[nfbmi-talk] {Spam?} complete misilc meeting 11 22

[joe harcz Comcast]

Important stuff in here. Long but important...Oh and I ddn't have to pay zillions of dollars in a foia to get it either.

Not: Essenberger is in here, as is Section 14 c, and the ever engaging Leemon Jones....

Joe
 

 

 

 

 

 

MISILC Council Meeting

11-22-13

11:00 A.M. EST

 

Crowne Plaza Hotel, Lansing, Michigan

 

CART Provider:  Annette Blough, CSR, RPR, CCP, CRR

 

 

 

 

 

ROUGH DRAFT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(This text is being provided in a rough draft format.  Communication Access Realtime Translation [CART] is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.)

 

 






 

 

     11-22-13.  MISILC Meeting

 

  >> SARA:  Good morning, if everybody could take their seats we will be starting the minute in one to two minutes.

  Good morning again. We are going to call the meeting to order at 11:02 a.m. on this beautiful Friday morning, I hope everybody is doing good today. Before I move into introductions, I wanted to just state that my attention is to finish the meeting somewhat early today due to the fact for those of us driving north there is quite a bit of snow coming down so I don't know if Carol has looked at the weather map or Nick is aware of that but they are starting in about south of Mt. Pleasant there is pretty heavy snow up there. It would be good to get us on the road in a decent hour, I will start with Steve and pass the microphone along and we will get everybody introduced and then we will start the meeting.

   >> STEVE:  Good morning I'm the SILC vice chair.

   >> Dominic Dennis member at large.

   >> Good morning, Kellie Boyd, SILC liaison.

   >> Shory with the Michigan Council for Rehabilitation Services.

   >> Tom Jones, Michigan Rehabilitation Services.

   >> Rob Essenburg, Bureau of Services for Blind, Vision, New Division Director for Development Assistance and Development Program.

   >> Leamon Jones, Bureau of Blind Services, Consumer Division.

   >> Mia Smith, Vocation Rehabilitation Counselor for 121 Program.

   >> Sean Bennett, disability rights advocate and public policy wonk.

   >> Ken Browde, Council.

   >> Miranda Grunwell, Council member.

   >> Connie Kiggins, SILC member.

   >> Lou Adams, Michigan Rehabilitation Services ex-officio member.

   >> Karen Stevens, SILC staff.

   >> Denise Stork-Phillips, ex-officio for Department of Human Services.

   >> Carol Bergquist, Council member.

   >> Robin Bennett, Council member.

   >> Rebecca Parten, Council member.

   >> Valarie Barnum-Yarger, SILC staff.

   >> On the phone who do we have?

   >> Mike.

   >> SARA:  Is there anybody else on the phone? 

Okay.

   >> Rodney Craig, staff to the Council.

   >> SARA:  Sara Grivetti, SILC Council member.

   >> And Lisa Cook will be on the phone.

   >> We need a role call and determination of a quorum and will turn it over to Karen Stevens.

   >> KAREN: I took roll as everybody introduced themselves.  Okay, Carol Bergquist?  

   >> CAROL:  Present.

   >> KAREN:  Robin Bennett?  

   >> ROBIN:  Present.  

   >> KAREN:  Kellie Boyd?  

   >> KELLIE:  Here.  

   >> KAREN:  Ken Browde?  

   >> KEN:  Here.  

   >> KAREN:  Lisa Cook-Gordon?  

   >> VAL:  Is going to be on the phone.  

   >> KAREN:  Val?  

   >> VAL: Yes.

   >> KAREN:  Dominic Dennis?  

   >> DOMINIC:  Here.  

   >> KAREN:  Sara Grivetti?  

   >> SARA:  Here.  

   >> KAREN:  Amanda Grunwell?  

   >> AMANDA:  Here.  

   >> KAREN:  Michael Hamm, on the phone.  

   Connie Kiggins?  

   >> CONNIE:  Here.  

   >> KAREN:  Steve Locke.  

   >> STEVE: Here.  

   >> KAREN:  Deborah Morrison?  

   >> DEBORAH:  Here.

   >> KAREN:  Rebecca Parten?  

   >> REBECCA:  Here.  

   >> KAREN:  Dawn Reamer?  

   >> Val:  Excused.

   >> SARA: We have established a quorum and approval of the November 22, 2013 agenda.

   >> KEN:  So moved.

   >> STEVE:  Support.

   >> SARA:  I need to make a couple changes to that under executive director evaluation, I need to move that off of the consent agenda and put that under new business and then I also need to add workgroup reports under state plan item D.

