South Schuylkill Rotarian and Schuylkill County Commissioner Gary J. Hess discussed issues with the prison and blight at the Tamaqua Rotary meeting Wednesday morning.

On a more positive note, Hess highlighted the Schuylkill Youth Summit Initiative.

Hess said the problem of overcrowding at the Pottsville facility was one that he and his board inherited and will most like one that won’t likely be resolved fully for years to come.

“(Our) prison’s overcrowding, as everyone in this room knows. It’s a decades-old problem,” Hess said. “We looked at ankle bracelets at first, but ran into budgeting problems.”

The prison board reported spending nearly $200,000 so far this year to house overflow inmates to other counties. Hess said that the county spends an average $1.3 million on out-of-county prisoner accommodations.

We were triple-celling inmates at an alarming rate with the number continuing to grow, until the prison was shut down by the Department of Corrections (in May 2016). We have to keep our capacity at 275 prisoners without triple-celling inmates and have been able to do recently,” Hess said.

“The board is tasked with looking at incarceration a little differently. As we continue to educate ourselves, we’re finding lots of our prisoners have mental illnesses, drug addictions, are homeless or are unemployed which has the potential to create crime.”

The board looked to the obvious first, seeing how much a newly built prison would cost. However, with a price tag of about $75 million, Hess said the board is instead focusing efforts toward an intermediate punishment center for low-level offenders as a viable alternative.

“Most of the time, prison is a revolving door. It will be a hit or miss on who makes it through their programs, but those who want to get better will take the opportunity. I believe (an intermediate punishment center) will be money well-spent,” Hess said “We looked at a new prison price of $75 million. We can’t afford that. In the next 20 years, a new board will have to cross this bridge again. But in the meantime, we can’t just hide our heads under the sand.”

Hess also cites the historical significance of the county prison as a contributing factor in its continued operation, adding that there may be ways to use historical grants and other related funds to maintain it.

Hess said the board is looking at two buildings for the proposed intermediate punishment center, of which, the county owns the Schuylkill Transit System building, which may be repurposed.

Renovation, demolition

Hess discussed the countywide demolition program to conquer blight. The key, he said, is to spread money and think “outside the box.”

“(This year) we received a $1.2 million grant, which our state reps helped secure. We always had a demolition program, but had very little funding. This was a good shot in the arm,” Hess said.

Some major projects the board is looking to tackle this year are: renovations at the courthouse, demolition in several major boroughs, and new roads and bridges.

“We are home to one of the largest courtrooms east of the Mississippi. Anyone who goes in there can see how grand Courtroom 1 is. But there’s been problems with the roof, the murals and binding falling down, and the ceiling was falling. There’s also never summer court in there because of a lack of air conditioning in the room.”

Hess said the planned upgrades don’t end in Courtroom 1 or the rooftop. Considering recent shootings, Hess said the board hopes to upgrade the building’s security systems.

“Most people (coming for court) aren’t too happy to be there,” Hess said. “Considering all that’s happened in recent weeks, we need to make sure security, county employees and the general public are safe.”

At a recent meeting commissioners put demolition projects up to bid.

The county is also seeking bids for demolition projects in Palo Alto, Tamaqua, Ashland, Tower City and Shenandoah.

Youth Summit

“(The commissioners) are very proud of the Youth Summit Initiative. Our board found that many of our local high school graduates would go off to college and don’t come back home. As someone with a successful business of 40 years and a father of two kids, who had a great education and moved on to great careers, I can confidently say there’s a lot of good job opportunities here. But, these are our future leaders and we need to listen to them and prepare them so we can go about building that foundation,” Hess said.

The youth summit was spearheaded by the commissioners and supported by Schuylkill County’s VISION back in 2012 and is comprised of 16 public, private and other schools. In the beginning, roughly 4,000 students were polled to survey their general feelings regarding the area and also to determine what issues high school students wanted solved. Hess said from these surveys, the commissioners found that the quality of life, jobs and safety were at the forefront of these issues.

Though not Schuylkill County schools, Panther Valley and Hazleton schools are also part of the summit. Hess said the summit looked at boundaries as well.

“They’re in the same boat as we are and oftentimes we depend on these nearby schools for support. We welcome other districts, because they often can bring new ideas. This isn’t a limited group and we want to take advantage of proximity,” Hess said. “We want to make sure opportunity is here if students want to stay or come back.”