Task force members react to consultant's proposal

Yahoo

2 days ago

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — In its latest report, a consultant has new recommendations for the Project Prison Reset Task Force.
Arrington Watkins submitted its recommendation Monday morning. After weighing factors such as location, availability to utilities and to emergency vehicle access among other things, the group recommended for the task force to take a closer look at six of the possible 13 sites, with one familiar location leading the way.
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The six sites at the top of the consultant's list are the existing Lincoln County site, CitiBank and Kappenman, which are both in Sioux Falls, Worthing, Mitchell and Huron.
'It was necessary to somehow get down to a manageable list. Six seems reasonable,' South Dakota Republican Representative and task force member Greg Jamison said.
The locations were analyzed based on a point system. At the top was the Lincoln County site, located between Harrisburg and Canton.
'One of the key takeaways is they're trying to find a place for 1500 or 1700 beds all in one place. There's a lot of advantages and efficiencies to having one location with these many beds where you've got one fence, one perimeter to manage, you've got all that food that needs to be prepared,' Jamison said.
However, Republican representative and task force member Karla Lems sees it differently.
'I don't think we have to have it all in one spot. I disagree with him on that. I think we have opportunity in Sioux Falls. I go back to the DLR Group study, which made a lot of sense to me. You could build another 300-bed facility between the old hill and the Jameson. You can add up on the Jamison 192 beds,' Lems said.
It gives the task force plenty to discuss at its next meeting in Pierre Tuesday.
'I think it's going to be very spirited and, full of ideas, questions and hard answers, probably hard questions. But tomorrow, I think you're going to see some outcomes that finally get this prison issue on the right track,' Jamison said.
'I think we're going to have a lot of input. I think we're going to have testimony from people, probably from these different areas that have been proposed to say, 'These are the things that would be good about it coming to our town or our city.' They're going to have opposition to some of these things,' Lems said.
The task force will meet at 10:30 Tuesday morning in Pierre. We will be livestreaming the discussion on on our website.
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