By Maddie Hanna
Concord Monitor
BERLIN, N.H. — It’s taken 10 years, two referendums, and $272 million to bring a federal prison to job-starved Berlin, a city still aching from the layoffs of the last of the region’s mill workers.
But the new prison, which was finished last summer, has no inmates and only a handful of correctional officers. The federal government hasn’t budgeted money to open it, and the soonest that could happen is October, when the next federal fiscal year begins.
For a community with an economy as depressed as Berlin’s, the stakes are high. City officials pushed for the prison, which will house 1,280 prisoners and employ 333 people, as a way to bring well- paying jobs to an area where few are available.
Berlin residents say many in the area - which already has a state prison - won’t qualify for the jobs, since 40 percent of the staff will be transferred from other federal facilities, and the remaining 60 percent must be under age 37 and have good credit.
But equally important, if not more important than the number of local hires, is the prison’s expected $38 million annual operating budget, said Mark Belanger, a manager in the state department of employment security.
“There will be, factually, a $20 million payroll in this community,” Belanger said. “People will be buying cars, buying houses, shopping in stores and eating in restaurants.”
Belanger said last week’s news that money for the prison wasn’t included in the current budget was “devastating.” Besides the prison, Berlin is waiting on a biomass power project proposed at the site of the city’s pulp mill and the possibility a company will reopen the nearby Gorham paper mill.
Meanwhile, the city’s unemployment rate has topped 10 percent. The real estate market is saturated with low-cost housing. Many businesses, Belanger said, are “holding on for dear life,” and he thinks they will close if the local economy doesn’t change soon.
“We’ve got a lot riding on it,” Belanger said. “We need that prison activated.”
An economic lifeline
How did a prison become the project on which this city staked so much of its future?
Shortly before American Tissue shut down the paper and pulp mills in 2001, putting 860 people out of work, then-mayor Bob Danderson started searching for ways to bring jobs to the community.
It wasn’t a simple task. A high tax rate coupled with expensive energy costs made it difficult to attract new industry and developers, Danderson said. He said he proposed bringing a casino to the North Country, but the idea was shot down by the state.
A federal prison, however, had potential. Danderson, who was born in Michigan City, Ind., looked at struggling cities in the Midwest, among them an Iowa community that turned to prisons after its farming industry collapsed.
“They didn’t have anything,” Danderson said. But three prisons drew development, he said, giving the community new economic life.
Danderson thought the same could work in Berlin, and he had heard that federal facilities were overcrowded. So he approached a local representative of then-Sen. Judd Gregg and asked: “What’s the chance of us getting a federal prison?” Gregg’s representative, he said, “looked at me like I had three heads.”
But Gregg was for it - provided Berlin was on board, Danderson said. That was the first hurdle to surmount: A citywide referendum on the project failed to win a majority.
So proponents of the project began public outreach efforts to “get rid of the fear and get out the facts,” Danderson said. At the time, he said, Berlin’s state prison had just opened, people were resistant to the idea of another.
“The public always believes you’re going to get the next Disney World,” Danderson said. He said public opinion shifted following a study conducted by a local economic recovery group, and after residents brought forward a petition, a second referendum was held in 2002.
It passed by a 2-1 margin. Gregg told the city in 2003 it had a good shot at getting the project, according to news reports at the time, and the next year the federal government approved money for its construction.
After an environmental study and a bidding process, the Bureau of Prisons awarded the construction contract to two Rochester, N.Y. companies. Work began in August 2007 and was completed in July, and 16 employees - including the warden - are on site, readying the facility for its opening.
“People don’t want their way of life threatened,” Belanger said of the initial public opposition to the project. “But the longer economic demise continues, the harder it is to look a payroll in the face and say you don’t want it.”
Doubts and anticipation
Still, skepticism about the prison remains. Given the under-37 age requirement and the difficulty many residents said they would have meeting the federal government’s standards, they doubted they’d see much benefit - even from the ripple effect city officials project for the local economy.
“It’d be different if there were 1,000 people coming,” said Jimmy Valliere, who works at a pizza shop on Berlin’s Main Street.
His coworker, Karen Payeur, said she was in favor of the jobs the prison would bring but didn’t expect them to boost the overall economy. “I think it will take so long for the funds to trickle down to the community,” she said.
