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Show Will inmates run USTS laundry? Decision has not been made yet There is a possibility in the nature of sharing, rather than replacing in some of the other administrative services areas, however. Fear that inmates from the prison were going to replace employees at the training school and cause widespread layoffs at the facility prompted Dandoy to call a meeting at the school about two weeks ago to explain proposed changes to the employees. He said at the time that State Sen. John P. Holmgren, R-Box Elder and Cache (chairman of the legislative social services and health ap- . propriations committee) had suggested the possibility as a cost cutting measure at the training Whether to use inmates from the Utah State Prison to replace workers in the laundry at the Utah State Training School is still up in the air according to Training School Supt. Jerry Dandoy. "We have a meeting with corrections (Utah Correctional Industries) later this week to go over some figures (in their proposal). It's still under consideration but nothing has been decided," Dandoy said Monday. Discussion, in addition to the. proposal itself, will include when can corrections officials meet with parents of training school residents, when will they meet with American Fork City officials; what is their procedure on public hearings, etc. ' We will go be going over their figures and determine what they mean on various issues - fine tuning the proposal. We know there appears ap-pears to be a big flat out dollar savings but there are other considerations," con-siderations," Dandoy said. UCI (Utah Correctional Industries) In-dustries) have indicated that they do not plan to submit any formal proposals other than for operations of the laundry because they do not have a pool of appropriate prisoners to take on further projects at this time. school. If the proposal is accepted, the laundry would be fenced off and made secure. Inmates participating in the project would be Level 5 inmates. in-mates. This means they would be close to the end of their sentence and would not be considered high security risks. The training school currently employs the equivalent of 22 full-time full-time positions in the laundry, but the impact would be higher than that since some of the jobs are part time. It is hoped these employees could be placed in other positions if the proposal should be implemented. Sen. Holmgren has said he believes things can be done more efficiently at the training school and still provide active treatment for the youngsters. He said he doesn't want to cut hands-on staff, but believes the school maintains too many vehicles, has an excessive number of secretaries, and has other excesses. Under the proposal for the laundry as presented at the employee meeting, cost using the prisoners would be about $240,000 a year compared to the present $511,000 a year because of being able to pay the prisoners less. |
