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| Utah will study feasibility of moving prison |
| By Deseret Morning News |
| Published: 05/02/2005 |
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Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. is proceeding with his plan to move the Utah State Prison from Draper - or at least determining the feasibility of doing so. On Monday the state will make public a new "request for proposal" bidding competition seeking a firm that will examine the economic feasibility of moving the prison. The proposal request, obtained Saturday by the Deseret Morning News, indicates "three or four" sites will be examined as potential new locations for the state prison. At least one watchdog group criticized the sudden release of the document and noted the public and press were not notified it would be issued Monday. Groups should be given more time to comment on the scope of the feasibility study, said Steve Erickson, director of the Citizens Education Project. "To our knowledge (the Division of Facilities Construction and Management) did not even do the minimum due diligence by placing the offering in the public notices section of the newspapers," he said in written comments. Jason Chaffetz, Huntsman's chief of staff, promised Saturday that the study would take copious public comment from "all sorts of stakeholders, both inside and outside of government." "This will not just be left in the hands of some firm," he said. The 54-year-old Draper facility was originally built to house 400 inmates. Over the past half century, the prison population has ballooned to nearly nine times that number, and various expansion projects have been completed over the years to accommodate that growth. "Our population along the Wasatch Front has continued to fill in, so (Draper) is no longer necessarily an ideal spot for a prison," Chaffetz said. Huntsman, as he said during the gubernatorial campaign, "would like to see it moved if it makes economic sense," Chaffetz said. Any community that doesn't want the prison won't have it forced on them, and media reports focusing on Tooele as the front-runner for the new prison are just rumors and hype, Chaffetz said. "Many communities around the state would like such a facility," he said. "We're not going to force this upon anybody." A prison can be "a great economic development tool" that would bring jobs to the surrounding community, Chaffetz said. The governor's office wants to have the feasibility study completed by year's end, with hopes of taking the issue to the Legislature in 2006. Any one of the sites selected as part of the feasibility study would not necessarily be the eventual prison location, Chaffetz added, noting that the study may show it isn't economically feasible to move the prison. |
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