Bel-Wood County Jail? According to Merle, it’s a possibility …
You know how they raised taxes to pay for maintenance and the county-owned Bel-Wood Nursing Home, but didn’t maintain it, so now thay have to bu8ild a whole new facility? That isn’t half the outrage. According to Merle:
Where the new B-W will be built is still to be determined. The old B-W will be renovated and used for some other county purpose, one possibility being used by the sheriff for overflow now existing at the county jail.
Wait just one second. I thought we needed to build a NEW Bel-Wood because the one we have now is too far-gone, (a fact Merle disputes, by the way).
But if it’s too far gone to be rehabilitated for senior citizens, how can it be rehabilitated to house prisoners? And don’t think for a minute the state or federal court system will let Peoria County get away with tossing jail inmates into something that’s so run down, it can’t be fixed (that’s the county’s position, after all).
One of the reasons we have the current jail on Maxwell Road so far away from Peoria Police Headquarters and the Peoria County Courthouse is that the courts ruled that the old Peoria County Jail in Peoria’s downtown was in too bad a shape.
So the current Bel-Wood facility would still have to renovated and repaired, not to mentioned fully staffed.
So where’s the savings in building a new facility? Or maybe that’s the scheme all along.
Billy Dennis is a former reporter and editor at small daily and weekly newspapers in Illinois and Missouri. He comments on media, news and politics. He also owns and operates 
