Now it appears that the price tag for the new Ulster County “mega- jail” will be well over $100 million. It was supposed to cost $40 million. Who knows how much it will cost when it’s finally finished? How many new schools could we have built with that extra $60 million?
The annual payments on the money the Ulster County Republican Leadership borrowed to build the “Mega Jail” will be more than $7 million. Remember their justification for building it in the first place was that the county was paying $500,000 per year to house prisoners out of county. That seems like chump change now. How much senior housing could be built per year for the extra $6.5 million?
Some other “interesting” facts:
the jail is the largest capital project in the history of the county.
the Republicans have now hired a third “manager” for the project without firing the other two. They are paying three “managers” right now: Christa Construction, Bovis Construction, and Hill International. And let’s not forget Brian Cunningham, who is being paid to mange the three managers. We don’t know how much they are paying these guys because the Republicans won’t tell us.
the Republican Leadership is spending nearly $60,000 for high-priced, out of town attorneys to dig themselves out of this mess of their own creation.
the average cost per cell is way over $200,000 and rising.
the estimated annual cost of utilities for the new jail is $1 million.
the Republicans spent over $330,000 on landscaping alone. Does the jail need to be that beautiful?
the jail will require 28 more correctional officers to run over the existing facility. The Republicans said way back when that less people would be needed to run the new facility.
If the Ulster County Republican Leadership’s failure was only about broken promises to the voters it would be bad enough. But this fiasco of a project is going to cost us big in the future: higher taxes for you for the rest of your life and for your children for theirs. Is there corruption involved? Let’s hope not. But huge amounts of money seemed to have gone down a hole and we’ve come up with nothing.
We need new leadership in this county. We can’t expect the Republicans who are responsible for this utter and total fiasco to fix it. We need to give the Democrats control of our county government.
Another example of Republican mismanagement, though on a much smaller scale, is the Persens House. The Persens House is an 18th century building located in uptown Kingston. It’s a relatively small building with less than 5,000 square feet of usable space.
Without a plan for how to use the building, the Ulster County Republicans spent $2 million on renovations. That’s not a mistake: $2 million dollars just to renovate a small building. And guess what? It’s still not usable. Another million dollars at least is needed to finish the renovations because all that’s there now after spending $2 million is an empty shell. That’s what’s going to be left of our county after the Republican Leadership is through with it: we’re going to be an empty shell where only the rich can afford to live because our taxes will be so high.
We can do better, much better. Elect Joe Stoeckeler, Mary Sheeley, Leonard Distel and Mary Mendola to be your voice in Kingston, a voice that will speak for you and not for the special interests.