CCA rebuttal 7.pdf

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RESIDENTS AGAINST INAPPROPRIATE DEVELOPMENT
REAL FACTS
∗ Politicians supporting this project have received financial donations from CCA. Property Values in a similar neighborhood in AZ dropped 12% after their detention center was built. Coldwell Banker's prison disclosure and hold harmless agreement that applies to ALL properties West of I75, south of Griffin Road and North of Pines Boulevard. "The sharks are beginning to circle," wrote SWR Town Attorney Poliakoff. "We should remain fully quiet" . How is that open and transparent ? As a result of declining prison admissions and excess bed space, the Florida Department of Corrections will be closing 7 prisons by July 1, 2012, including the Women’s Prison next to the CCA parcel. This location is part of the Everglades. The negative impact on our ever dwindling water supply is unacceptable. SW Broward is brimming with residential properties and schools. It is no place for a prison. ICE has two other respondents to their RFP who are eager to have their locations selected for this project. Who would you believe first... A multi-million dollar company making money off our tax dollars or your neighbors who have been researching this company since they announced the detention center?"

Deciphering ‘The Facts’
The South Florida Detention Center
New Jobs Yes, But Not So Good Pay & Benefits
We are told that we will get "New Jobs with good pay and benefits." That's true to some extent. Certainly the white collar management will get good paying jobs. Their CEO, Danon Hininger, made $3.3MM in 2010. That's a great job! We are sure the benefits are good too. We can't wait to see those types of jobs come in to our area, especially for all the politicians who have either joined the ranks of the unemployed or that soon will join their ranks. CCA will pay as little as it possibly can, as it does everywhere in the U.S. In the absence of effective monitoring, it can be expected to staff the prison well below contracted levels. If it is able (and it has lost million dollar, multi-state class-action suits that challenged its practices) it will pay less than legal wages. Its benefits are marginal. They brag about their 401K plans, although they have very low participation among staff who are living paycheck to paycheck. In 2000, during a visit to their CADC prison in Florence, Arizona a poster in the break room lauded their retirement. In fact their stock was selling close to $40 at the time and dropped to 28 cents per share by 2001. "Retirements" were completely wiped out. In Crowley, Colorado, they had three health "benefit" plans for employees. Astronomical employee premium contributions meant that few could afford the best plan. The second plan had extremely high co-pays and very limited benefits. The bottom plan was next to worthless. The secretive CCA alleges that what it pays is protected "proprietary information," as is the nature of those held inside their prisons. In fact, our recent legal discovery efforts have confirmed CCA pays it's non-guard staff as little as $8.80/hour.









“Hundreds of New Jobs” Locals Need Not Apply
On 7/21/04, the day after its second major riot, the Crowley prison was still smoking. It was surrounded by a perimeter of state prison correctional officers to deal with any possible escapes as many of the low paid CCA guards had run for their lives and a huge number resigned in its immediate aftermath. The town where it was located, Olney Springs, was derelict, with almost all its stores boarded up. A restaurant was open with a well worn, bare board floor. Unable to work because of the riot were half a dozen roofers from Tennessee who had been busy finishing a new cellblock but couldn't continue at the locked down prison. Asked if they were a union crew, we were told that they weren't, That they sometimes had to buy a single employee "card" to present the appearance of legitimizing the job. They said no one paid dues regularly, nor did they get anything close to prevailing wages. Asked if they traveled all over the country doing roofs for CCA, for instance at their California City prison in California? They said that they did, that local laborers were not employed. Prison construction is a specialty where construction jobs are filled by only a handful of local workers, usually those in locally licensed specialties such as electricians. We have found this to be the case in one facility after another (check the Private Corrections Institute's webpage for Hardin, Montana: www.privateci.org) In Pahrump, NV, CCA made the same promises to locals and only seemed to use local labor for site prep, as the cost of bringing in earth moving equipment would have made employing out-of-state, poorly trained scabs more expensive. It doesn't appear that they used any significant union labor. (are the carpenters listening ?)
swranchesdetentioncenter









WWW.NOPRISONSWR.ORG

One ex CCA employee said : The company brought staff from other facilities to be promoted. We were also forced to work very long hours, in some cases three shifts in a row. We were never allowed to take any lunch breaks, even between shifts. Our paychecks were often several hours late, so when you got off of your shift, you would have to wait two or three hours to get paid on payday. Vacation and overtime pay was frequently left out of our checks, and when it was brought to the attention of HR, there were plenty of excuses on why they didn't have to pay it.

