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Remodel jail, not build new one

By Michael Cavanagh 3 min read

With the recent scuttling of Al Ambrosini’s grand rip off of the Fayette County taxpayers, I feel it is necessary to address this most important issue.

The taxpayers have again been used and abused by this tax-and-spend liberal. To date we have invoices and commitments totaling $4 million plus on this failed “Taj Mahal.” That’s $2 million plus to the engineers, $1.25 million for the scrub land, and $1 million plus for sewerage. I remind you that not one shovel has been turned to date; do you feel ripped off yet? You should.

The absolute arrogance of Ambrosini cannot be overstated in this whole process. He has been abusive in his power, rude to any citizen that has asked any questions about or has been critical of his project. In fact, Commissioner Ambrosini even penned a completely false guest commentary in the Herald Standard attacking me personally for being opposed to his grand jail project.

I give most of the credit to Commissioner Angela Zimmerlink for her steadfast stance against building this grand jail from day one and voting not spend any of the wasted taxpayers’ money. I will give some credit to Commissioner, Vince Zapotosky for now stopping this grand rip off of your money. It has been undeniably proven that Ambrosini was in fact willfully and purposefully keeping both his fellow commissioners in the dark regarding this costly proposed project. He withheld the geo-technical study about the site for the prison for over two and a half months.

Now that I have pointed out the flaws that Ambrosini has lead since before even being elected. I will now state my common-sense solution to this problem facing the Fayette County taxpayers. I would build a new “annex” directly behind the courthouse, housing an additional 200 prisoners. This will save the need for costly land acquisition, sewerage, and the many other issues that were facing the doomed Ambrosini plan.

We will also save on any future needs of transporting prisoners at taxpayers’ expense. I would then use the current annex to house the women prisoners. Finally, I would remodel, update, and repurpose the current jail. Plans have already been paid for and exist from a previous board of commissioners.

I have previously written about this common sense solution; Why has it has been attacked by the current “political class and judicial system?” The answer is they want to make money on raising your taxes, plain and simple!

Michael J. Cavanagh is a resident of Uniontown.

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