pine Bluff and Dermott/McGehee at a later date.

A rough schedule for Prescott will begin with the meeting and presentation, followed by a tour of the proposed site.

Tyler said the ADC will be looking for a site with attractive land, with at least 400 acres available. The land must be above the flood plane with access to all public utilities.

The site's proximity to highways and interstates are important variables as well.

There must also be access to medical and community resources for the staff and inmates. "Inmates do get sick," Tyler said.

The ADC has already reviewed all paper information submitted by those cities vying for the prison.

All cities on the "short" list, she said, appear to meet the ADC's criteria. The next step is to physically visit the sites and communities to see if everything measures up.

The committee will take a good look at the available work force to make sure the facility can be properly staffed. Once constructed, the prison will hire 225 people, but as it expands, it will employ up to about 500 workers.

"These units," Tyler said, "are much like small cities."

The prison itself will take up 100 acres of the land. The rest of the property will be used as a buffer and to create inmate jobs. All inmates work, Tyler said.

The jobs will either be in agriculture, industrial or a combination of the two, or possibly even a livestock operation.

A final decision on where the prison will be located could be made by mid-August or September.

The facility is a "fast-track" project, with construction to begin by January 2000 and be completed in 10 months.

It will have an annual operating budget of around $11 million initially, with the average salary for employees being $11 per hour.

When the facility expands, the annual operating budget will grow to $23 million.