As the Unicoi County Jail Workhouse Progresses

Unicoi County, Tenn.—Unicoi County has been working on its new jail plans for a while now, and today the jail committee took another step forward.
    Jail inmates were supposed to start demolition on the building today, but a couple crucial meetings with the architect and project manager need to come first.
    The Jail Committee made the decision to hire local project manager Kevin Horton… which recently prompted committee member Doug Bowman to resign. The county thinks keeping the money for the project local is more important.
    “If we’re going to spend over a million dollars,“ says Sheriff Kent Harris, “we need to pump it back into our own economy.“
    Using jail inmate labor and a local project manager also helps to keep costs down, something they learned from the last jail project. This time, Mayor Greg Lynch says they’ve saved enough money to buy six more patrol cars.
    “It’s taken a little more effort,“ says Mayor Lynch, “we coulda done a turn key job, but I think that we owe it to our county and our taxpayers to try to do the best we can to try to save money on this project.“

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