   Do I have support for those changes?

   >> ROBIN:  Support.

   >> CONNIE:  Support.

   >> DOMINIC:  Second.

   >> SARA:  All those in favor?  

   >> Aye.

   >> SARA:  Any opposed? 

   Motion carries.  

   And I need to ask you to identify yourself when you talk so that those on the phone can know who made the motions and supported those and also for Annette to capture the names.

   Second item is the September approval of September 13, 2013 draft quarterly business meeting minutes and these were included in your packets. The do we have a motion for support?

   >> CAROL:  Motion.

   >> SARA:  Carol made the moment.

   >> KEN:  Support.

   >> SARA:  Any discussion? 

Hearing no discussion all those in favor?  

   >> Aye.

   >> SARA: Any opposed? 

   Motion carries.  

   Okay, under operations we have consent agenda and in your packet under the pink tab we have the October meeting minutes from the executive committee meeting and we also have included in the staff operations report. So I'm looking for a motion to accept and place on file the SILC consent agenda.

   >> KEN:  So moved.

   >> SARA: Ken moves.

   >> CONNIE: Second with questioning.

   >> SARA:  What was that?  

   >> CONNIE:  Second with question.

   >> SARA: And we will open it up for discussions because you had questions, Connie?

   >> CONNIE:  Yes.

   >> SARA: I was politely reminded when we have discussion on the consent agenda we have to request for move it off the consent agenda so do you want to share which topic we want to discuss and we can move it off the agenda.

   >> CONNIE:  The variation report.

   >> SARA: That is under finances.

   >> CONNIE:  Operations report.

   >> SARA: So I think we need clarification of where the variation report is at. Connie you are thinking it's under the operations report and I believe Val thinks it's under the finance so it's going to be addressed under the finance report is that a sufficient place to discuss it?

   >> CONNIE:  Fine.

   >> SARA: Okay, so we have support a motion in support for accepting the SILC consent agenda, all those in favor?  

   >> Aye.

   >> SARA: Any opposed? 

   Okay, motion carries.

   I will turn it over to Ken Browde, I have been saying Ken's wrong for 15 years he pointed out to me yesterday. So it's going to take a little bit of time to readjust to this so it's Ken Browde, our esteem treasurer to the Council will be providing us with the financial report.

   >> KEN:  And my mom mispronounced it for 28 years. First of all the fiscal information is in the water melon color of the section, our total program budget is $429,422. Right now the share from MRS is 65% BSBP is 35%. MRS to the tune of $279,124 total is on a monthly reimbursement contract to the BSBP share is $150,298 which is in advance. Right now we have approximately $199,015 and I am going to turn this over to Val to further explain the budget ins and outs here, suffice to say we did not draw down approximately $15,000 of last year's money and the at this point I am going to turn it over to Val but I think it's significant to note that in all of our machinations the money has been taken care of wisely and things are going very well with no significant problems at all. Val will explain the details at this point and thank you.

   >> VAL:  You're welcome. And Ken sort of merged two years into one so I'm going to try to back us up and separate them.

   The first thing under your financial information is the statement of financial activity that reflects last year's operation, it's your fourth quarter, and that was a total Council budget of $443,966.60 of which MRS provided 71%. BSBP provided the balance. As Ken said, MRS is a reimbursement monthly. At the end of our year, when we look at what our projection had been for what the Council approved, we had roughly $15,580.46 that was unencumbered that the executive committee directed us not to encumber or draw down so that is a portion of our money that the Council did not utilize.

   With BSBP, we had $5,089.65 unencumbered. In talking with Laura their decision was not -- because we get an advance with them, we had that money in hand, they indicated we did not need to return it; it was given as a cash advance towards our operations of this year. So in the end it does not increase our budget for this year. It's just a manage -- issue of moving it from one place to another and Connie you had a question on the variation report which deals with last year's finances. I'll try to answer it.

   >> CONNIE:  In the paperwork on the variation report it says they requested we do not prepay and book expenditures as done in previous years. Is this in conflict with when we voted to give you the right to move things around the way that you needed to do?

   >> VAL:  Not at all.

   >> CONNIE:  Okay.

   >> VAL:  What they are referring to and what we were referring to in this is there are some instances where we know what it is and because of cash flow issues and because we have previously been able to get a discount by paying it all at once in advance, we have actually booked it and paid it out of the year that was ending even though when it was the financial review was done it was showing as a prepaid expense and that is what was not done. So, no, it's not doing anything.

   >> CONNIE:  Okay.

   >> SARA: I'm wondering if anybody from the executive committee wanted to address that as well and answer Connie's question as well.

