Sheriff reappointed to lead prison board

The Carbon County Sheriff will lead the county prison board for another year.

On Wednesday, the board held its reorganization and unanimously reappointed Anthony Harvilla as the president for another term. Harvilla has held the position on the board since being elected in 2016.

Newly elected District Attorney Michael Greek will now serve as the vice president of the board and Rocky Ahner will serve as the board’s secretary.

Following reorganization, the board discussed an ongoing issue at the prison, which includes clothing being flushed and clogging the lines.

Warden Timothy Fritz said that on Jan. 5, someone again flushed an article of clothing in the maximum security block, clogging the drains, causing the prison to again have to call in an outside company to snake the line.

He instructed maintenance to shut off the water in the cells for the time being.

In addition, Fritz also temporarily took away visitation and phone privileges to that block, put the block on lock down 23 hours a day and stopped commissary.

“It has been working,” he said, noting that he plans to lift some of the sanctions next week. “We will do it in phases so we are not giving everything back at once.”

The sanctions, Fritz hopes, will deter inmates from continuing to flush their clothes.

Last month, the former board spoke about the problem, which had been happening for a few months.

At that time, the board reported that prison maintenance had to snake the drain in that block three times in one month.

The board asked if there was anything that can be done to find who is doing this, such as inventorying the prison-issued items, numbering the clothes and more.

In other matters, the board approved sending a recommendation to the board of commissioners to proceed with a fire pump system repair project.

Fritz said he received a quote for the fire pump system inspection for Johnson Controls, stating that there is some work that needs to be completed on the system. The cost for the project is $3,692.

He noted that this was the first inspection of the fire pump system since the prison was built. Before that, the system was maintained by the former prison maintenance director.