Thread by @ForARPeople1

Good evening! We're about to roll in to Franklin Co to cover tonight's town hall re: the Governor's plans to build a 3,000 bed prison in the small town of Charleston. Residents circulated a petition, which now has more than 2,300 signatures, to oppose the prison. Follow along with us on this thread. #arpx

The context: in October, state employees dodged Qs from #arleg members about where the prison would go. Then, the Governor blindsided residents last week when she announced the location on a radio program. No elected officials from the town/county had been notified or were part of the discussions.

If you want to gage how local folks are feeling about the prison in their backyard, read the comments on the petition: change.org/p/petition-to-…

It is a packed house - we had to park about a half mile away. Going over some ground rules now.

Apologies for the delay! Technical issues. Rosemary Underwood gave a strong opening statement condemning the lack of communication from the Gov's office and calling for comprehensive environmental impact statements, economic analyses, and social impact statements.

First question was when community leaders knew - many of them found out from the paper.

Explicit statement that they were told to keep the purchase of the land quiet; boos from the crowd.

Says exhaustive process, site was under review for several months.

Next question: were there any studies done re: environmental impacts, utility price increases, etc.

A: obvious that an investment in infrastructure would be required in any site, not just this one.

Shelby Johnson, Geographic Info Officer for the state. His team helped map things out, wants to make some remarks about site selection process.

One criteria was the site shouldn't have an existing correctional facility w/in 16 (or 60?, mic isn't great) miles because of staffing concerns.

Confirm: 60 miles. Very few communities meet that criteria. Pope, Union, really only options until you get over here South of Harrison.

Combined with needs for workforce, really narrows to River Valley area. They thought about Conway before moving now west of R-ville.

He's basically telling them - sucks to be you, but this is the only spot we could do it so we're gonna do it (reading between the lines).

Q again about infrastructure (Lots of the opening statement mentioned this issue - utilities and pollution known to rise outside prisons)

Q: is state prepared to help with infrastructure construction? Will it help with funding?

A: yes.

Q re: process, why not use Fort Chaffee land?

A: Evaluated multiple sites across the region, workforce data + available land made this location stand out.

Q: why not build onto an existing facility?

A: usually already tapped out workforce capacity in those areas, and workforce in correctional facilities already huge problem

(we could simply lock fewer people up for non-violent crimes)

Sec of Corrections is here. Reiterates everything that's been said already, driving home the point that this is the only real option for a prison of this size.

Q: workforce again.

A from Sec of Correction: lot of local jails around. We won't be able to attract people just due to salary.

Magness up (Board of Corrections): other correctional locations similar to this demographic. For a few years the facilities' staffing needs lowered law enforcement staffing, but then evened out.

Next Q: concern re: increased crime around correctional facilities.

A: not usually a concern re: visitors for inmates. Contraband is going to a specific inmate, they're not developing crime rings or anything.

Q specifically about sewage.

Most facilities have their own wastewater plants. Magness says that the professionals have worked this out.

Q: Will this facility be self-contained?

A: most likely (not a popular answer).

Moving onto potential farmland contamination.

Says there's risk mitigation.

Q: will any construction of those facilities affect local wells? Several farms/houses on wellwater close to proposed site.

LIVESTREAM AVAILABLE: youtube.com/live/mSivZ_u3z…

A: We're not here to do harm to anyone, but we can't rule that out.

Q: will there be recourse if there's harm done?

A: there should be, yes.

Q: community members aren't convinced that their privacy will be respected - noise, light pollution, construction disturbance, etc.

A: infrastructure needs required to mitigate that, but certain ingress/egress needs. Architect involved with corrections members to mitigate as much as possible to reduce sightlines to homes, addition of treelines, setting it back as much as possible.

Q: fire protection. Will rural firefighters be relied on in case of fires?

A: Could go both ways. Investment needs to be made into fire services, but if locals aren't sufficient, the a self-contained fire service will be the move.