Others said they didn’t see how having a second prison would better the city, worrying the project would attract rising crime and more welfare recipients.
“That’s what the first one did,” said Keith Tupick. He predicted “stealing, theft, spending on cops. I think it’s a waste of money.”
“It worked good for two years, and it’s done,” said Berkley Churchill, who was sitting next to Tupick at a bar in Berlin. Churchill, a bulldozer operator, was hired during the construction phase of the project, and “that did stimulate the economy for a couple good years,” he said. “Now we got a concrete jungle.”
Churchill said the city would be better off with a development that paid taxes. He also said he didn’t understand why the government was making it difficult for people to get the jobs.
“What the hell does your 750 credit score have to do with getting a job?” he said. “They’ve got so many requirements. It’s foolish.”
Others in the community, while not without reservations, said Berlin stood to gain greatly from the prison.
“I don’t want us to become known as a prison town, but it involves some good benefits and good paying jobs,” said Red Drapeau, a security officer at the White Mountains Community College. “I think it’ll definitely help this area. We’ve been hit hard.”
Among those eyeing a job at the prison is Tom Bisson, a 21-year- old criminal justice student at the community college. “It’s federal benefits,” he said of the appeal.
But Bisson thinks he has a better chance at getting a job at the state prison. Federal corrections officers need several years of related work experience or a bachelor’s degree, neither of which he’ll have when he graduates next year.
“The feds make it a little tougher,” Bisson said.
A workforce for future
Given the heightened requirements, a group of community leaders and members are doing what they can to help local people qualify.
The group, known as the talent team, has coordinated free workshops hosted by the community college to teach people how to apply for the jobs. The first step of the process is done online and scored electronically, meaning a single mistake - or an omitted keyword - can disqualify an applicant.
But once an applicant makes it through that stage, “credit history is typically the single biggest disqualifier,” said John Dyer, a member of the talent team and director of community and corporate affairs at the community college.
Dyer learned about the challenges of the application process from the experience of Welch, W.Va., which pioneered the talent team concept before a federal prison opened in its community.
The West Virginia team shared its model with the group in Berlin, which adopted it in hopes of increasing the community’s benefit from the project. “Obviously, we want to maximize the number of people who qualify,” Dyer said.
When opening a new prison, the Bureau of Prisons aims to hire 60 percent of the staff from the local commuting area, said Cathi Litcher, the bureau’s activation coordinator.
But in West Virginia, the bureau made 72 percent of hires locally - an outcome Litcher attributed to that talent team’s efforts.
In prior prison activations, “very seldom would we even get the 60 percent,” said Litcher, who has been with the bureau for 18 years. “It was amazing. . . . We’re just hoping we have the same kind of positive outcome (in Berlin).”
But while city officials are working toward that goal, they say Berlin will benefit regardless. For Mayor Dave Grenier, the prison’s biggest positive impact will be the young families he expects it will bring to the community when existing federal employees transfer to the new facility.
“Our biggest export in the past 20 years is young people. The bright ones,” Grenier said, pointing to census statistics that show the city’s median age climbing from 43 in 2000 to 50 in 2010.
Russell Ramsey, the principal broker at Coulombe Real Estate and a member of the city’s talent team, said he’s sold seven homes so far to incoming prison employees - “all young families.”
Ramsey said he expects most transferred employees will buy property in Berlin because houses are affordable, they won’t have to commute during the winter, and home rental options in the city are limited.
“It’s unbelievably positive,” he said of the prison’s expected effect.
A bump in home sales is just one way Belanger said the prison will help the wider community. Residents who are unemployed will have a better chance to look for work elsewhere if they can finally sell their homes, he said.
And while most former mill workers are too old to be hired by the prison, younger people hired locally will vacate their jobs, creating opportunities for others out of work, Belanger said.
“The fact that it doesn’t benefit them directly is shortsighted,” he said.
Grenier sees the prison, along with the proposed Laidlaw biomass plant, as key to diversifying the local economy.
Until now, “we were training our kids on skill sets for industry,” he said. “That’s been a painful change for us.”
But Berlin five years from now “is going to be totally different than what you see today,” Grenier said. “This is the year when Berlin reinvents itself.”
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