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Reader reflects on new jail question |
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Tuesday, 25 March 2008 |
Letter from Paul Stenshoel
Valley City, N.D.
Woke up early one morning and went down to the County Commission meeting held at our beautiful 1920 Art Deco courthouse. Got to listen to the kibitzing amongst the windmill power folk. That was quite entertaining --some great salesman bull#@!* going on there. But then I hung around long enough to hear something that really got my attention: Keith Colville showed up with a friend and discussed with the board options on preserving the heating system in the old jail. I got to thinking: This guy took it upon himself to research options on preserving the equipment in the old jail? Why?
My thoughts have always been, I don’t really care if they build a new jail as long as they leave the old one alone. But after listening to Keith, I am kind of changing my mind on that. He claims the new jail -- any way you look at it -- is going to cost the taxpayers more money. You can shake it up and throw ‘em out, but any way you look at it, the dice keep coming up craps.
Taxpayers will pay at least some for a new jail. The good thing is, I am sure there might be some out there who will benefit locally and I’d guess that’s why maybe ol˙ Double G (George Gaukler) remains so active in the efforts. Yeah, Double G was there, and you can bet if Double G’s there, there’s some dollars to be had in a North Dakota minute.
You know, I can understand why some may want the jail away from the high school and away from our downtown housing district but I’ll bet ya that if you ran the statistics you’d find you wouldn’t be any more safer.
So.. I am starting to think that maybe it would be better if the local folk were to get the work for maintaining and restoring of the old jail, thinking in the long term it might benefit the community more -- statistically, I know it would. Let it trickle back down into the town trades instead of out to the developers and out again to Florida, Fargo or who the heck knows where.
Singin’ the same old, same old Barnes County developers blues.
Yeah, Rome may not have been built overnight but that new crap in Fargo sure was.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 23 May 2008 )
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