webster - Southbridge Evening News

www.webstertimes.net Friday, February 27, 2009
Sheriff’s office aims to ‘go green’ with wind turbine
• THE WEBSTER TIMES • 3
BY TERESA A. FRANCO
NEWS STAFF WRITER
Editor’s Note: This is part one of a two-part
interview with Worcester County Sheriff Guy
Glodis. Check out next week’s Auburn News for
the conclusion.
Worcester County
Sheriff Guy Glodis has
been in the political arena
THE for 14 years, but he is only
40 years old as of
WEBSTER Wednesday, Feb. 25.
Glodis, a longtime
TIMES Auburn resident, is celebrating
his birthday with a
INTERVIEW party Wednesday at the
Hanover Theatre for the
Performing Arts in
Worcester. Many officials
will be in attendance at the celebration,
including U.S. Congressmen James P.
McGovern, Worcester County District
Attorney Joseph Early Jr. and Central Mass.
AFL-CIO President Joseph Carlson.
Glodis has devoted a substantial amount of
time as sheriff to improving communities. He
has saved towns and cities tremendous
amounts of money by increasing the productivity
of the community service programs,
where inmates go out into the towns and perform
community service projects. The program
has completed projects such as painting
for Auburn schools, construction of the
Blackstone Town Hall, painting the Leicester
Town Hall, work for Camp Laurelwood in
Spencer, construction of the Charlton
Historical Museum, floor tiling at Southbridge
High School and construction and painting for
the Clara Barton Center in Oxford.
Glodis’ latest project is installing a wind
turbine at the jail in West Boylston, which is
aiming to save the jail and surrounding towns
money.
Recently, the Auburn News sat down with
Glodis to talk about the projects he has underway
and about his career — and turning 40.
Are you expecting a big turnout for
your party?
“Yeah, actually I’m going be 40 years old. To
me, the milestone Wednesday night isn’t that
I’m turning 40, it’s that I’ve been in the business
for 14 years. It’s incredible because I got
elected into the house in my mid-20s and then
to the Senate. So, that’s really gone by fast. I
really, really enjoy the job, it’s a fun job. It’s
one of the few jobs you get paid to help people,
that’s what I enjoy about it the most. Running
a jail is a very, very challenging job. You don’t
come to work and get a lot of good news. In
the Senate it was all about good news. You’re
opening up schools, opening up libraries,
you’re finding housing for people, health care
–– it’s all good news. In the jail, it’s a lot of
negative. That took a lot of getting used to
from really dealing with a lot of good news
consistently to trying to correct a lot of bad
news … But I enjoy it, I like it and I like a
BY RYAN GRANNAN-DOLL
STONEBRIDGE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Two area lawmakers have several interesting
bills up their sleeves for this legislative session.
Both state Sen. Stephen Brewer, D-Barre, and
his colleague, state Rep. Geraldo Alicea, D-
Charlton, have filed several bills this year as
part of their legislative agenda. Most of the
bills focus on public safety, improving the economic
situation and several other initiatives.
Two of Brewer’s bills are aimed at personal
safety.
One would modify the missing persons
reporting system and was filed on behalf of the
family of Molly Bish, according to a press
release from the senator. The 16-year-old lifeguard
was kidnapped and killed in 2000 while
working at Comins Pond in Warren.
Another of Brewer’s bills would require
minors swimming at a state or town run camp
to wear a floatation device. It would also
require docks that extend beyond the swimming
area to be enclosed. That bill, according
to Brewer’s Senate office, was filed on behalf of
the family of 4-year-old Christian Frechette,
who drowned in 2007 while playing at a townrun
camp on Cedar Lake in Sturbridge.
Brewer said he is personally familiar with
the issue because his brother, Max, drowned
when he was just four years old at a Charlton
pond.
“If you save the life of a child, you save the
world,” he said, quoting Magi Bish.
Alicea, who represents a precinct in Oxford,
is an advocate for
Teresa A. Franco photo
Worcester County Sheriff Guy Glodis in his office
Thursday, Feb. 19. Glodis will celebrate his 40th
birthday Wednesday, Feb. 25.
challenge. I think at my age I should be challenged
and I should be motivated and I’m both
in this job.”
