A paid advertisement that was printed Wednesday, Aug. 29, become a topic of discussion at Monday morning’s Carroll County Supervisors meeting. Another resident voiced his opinion on the proposed downtown jail as well as the fallacies of thought he perceived in the printed piece. Ronnie Schagt is a retired resident of Carroll and says he doesn’t usually voice his opinion on things, but the first thing that jumped out to him from this advertisement was that the author, Greg Siemann, did not have a basic understanding of the project itself.
The article does say that Sheriff, Ken Pingrey, is to be applauded for bringing the plight of the current jail to the attention of the public. However, it goes on to say that the supervisors had not been transparent about this issue in a timely manner. Schagt took a diametrically opposed stance to this statement, with which Supervisor, Gene Meiners, agreed.
Schagt says as far as ruining the downtown businesses, he is unsure of how long Mr. Siemann has been a member of the community. There is no proposal, he says, to put two rolls of chain link fencing and razor wire around the complex, but instead to construct a design that mirrors the style of the current courthouse. There are many aspects of relocating the jail to a location outside of the city limits that Schagt says have not been considered by those who are opposed to the current plan. He says he doesn’t think some of these citizens have weighed those costs.
He adds that the rural water system can’t supply enough pressure to run the sprinklers for the building, so a well will have to be dug and a purification system added to that. And then, it will take a three-phase motor to operate the water supply, which may have to be run for miles to the location, which Schagt says is very costly. Instead of natural gas, the remote site would require the use of propane and a huge disbursement configuration to accompany that. Then, you will have to put up that double chain link fence with razor wire. Schagt says Greg Siemann may be a concerned citizen, but he is one too, and not just for the City of Carroll, but for the county as well. He also wants to stress that he hopes by speaking out, maybe he can help those people who are being coerced to say no to understand that the recent advertisement may represent a deaf ear and a blind eye to the subject until just recently, because he has been hearing and reading about it for years.