Deciphering ‘The Facts’

Page 2

Helping Local Businesses ?
CCA's "community" is Nashville, TN, the only one to which it is marginally responsive. That "injection" a well worn, but wholly duplicitous selling point. They had the owners of the long established ACE Hardware in Pahrump among its most ardent supporters, convinced CCA would express local purchasing preference. They recently closed their doors in the absence of any such windfall. In fact the industry prefers prefabricated construction from out of the states where their prisons were sited, only needing to be bolted together and just finishing work to be done on site. In fact, when they promote their services to states and the feds, they repeatedly claim that nationally centralized purchasing lowers their costs, contradicting the false claim of buying local.

The Real Impact of locating a facility like Krome in SWR
Released detainees are transported to the closed public transportation hub. That happens to be the SW Regional Library , right next to the Charter High School, Broward College and FIU.

CCA Says “Independent studies have shown no correlation between property values and proximity to a detention center of corrections facility.”

CCA is shamelessly lying.
No Correlation? How do you explain The National Institute of Corrections / Department of Justice report that cites an FIA / FAU study which specifically demonstrates the correlation of an affluent community in Goodyear, AZ being within 3 miles of what was a 1500 bed Arizona facility as causing a 12% drop in property values. Haven’t your property values decreased enough already? Can you afford for your home to be worth 12% less than it is today?

More Money for Local Schools.
Now if that isn't a bald faced lie, nothing is. Just take a look at Bob Norman's Channel 10 piece which demonstrates that this wonderful partner with the Town has already shorted the county tons of money that could have helped our $120MM school district shortfall. Norman says they shorted the county by $60,000 a year in property taxes because they put cows on the property for a few weeks in January. As they bought the property in 1998, that's like 13 years at $60k per year or almost $800,000 total and they haven't even got started! Yeah, some friend of schools. CCA alleges it will pay considerable local taxes. In actuality, it fights tax assessments at every opportunity. It is rare that it compensates adequately for the considerable local services it receives in terms of law enforcement, riot control, burdens on courts and consumption of utilities such as water and sewage. In Youngstown, Ohio, where staff was regularly assaulted, inmates were murdered and four killers were among a mass breakout, the school district sued for years because CCA refused to pay non-abated taxes. They have demonstrated that they are predatory and will do whatever they can to avoid paying their fair share. Lucibeth Mayberry has gone on record saying essentially that they will use whatever loophole they can to avoid taxes.

At the right you’ll find that the following clause in the ONLY LEGAL CONTRACT IN EXISTENCE between the Town of Southwest Ranches and CCA . This is SWR’s LEGAL and contractual statement of how well they are going to treat our schools through property taxes which are used almost exclusively to fund the schools.

WWW.NOPRISONSWR.ORG

Deciphering ‘The Facts’

Page 3

An Open & Transparent Process. Read the FACTS & YOU decide:
We have been repeatedly told by the Mayor of SWR and other town officials that the reliance on a prison as an integral part of their ability to sustain themselves as an independent municipality has always been A WELL KNOWN part of the plan. Lets look at the plan shall we? First stop is the Town's website and the description. The History Page makes no mention of the dependence of our future on a prison. Given that Vice Mayor Doug McKay has repeatedly admonished us that "we didn't do our homework", we are surprised to find no mention of the corporate partner that will save the town. Next we went to the Home Page which even describes some of the zoning of the Town. There is NO mention of a prison. Looking through various Town budgets which generally contain quite a bit of commentary, we find no mention of a prison and back in 2005 a couple of mentions of "CCA." (If you didn't know what CCA was you'd breeze right past these mentions in spreadsheets.) Only the last budget, 2011, is quite in depth (and worth reading if you have the time). So no mention of a Prison. Well, that's no surprise as promoting the Town as a haven for prisons and as a place where the majority of nonresidential taxes come from a prison is something to be ashamed of, not something to advertise. And Town officials have been complicit in not advertising this. Next, look at the Town's official document describing the plans for the Town's growth and development. This document is called the Town of Southwest Ranches Comprehensive Plan. The document itself states its own purpose and how its basic elements came go be: The Town's first Comprehensive Plan was adopted by the Town Council on May 8, 2003.