We understand the Worcester County
Jail has been doing many things to
become more economically friendly.
minors and senior citizens, and is keeping the
focus on those topics this year, but is also filing
bills to help deal with the brutal economy. One
of the initiatives Alicea said he is sponsoring
would address housing prices in an effort to
make finding a home more affordable.
“We need to make it more affordable for families
to purchase a home,” he said.
Another bill Alicea said he filed would protect
consumers from predatory auto lenders
who pledge to pay part of an owner’s bill, but
the owner’s soon see their share increase. A
Southbridge woman, he said, fell victim to the
scam.
“Some owners are not really aware [of this],”
he said.
Minors are also on his list of people to protect.
He filed a bill to protect minors from teachers
or other authority figures from seducing
them into a sexual relationship.
“There is a lot of interest [in the bill],” he
said.
Newspapers and taxpayers might be interested
in another of Brewer’s bills — one that could
strengthen the state’s Open Meeting Law.
The current version of the law requires
meetings of public bodies to be held in open
session, but there are eight exceptions allowing
Free Estimates
508-347-2305
Closets
Home Offices
Garages
“We’ve gone through a little bit of a metamorphism,
change in our mission at the jail.
Our original –– and it still is our main mission
–– is the care, control, custody and the
rehabilitation of inmates. That is has basically
been our foundation and that’s our core
mission. When I became sheriff, however, I
put an additional mission of being more community
orientated. We wanted to be a good
community partner. We teamed up with a lot
of police departments to help find grants ––
we’ve got a mobile command vehicle that
police and fire departments use throughout
Worcester County. We have a senior triad program
where we go into different council on
aging [senior centers] and offer them free
resources and free assistance and free help.
And that was our mission three or four years
ago. However, in the last six months with the
real severe meltdown in our economy, our
newest mission –– and we still have all of the
above –– but now our other mission is to save
money –– to save money for taxpayers.
We’ve done that in different ways. One,
we’ve had an energy audit at the jail. Two, we
became more competitive with our bidding
process to save money for taxpayers. Three,
we’ve restructured the jail, eliminating different
dual management positions and actually
reducing our staff two months ago. The fourth
thing we’ve done is expanded our community
service programs. Where inmates go out into
the towns like Spencer, Auburn and
Southbridge and they perform community
service projects in schools, non profits, little
leagues, fire stations, police stations, beautification,
restoration projects that has literally
saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in
local budgets and that’s something we’re very
proud of. And the last thing we’ve done more
recently is we’ve obtained a grant to put up a
wind turbine at the jail.”
How much progress has been made on
the wind turbine project?
“We just installed the 165-foot test tower on
the grounds of the facility, which will basically
gauge the wind speed, direction and turbulence
of the air. But we’ve been told that this
West Boylston facility would be a great host
site for a wind turbine because it’s at an elevated
level. So, what we plan on doing is having
a wind turbine that’s expected to produce
5.2 million kilowatts of electricity per year.
That will be enough to cover all our electricity
and utility costs at the jail, saving taxpayers
about $750,000 a year. What we then intend to
do, two years from now, is take it another step
and install two more wind turbines to have a
total of three. We’re planning on having a
mini wind farm at the jail, not only to save
electrical costs at the jail and our taxpayers,
but more importantly to resell surplus electricity
to neighboring host communities at
retail value. Which, again, are ways we are
trying now in our economic downturn on
thinking not only how we can be a good community
partner, but how can we save money
in this cash-strapped time. And we’ve done it
with restructuring, we’ve done with lowering
our workers’ comp costs, we’ve done it with
our community service programs and now
we’re doing it up here with our wind turbine
to greatly reduce and save $750,000 in electricity,
and in the foreseeable future, to be able to
sell that electricity back at wholesale costs.
That’s our plan, at least.
When I became sheriff, I was really committed
to reinventing the image of the sheriff ’s
office. It was really looked at as an antiquated,
county jail and I wanted to reinvent it to a
more proactive, modern, public agency committed
to fighting crime, rehabilitating
inmates and providing community services
for the towns and cities of Worcester County.
And I think we’ve had a lot of success in that.
We’ve had several awards last year for innovation.
For the first time in the history of the
Worcester County Sheriff ’s Office we became
accredited by the American Accreditation
Association, which is a huge milestone. That
means we have to meet certain standards in
our day-to-day policies with the jail. We’ve
been able to really, I think, bring a lot of
progress to a jail that a lot of people thought
five years ago wasn’t plausible to be accredited
or to be a modern jail or to be a proactive
community servant.”
