Eagle Mountain families protest at final prison relocation open house


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EAGLE MOUNTAIN — "No prison," Amy Saunders yelled Tuesday evening at the steady stream of traffic headed to the Prison Relocation Commission's third and final open house at the Utah County community's only middle school.

"I'm screaming, 'Keep it in Draper,' as well as, 'no prison,'" said Saunders, who home-schools her eight children. "If they need to rebuild it, it should be on the 700 acres they already have."

Her husband, Kendel Saunders, an engineer at a high-tech company located not far from the Utah State Prison at Point of the Mountain in Draper, stood nearby with their children in a crowd of more than 50 protestors.

"If they're arguing 'Silicon Slopes' won't happen, I'm watching it happen with the prison right where it is," Kendel Saunders said, citing the name given to high-tech development along the I-15 corridor between Salt Lake and Utah counties.

But for the Saunders family and others who filled Frontier Middle School during an open house that started at 4 p.m. and ended at 9.p.m. after a two-hour question and answer session, the concern over a possible prison was also personal.

"We moved to this valley to establish a home for our family, a longtime home," Kendel Saunders said.

He said he worries his children's children won't want to visit grandpa and grandma if they're near a 4,000-bed prison.

Two of the four sites on the commission's shortlist, on the edge of Eagle Mountain and in rural Fairfield, are close to the Saunders' White Hills home, a neighborhood recently annexed by Eagle Mountain.

Eagle Mountain residents boast of having the youngest population in the United States, with an average age of 19, while only about 1,200 people live farther out along state Route 73 in Fairfield.

The other sites the commission is considering for the $550 million project are in Salt Lake City west of Salt Lake City International Airport; and in Grantsville, near the Tooele County community's major employer, a Wal-Mart distribution center.

The commission has already held open houses in Salt Lake City and Grantsville. A public hearing on relocating the prison is scheduled for 6 p.m. June 16 in Room 30 of the House Building at the state Capitol.


We have a nice, growing community. You see all the kids we have here. I just don't want it here.

–Todd Hadock, protestor


Trisha Vale also participated in Tuesday's protest with her family in tow, including 8-year-old Kaia, who attends Mountain Trails Elementary School, just over a mile from the proposed Eagle Mountain site.

Kaia's mother said the girl is afraid prisoners would escape and come to her school.

"They're going to kill us," Kaia explained to a reporter. Asked where she believed the prison should go, Kaia smiled brightly. "In Australia," she said.

Her mother preferred the Salt Lake City site, calling it "a commercial area already." Her community has enough traffic, Vale said, without adding prison employees, visitors and volunteers to the roads.

Todd Hadock took a break from waving a large American flag alongside protestors to say the Salt Lake site is the "most sensible" choice for the commission, set to make a recommendation by Aug. 1.

"We have a nice, growing community. You see all the kids we have here," said Hadock, who moved with his family from Midvale to Eagle Mountain two years ago. "I just don't want it here."

Neither does 17-year-old Katie Spencer, wearing a tiara and a banner proclaiming her second attendant to Miss Eagle Mountain. Because a high school hasn't been built yet in Eagle Mountain, she attends school in nearby Saratoga Springs.

"Eagle Mountain is not the place for it," Spencer said. "It's such a young city. It's really important we keep on growing."

Inside the massive middle school, Ian Story wandered around the booths set up to explain what a prison would mean to Eagle Mountain and Fairfield with two of his four children.

Story said he hasn't made up his mind yet about whether he supports the prison moving to Utah County, even though his children attend the elementary school near the proposed site.

#Poll

"You can have the fear-mongering," Story said, citing opposition to the site he's seen circulating through social media outlets. "I think it would be just as safe here as it is right now."

A crowd that spilled into an overflow room for the question and answer session was punctuated by babies crying and children fidgeting as Eagle Mountain Mayor Chris Pengra urged them to not to become raucous at the start of the session.

But there were angry shouts as well as bursts of applause from the audience, especially when the moderator read a question asking why Draper was being treated as if it is more important than the communities on the shortlist.

The commission's co-chairman, Sen. Jerry Stevenson, R-Layton, answered that while the Draper property is "alluring," the state is not focused on its development. The commission's job, he said, is to find a site for a new prison.

Once the commission settles on a site, Gov. Gary Herbert has said he will call lawmakers into a special session of the Legislature to consider the commission's choice.

Contributing: Nicole Vowell

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