Town council intends to make the fight for a correctional facility in Fort Frances a top priority.
In the wake of the announcement earlier this month that the Fort Frances jail is slated to close in 2004, Mayor Glenn Witherspoon vowed he intends to find a way to keep its 33 staff employed here.
Before the item was addressed by the town council at last night’s regular meeting, Mayor Witherspoon had sent a personal letter to Correctional Services minister Rob Sampson.
“I sent a letter of concern to Mr. Sampson in regards to job loss,” said the mayor. “He’s been invited here to look at the proximity of the courthouse to the border.”
Mayor Witherspoon said the province should take a close look at maintaining some sort of correctional facility here because of the heavy volume of traffic that enters the country here.
“We addressed that we are on the border, where we have over one million people coming through here,” he explained, adding not all of those visitors are likely to be law-abiding citizens.
Last night, councillors backed the mayor’s letter and stressed the importance of putting the pressure on for a local facility.
“We really have to go after that one because there are a number of employees that work there that we don’t want to be losing from the community,” said Coun. Dave Bourgeault.
Council agreed to lobby the province to choose Fort Frances as a location for a new young offenders’ facility that’s being touted for somewhere in Northwestern Ontario.
While the jail here is an old building, Mayor Witherspoon maintained Fort Frances is an area prepared for any type of correctional facility,
“We have the staff, we have the courthouse, and we have the OPP station right here in Fort Frances,” he argued. “We’ll be lobbying very hard in the future.”
Council officially received notice of the jail’s pending closure at last night’s meeting.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
