The Prison Relocation Commission is not in charge of the decision whether or not the state prison should be moved, but its task is to determine how and where to move the prison.
That’s what PRC co-chairman Sen. Jerry Stevenson told the room full of 200 people who showed up for the PRC’s first and possibly only public hearing Tuesday night in the House office building at the Utah State Capitol.
Just minutes after speaking those words, he turned over the time for three-minute statements from representatives of Eagle Mountain, Fairfield, Grantsville and Salt Lake City — the four potential host cities for a new Utah State Prison.
Their message — “Keep it in Draper.”
“The prison was already in Draper in 1978 when the city incorporated and chose to include the prison in their community,” Grantsville Mayor Brent Marshall said. “The prison was already in Draper when most of the people who live there now chose it as their home.”
Draper, therefore, is the only community that wanted the prison, and they did not ask for any incentives, according to Marshall’s logic.
“It should stay there [in Draper],” he said. “When will you accept the fact that the prison currently sits at the best site?”
The idea of rebuilding the state prison in Draper was echoed by most of the speakers who were given two minutes each to address the PRC during the hearing.
Among the slew of nearly 60 people who spoke were 14 from Tooele County.
Jewel Allen, co-founder of No Prison in Tooele County, showed up two hours early for the meeting to get a front-row seat.
Dressed in a bright red T-shirt with a No Prison in Tooele County logo, Allen was the first public speaker.
Allen turned to Bob Nardi, the PRC’s prison location consultant from New Jersey.
“Mr. Nardi, you come into communities and sell them on the benefits of a prison,” she said. “But do you wait around to see what it does to their soul?”
As the timer counted down on her two minutes, Allen cited distance from volunteers, staff, courts, medical care and inmate families, along with a lack of dependable water, as reasons the Grantsville site is not the best site for the state or inmates.
The Draper site meets the criteria the PRC is looking for, according to Allen.
Grantsville resident Susan Johnsen referred to the PRC members as condescending, arrogant and evasive.
“Nothing we have read convince us that reformation and relocation have to be synonymous,” she said.
Debra Spilman, of Grantsville, said she feels like a child being chastised by a parent when she hears the PRC members talking to the public.
“The majority of the citizens of Utah have said, ‘Keep it in Draper,’” Spilman said. “You are supposed to represent us, the people. So what right do you have to go against what your constituents say and demand that the prison be moved out of Draper?”
Water, education and financial responsibility were on Stansbury Park resident Kami Porter’s list of concerns.
“I am concerned to hear that Canyons School District spends more money to educate prisoners than they receive from the state to educate prisoners,” she said.
Bishan Abeysekera, a chartered financial analyst who lives in Grantsville, pointed out what he believes are flaws in the financial figures used by the PRC.
“I am here to say there are fundamental flaws in your capital budgeting process,” he said. “In essence you have used incorrect numbers to justify moving the prison.”
The $1.8 billion figure for the potential annual economic output from the development of the Draper property fails to consider that much of that output will come to Utah even if the prison stays in Draper, according to Abeysekera.
Paul Rupp, of Grantsville, said he is concerned about the environmental impact of all the people who will have to drive the additional 40 miles from Salt Lake County to Grantsville.
“The prison should be rebuilt in Draper where its beautiful campus can be seen by everyone,” Rupp said.
The prison should stay in Salt Lake County where most of the prisoners come from, according to Jolynn Durfee, of Grantsville.
“Tooele seems to be a convenient dumping ground for everything people don’t want,” she said. “We don’t want any more.”
Wayne Butler, whose great-grandfather helped settle Grantsville in the 1860s, said he was concerned with a “moral question.”
“We have worked hard and volunteered hard to make Grantsville the best place in the world to live,” he said. “Move a prison out here and our identity will change.”
After listening to the litany of keep-it-in-Draper comments, PRC co-chair Rep. Brad Wilson called rebuilding in Draper “impractical.”
“If we are going to rebuild the prison we should build it in the most appropriate site,” he said. “I don’t think Draper is the appropriate place.”
Stevenson said there isn’t enough room to rebuild the prison on the current site in Draper. Leaving the prison on the current site would also forgo the economic benefits for the state of developing the Draper site, he added.
The PRC is waiting to receive the results of the geotechnical studies of the four prison sites. When the data is available the PRC will meet to continue the selection process.
“When we are done there will be only one site left,” Stevenson said.
Stevenson anticipates that the PRC will have its final recommendation ready for approval by the Legislature and governor by Aug. 1.