PHARSALIA – Closing Camp Pharsalia isn’t just taking 105 jobs out of the area, it’s disrupting 105 families and the communities they live in, says one corrections officer at the minimum security prison.
“Nobody wants to see it closed,” said Paul Lashway, a veteran corrections officer of 18 years and the camp’s union steward. “This is our home.”
The state Department of Correctional Services announced Friday that it’s planning to shut down Camp Pharsalia, along with Camp Gabriels in Franklin County, Camp McGregor in Saratoga County, and Hudson Correctional Facility in Columbia County in January 2009. The move is said to free-up expenses for advanced sex offender and mental illness treatment programs mandated by the state Legislature that will cost upward of $70 million.
The officers and civilian staff at Pharsalia are assured jobs at other prisons in Cayuga and Oneida counties, state and union officials say. But Lashway said for many, the shift to another facility an hour or more away will take its biggest toll on their family lives.
“Does it disrupt the family?” Lashway said from his home Monday night. “Sure it does.”
Lashway expects he’ll have to miss a lot of his son’s football games and other events and says the move will put added pressures on his wife. He says many at the camp will likely face similar challenges.
The extra three hours of drive time each day will also significantly lessen the amount of time officers can be involved in their communities, he and union vice president Tom Haas say.
“They are the volunteer fire fighters and little league coaches. They are people involved in their communities,” said Haas, the Central Region Vice President of New York State Corrections Officers and Police Benevolent Association. “Being back on the road takes these people out of their communities.”
Throughout the year the camp’s inmates do work in the surrounding state forests and parks, the New York state Veterans’ Home in Oxford, Chenango County Landfill, City of Norwich, the Department of Environmental Conservation’s flood control areas, SPCA, Rogers Environmental Center, and Catholic Charities, as well as numerous churches and fire departments. They also take on projects in Broome and Cortland counties.
“We’ll miss it,” said Norwich resident Tom Taylor, a retired pastor from the Broad Street Methodist Church who helps put on a Christmas party each year for the inmates for the work they do. “It’s been a good thing.”
Taylor hopes the decision to close the camp has been made for sound financial reasons, and not political posturing.
