WILLARD, N.Y. — Gov. Kathy Hochul says with declining incarcerated populations, plans to close six New York state prisons is fiscally prudent, saving taxpayers tens of millions of dollars.

One of those slated to close is Willard Drug Treatment Campus in Seneca County, which employs about 330 people, including correction officers and civilians. 

Among those employees is Ryan Rank, a correctional officer for nearly a decade. 

“I am married and I have two young children, and this has been a wonderful place for me to be able to work," Rank said, "I get to go home to my children every day, and if we close, that will not be happening. I’ll probably be shipped across the state somewhere and be starting all over, working no idea where.”

“As the population has declined, inmate-on-inmate assaults and inmate-on-staff assaults have doubled," Patsy Cornacchio of NYSCOPBA Western Region said.

Cornacchio has worked there since the facility transformed from an asylum to a drug treatment correctional facility in 1995. Now, he’s a representative for the union that represents the correction officers. 

“Our goal as a union is to try to make it as simple and as easy as possible, and ease the distraught on the families of the move of uprooting your family to move anywhere on the state where they need you," Cornacchio said.

“There’s not many other options in this area, other than working for this department," Rank said. "I still have to work for this department and end up being moved wherever they want me to go somewhere around the state.”

The facility is located in the hamlet of Willard, which is primarily in the town of Romulus, bordering Ovid. 

The Willard Drug Treatment facility is a medium-security institution. All of the inmates there are undergoing drug addiction or rehabilitation. Their stay is about three months. 

The governor says closing this facility and five other prisons will save taxpayers about $142 million.

“The state economically feels this is in their best interest," Cornacchio said. "When they’re looking at a numbers game and not the human factor of what goes into closing a facility, the effects on the family, and the effects on the inmates. It affects all people, everyone involved, from the inmate population to all employees and the community.”

“They work, they order food, they go to local gas stations, and so it’s all going to filter," said Norman Martin, co-owner of Rylee’s Place restaurant, located directly across the street from Willard. He's expecting to feel the pinch. 

“Oh yeah, I am concerned about that," Martin said. "There’s a lot of people in that community that feed off that stuff.”

The closures are the latest in a line of prison facilities to be shuttered by New York in the last 10 years as the number of people in prison has steadily declined. 

New York's population of incarcerated people stands at 31,469 people, the lowest number since 1984.