Southwest Ranches Town Attorney Keith Poliakoff sent an email urging town leaders to maintain a "cone of silence" about a proposed immigrant detention center in SWR to avoid growing public unrest. "The sharks are beginning to circle," wrote Poliakoff. "We should remain fully quiet" and that "if [Lynn] gets a ton of calls we will issue a carefully crafted press release, but until then, the less we say the better off we will be."

It is dedicated to developing strategies and policies to ensure preserving, protecting and enhancing the quality of the Town's Rural Lifestyle . There is no mention of a prison, correctional facility, jail, "processing center" or anything of the sort expressed or implied in their meaning of rural. Yet, Steve Breitkreuz told us at the December 22, 2011 Council Meeting that a prison was part of preserving our rural lifestyle. A reading of the document only locates two mentions of "prison" as POSSIBLE uses of land within the town. This comprehensive plan SHOULD contain a description of the prison and how our town is dependent on it. It doesn't. It doesn't mention ANY plans for a prison. Let's take a look at one of the first public ordinances related to the prison and let's see how much they wanted you all to know about The infamous Sylvan Pass plat was discussed in Ordinance 2001-08. The only mention of the necessary prison that everybody in the town agreed and banked upon was here:
(Continued on page 4)

Follow The Money!
FL Senator Bill Nelson's and FL Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Shultz both signed a letter of endorsement for the proposed detention center. Debbie was given $1000 by CCA immediately after endorsing the CCA / ICE immigrant prison in Southwest Ranches. Senator Bill Nelson was given twice as much. His endorsement, was worth $2000.

“Open Process” Continued
(Continued from page 3)

WHEREAS, a portion of the West Broward Industrial Park Plat has been sold to a third party; and WHEREAS, Sylvan Pass has not yet been constructed and is requested to be vacated in order to provide a preferred method of access along 202 Avenue; and that "third party" might just be CCA.

It is quite clear that this Town, from its inception, has done practically everything in their power to keep the residents in the dark about their plans for a prison. In order to complete the legitimacy of the process of jamming a prison down our throats, CCA has been conducting closed-to-the-public advisory group meetings which are by invitation only!

We Must Protect Our LIMITED Water Supply!
Broward Sierra Club opposes South Florida immigration detention center The Detention Center would • utilize approximately 180,000 gallons of water per day, which would place additional strain on the Biscayne Aquifer, virtually the sole source of drinking water for all of Broward County”; • generate 180,000 gallons per day of waste water, which would be injected approximately 2,600 feet underground, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has found that injected wastewater may migrate horizontally into marine and other waters and vertically into usable drinking waters”; The environmental group also argues that the project would further degrade the gateway to what remains of Broward County’s natural areas — even while the county plans on taking control of the nearby Everglades Holiday Park for the purpose of expanded ecotourism. In November, Florida Legal Services, a legal service organization representing the Florida Immigrant Coalition, sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano arguing that the immigration detention center does not comply with National Environmental Policy Act rules for federal agencies.

Congressman Mario Diaz Balart sent a letter to Director John Morton, the Director of ICE, opposing the placement of the Detention Center. He specifically cites the reasons for apprehension: “... that the facility would affect property value, traffic, and noise to the area, utility consumption, fire department response times, and their overall quality of life. In addition, the potential site is less than five miles from more than a dozen schools…”

City of Pembroke Pines Picks a Side !
On February 8, 2012 The Pembroke Pines City Commission unanimously voted to send a resolution to President Barack Obama declaring their opposition to the siting of the proposed detention center. The Resolution represents approximately 90,000 residents and is a call to the President to step in and stop this facility from being placed so close to homes and schools.

One Last FACT: CCA is a corporation run exclusively for the benefit of its millionaire executives. Compensation, including stock options, stock awards and salaries frequently exceeds a million dollars monthly. This is not to mention perks like corporate jets, at the ready for junketing around the world. Their next priority is to give just enough dividends to stockholders to support a high enough price for the benefit of its own managers and board members who own millions of shares for which they've paid little or nothing. In order to increase dividends by a few cents more than Wall Street expectations they are quick to defer necessary maintenance, for example, jeopardizing the health and safety of the community, its employees and prisoners alike.
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