Staff Watches Over Empty Juvenile Detention Facility

Talk about waste in the government of New York.  Throwing 3 million dollars out the window should hurt, even for New York. Just think about all the other things that the money could be used for. This money is being spent so union employees wouldn't have to be transferred to another facility.

Here are some excerpts from the article

The sprawling campus north of Albany is empty except for 25 to 30 staffers. Each employee collects almost $90,000 a year with benefits.

The state tried to shut Tryon down. It moved young people to other facilities. But the New York law requiring union members at juvenile detention centers and prisons to get a year's notice kept it open. Now the empty detention center costs taxpayers $3 million year.

Throwing money away like this for the cause of not inconveniencing union employees is just wrong.  New Yorkers should be upset.  Besides the wages that they are having to pay how much does it cost New York State as well as the county of Fulton to keep the heat on for these union employees?  How much does it cost for the upkeep the buildings, the grounds clean, snow removal and trash pick up?

There are other staffing concerns. Only 661 juveniles are in the state system, and yet 2,134 state employees watch over them. The cost is huge: $228,000 a year to keep a kid in a secure facility and $298,000 in a non-secure facility. Cities and counties pay half.

Right now it costs $169 million to run these facilities and New York City pays a big share of that cost- a share that city officials like Probation Commission Vincent Schiraldi want to cut down.

It sounds like the unions and the Department of Correctional Services in New York have a very easy job with that ratio of staff to juveniles.

Vincent Schiraldi, the New York City probation commissioner, said that the half-empty and empty facilities throughout New York are bleeding taxpayers dry.

The way the Department of Correctional Services are going there will be nothing left of the Big Apple by the time they are done with it.


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