Check back next week for part two of our
interview with Worcester County Sheriff Guy
Glodis.
Teresa A. Franco may be reached at 508-909-
4136 or e-mail her at tfranco@stonebridgepress.com.
Lawmakers aim to take initiative in ’09
ALICEA, BREWER WORKING ON BILLS
matters to be discussed in executive session.
The bill would create a new office within the
Attorney General’s office that would investigate
complaints. The local county District
Attorney offices currently carry out the investigations.
The bill would also require officials to allow
the public to view e-mails and any communications
involving a quorum of members.
“Sunlight is the best disinfectant,” he said.
“The fourth estate is the conduit for that. We
need to have an open and transparent process.”
Other topics are also on their agendas, both
lawmakers said.
Brewer said much of the session will be
spent on dealing with the state’s budget crisis.
Alicea and Brewer each said they want to focus
on reforming the pension system for state
employees.
Alicea stressed the necessity of that effort.
“A large portion of our budget goes to pension
pay,” he said, adding some people who get
them “probably have not worked for a long period
of time.”
Noting the slog it sometimes takes to push
bills through, Brewer said he won’t give up.
“We fight for the things we believe in,” he
said.
ACCURACY WATCH:
The Webster Times is committed to accuracy in all its
news reports. Although numerous safeguards are in place
to ensure accurate reporting, mistakes can occur.
Confirmed fact errors will be corrected in a timely manner
on page A3. We cannot run corrections based upon differences
of opinion or unconfirmable facts. We will, however,
print letters to the editor from area residents who
wish to add their comments to our news coverage. If you
find a mistake, please call (508) 764-4325. During non-business
hours, leave a message in the editor’s voicemail box.
CORRECTION
In an article entitled, “The biggest
stages, the best of breed,” The Webster
Times incorrectly stated in a photo caption
that Ch. Tamedale Orinoco won best
of show. The caption should have read
“best of breed.” Also, Ch. Fenway Fan’s
age should have read 22 months old, not 22
years. We sincerely apologize for the
errors.
PUBLIC MEETINGS
Editor’s Note: Meetings as listed are
retrieved in advance from multiple sources,
including Town Hall and the Internet. The
Webster TImes is not responsible for
changes and cancellations.
DUDLEY
Monday, March 2
The Bay Path School Committee will meet
at 7 p.m. at Bay Path Regional Vocational
Technical High School, 57 Old Muggett
Rd., Charlton in the Board Room.
The Dudley Conservation Land Trust
meets on every third Tuesday in room 210
of the Dudley Municipal Building, 71 W.
Main St., Dudley at 6:30 p.m.
Wednesday, Mar. 25
The public hearing for the 2010 fiscal budget
will take place at Shepherd Hill
Regional High School, 68 Dudley-Oxford
Rd., Dudley, at 7 p.m. The regular meeting
will follow with the final vote for the fiscal
year’s budget taking place.
WEBSTER
Monday, March 2
The Bay Path School Committee will meet
at 7 p.m. at Bay Path Regional Vocational
Technical High School, 57 Old Muggett
Rd., Charlton in the Board Room.
Wednesday, Mar. 4
The Building Sub Committee will meet at
5:30 p.m. in Conference Room 151, Bay Path
Regional Vocational Technical High
School, 57 Old Muggett Rd., Charlton.
OXFORD
Monday, Mar. 2
The Bay Path School Committee will meet
at 7 p.m. in the Board Room at Bay Path
Regional Vocational Technical High
School, 57 Old Muggett Rd., Charlton.
The Budget Sub Committee Meeting is at
6:30 p.m. in the Bored Room at Bay Path
Regional Vocational Technical High
School, 57 Old Muggett Rd., Charlton.
The Bored of Health Meeting is taking
place at 5:00 p.m. in Memorial Hall, 350
Main St., Webster.
Wednesday, Mar. 4
The Conservation Commission Public
Hearing will take place at 7:15 p.m. at the
Oxford Town Hall, 325 Main St., Oxford.
Wednesday, Mar. 11
The public hearing for the 2010 fiscal year
budget will be at the Hilltop Restaurant,
Bay Path Regional Vocational Technical
High School, 57 Old Muggett Rd., Charlton
at 6:00 p.m.
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