Q: Medical care now. Rural hospitals already at capacity.

A: medical vendor offers a full compliment of services, other than emergencies. Goal is to handle as much as possible in-house.

Q: property values around the prison. Nobody wants to live by prisons.

A: It's believed that there will be no diminishment of property values. Crowd LAUGHS.

Secretary trying to do damage control. She's from Malvern, last prison built there in 2003. Her mom is less than 5 mi away.

She says she doesn't believe there's been a negative impact, but acknowledges that was 20 years ago.

Sen King is here: says this issue should've been taken care of years ago. BoC says 8 counties make up 67% of incarceration figures. That's why they want to place here.

Says we don't take care of crime, they'll keep coming and we should stop dumping all our problems into those 8 counties. Crowd applauds. "Better something from the Government sounds, worse it's gonna be." Applause

King: a lot of people that are pushing this on you are the folks who caused this.

King coming down firmly on the side of the crowd. He's not buying the price tag - AL build a 4k bed for several billion, and there's no way a 3k bed for 400~+ million.

He's pushing Profiri for specifics on how they came up with price tag.

A: I recognize the concern, can't speak to Utah/AL pricetags but implies they went over budget.

A cont: vendor will work with corrections to asses needs and current state. Says this "will inform the budget."

King: they should've come up with this when they sold the legislators. They've provided no details. "If we beat alabama on this, it'll be the only time we beat AL."

King: Complex set of issues that simply isn't being addressed. Most rural counties aren't having these issues. Crime comes from urban centers and it's not fair to dump those issues on rural counties.

Crowd applauds

Stubblefield: One of the biggest mistakes of this meeting was that it wasn't held a month ago. What about the loss of value for the people?

Says he asked Gov's office if they'd build a house next to the facility if the land was donated, and they all said no.

Says best part of government should be transparency with its people. This kind of obfuscation has been going on too long in this state.

Stubblefield says they haven't gotten nearly enough info.

Q: as the public, it's concerning our elected officials knew nothing about this, let alone Stubblefield who's on relevant committee. Can we address this?

A: our concern was price of land escalating if this was known. This is a deeply unpopular answer with the crowd.

Q: I guess there's nothing illegal about this, but is that common? Would you want that done to you?

A: *shrugs*

Q: are there hard numbers to indicate that the price would rise?

A: hard numbers for budget.

Profiri getting yelled at from several corners of the crowd now.

Ultimate cost of prison will be determined by needs of facility.

Magness: Utah facility Sen. King mentioned that was double the price is higher security (hardened) and has a hospital, which increased cost drastically

"There's people in this building against the prison."

*everyone stands and cheers*

"Mark my words, some of you or your families will work there."

Yells from crowd: We don't want to work there!

Arrogance here is stunning.

Magness again: inmates will help clean streets and parks.

Crowd: We don't care, we don't want it!!

Missed his final comment but it was... unpopular.

He's now explaining difference between hardened facility and this proposed one.

Profiri now: mentions issue of housing state prisoners in county jails - it's expensive, they don't have good programming, etc. Modern facility will lower recidivism and result in better outcomes. Exponential benefit to taxpayers.

Q: what kind of prisoners? High security, min security, etc.

A from Sec. Wallace: not high security. Will be largely minimum security. She's vamping - crowd yells "What kind of prisoners?"

She says she doesn't know for sure, but vendor will help determine.

Stubblefield to Magness: when did the board know?

A: Two weeks ago today.

Stubblefield to Profiri: When was the decision made?

He starts to vamp, crowd yells him down - "give us the date!"

Seems it was at least 3 months ago. Prison board votes tomorrow on it.

Stubblefield reading now from Arkansas Code: essentially, this is illegal in his mind. They're not allowed to do this without a public hearing in the municipality or county.

Stubblefield wants to know how they're getting around this. Says BoC should check w/ AG to see if Ark. law is being violated.

Crowd cheers.

Stubblefield: Why force something on a community that doesn't want it? Board doesn't want to spend 2-5 years in litigation.

Standing ovation.

He wants to know what the Governor's Office was thinking.

King now: how did they come up with the $$ figure in the first place? They created the problem for 7 years. They gotta provide hard figures how they're gonna build 3k beds for the 470mil price tag. "This thing is over budget before a shovel goes in the ground."

Q: Based on law, is there a way to postpone vote at BoC to give community more time?

A Magness: my prerogative as chair to postpone. I will not do that.

Boos from crowd.

King: Trying to nail the coffin before session because they screwed the budget figures (from LEARNS, I wonder if he's thinking?)

King, cont: nothing wrong with waiting while we get the real figures before taxpayers get screwed with a bigger price tag!

Missed speaker: ARLeg would have to approve funds, so this isn't over.

Q: What time is the vote?

A: 9 AM.

Asks Senators to file injunction to stop process.

Stubblefield says he's going to speak to AG.

Sec. Wallace: Legal counsel doesn't believe this is applicable. She's shouted down. Says this isn't a "community based residential facility", which is what the statute Stubblefield cited refers to.

More talk of injunctions, or any way to stop proceedings. Seems to be a lawyer in the crowd that the question was directed toward.

Lawyer getting a mic. Prosecuting attorney for county.

Says first he's heard of the statute, but not sure. Open to any option to make sure due process is followed. Jokes he might have a late night, but an injunction would have to go through Pulaski Co. Crowd yells "then do it!"

King says he thinks they changed it so might be able to be filed here.

Community rep lists again all the concerns.

Profiri thanks crowd for letting him talk and says "this process will continue" (doesn't sound like it)

King: our Founding Fathers set up a system where people didn't get stuff crammed down their throats. Civics teacher over here would tell you that's a communist country.

County judge I think - asks lawyer to get an injunction before a circuit judge.

Magness again says no chance of holding off on the vote.

JP with family land nearby (missed name) coming up to speak, getting huge applause. His family has farmed the land for 60 years. They're just small ranchers, working people. They don't want to give up their land.

Says he's worked in quite a few prisons over 82 years. He figured out how to make a prison partly pay for itself without money coming from taxpayers. He's been told this prison will not have any way to pay for itself. Coming straight from working folks' pockets.

He hates to see this be here, but more importantly hates to see Arkansans pay for this year after year. There will be no end to these tactics, he says.

Says when convicts' families move nearby so they could visit, the community will become unsafe. Kids won't be able to take the bus alone. (could do without this implication, but)

Says he loves this little area of the state of Arkansas. They have the best people he knows of in the state. He thinks the decision that's being made right now will cost their children, grandchildren, great grandchildren for the rest of their lives. No telling what that cost is

He knows the land and says there's no way prison will be able to support itself.

He thanks the school board, superintendent, and everyone there for use of facility. Thanks Gov's Office for being here (lol) - knows they care because they showed up.

But: If the Gov's Office had many any effort to talk with anyone here, any elected officials, then we wouldn't be here today.

Why so secret, he asks?

He asks folks to think and pray about what he's said. Apologizes if he's unintentionally misled anyone.

Gets another standing ovation.

Ms. Moore (sp?) will now make a comment. She didn't plan to speak, but she's been moved and startled by the lack of compassion and concern for the folks in the building.

Applause.

Says she has no questions for the panel, but for the crowd.

Q: most of you have spent your whole lives here. Folks, I'm not ready to give up on our community. I appreciate our reps for trying to defend us. If all of us stand together, they can have their vote, but we'll still be here and we'll be fighting for our way of life.

Cont: I will go as far as I can, with all of you, to hold up this process for as long as we can. I propose we launch a fundraising campaign to save our community. If we stand together, we can hire qualified attorneys to make sure they haven't violated our rights.

Okay, they're wrapped. Thanks for following along!

Crowd yelling to hold the vote as they disperse.

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