   >> VAL:  As you go through your financial packet the next thing you are going to notice after your variation report is you will see in agreement that is called amendment number two. This is an agreement between the Council on DHS where they have increased our operating budget by roughly $80,109. That covers our SILC operations promissory MRS for October, November and December. It is figured at the 71% that they were reimbursing us last year.

   When the balance of our MRS grant is put together, that will be factored in and reduced to the 65% so we will still be ending up with a $2,014 amount that is what the commitment was from MRS/DHS at the 65% level. Any questions?

   >> STEVE:  Back on the variance report regarding the $15,580, is that money that is carried over to the next fiscal year or is that money that was left unexpended that will revert back.

   >> VAL:  The money -- we did not get the money so it was not carried forward. We did not obligate it so it was never paid to us and, no, it is not carried forward. That money is gone from the MRS point of view. The BSBP $5,085 we had in our possession, we were told to treat that as a cash advance towards this year's grant from them.

>> SARA: So I think that what I'm hearing is that staff need to be commended for under spending the money that was granted to them, that they managed the operations very efficiently and effectively and the nice thing is when you look at the total budget for fiscal 14 it's in line of what the expenditures were in fiscal year 13 so I think what that tells us is that nothing should change significantly in fiscal year 14 even though we saw a reduction in the budget because staff was able to spend the money very efficiently and very effectively so I think that is the point I'm hearing.

   >> VAL:  I hope you are right. It's our plan, how is that? 

   The last thing that you have in your financial pack is a copy of a commitment letter with Fairchild level and rice for the SILC financial review. They are the organization that was here and presented to you a year ago. They have done their onsite work and they spent a better part of a day last week with Karen so that is underway. I assume you will have your financial review back in for the February meeting.

   >> STEVE:  A question on that has the SILC ever under gone a financial audit? I know we talked about Federal funds not being able to be used for a financial audit and a financial review is more of a review of the financial statements as opposed to a more in depth audit has SILC had a financial audit and is there a plan to ever do one of those if it has not?

   >> VAL:  To my knowledge while I have been here, no, I'm not aware of a full financial audit. There has been discussion from time to time about should we look at having one. And, one, we have never been able to figure out how to come up with the money to do it because we only have our to funders being MRS and BSBP, we cannot use our Federal money to pay for a financial audit so it has to come out of our limited GFGP and if we use that for a financial audit and then we are talking probably $5,000-$6,000 or more, that is coming out of our we are talking more than $5 or $6,000 and comes out of GFGP and money not used as match by the organization. There have been conversations over the years with both MRS and BSBP who have never felt the need for us to do a full audit. What has happened on occasion is in addition to our financial review, it has been I want to say a hybrid financial review to the extent that occasionally certain areas that we don't know ahead of time are actually tested, so they look at one thing one year being salaries, another thing another year being something else. And that was something that the Council is comfortable with at that point in time.

   >> STEVE:  GFGP dollars can be used for a financial audit?

   >> VAL:  Yes, as long as it's agreed upon and as long as we have agreement from our funders to do that. Because when they give it to us, it's there for us to cover some of the expenses that might come up that are not allowable for Federal dollars and they do indicate in both of our agreements that we can use our GFGP for a financial review. It has never indicated an audit. We do not reach the Federal dollar level which allows us to use Federal money on an audit. We don't have a half million dollars of Federal money coming into us.

   >> STEVE:  That is a Federal single audit. But in terms of a financial audit, could you find out with the DSU in conversations on whether or not that would be a possibility for the future sometime down the road, to do a financial audit as opposed to a financial review and perhaps executive committee could discuss that.

   >> SARA: Thank you, Steve. I think the question with the transition from MRS to DHS, and, Lou, you may want to answer this, did anything change in how your contractual agreements work with SILC? 

And there are sub recipient contracts and didn't know if there was changes in how the SILC contract is being defined.

   >> LOU:  Well, we talked about the biggest change which is that is a reimbursement approach. And Denise can answer this better than I can but other than that I don't think that there are any significant changes to the way that the contracting is being done, it's being done following the state of Michigan contracting rules and regulations. The GFGP for a financial audit I think is certainly something that can be discussed. I think I can't speak for Ed Rogers from the Bureau of services to the blind but we certainly would want to hear the rationale on what we would hope to be accomplished by that. And what way it would be useful. But certainly willing to hear and discuss that idea.

   >> VAL:  Steve, one of the things and I don't know what is in the CIL boilerplate, but the boilerplate language in our DHS agreement basically says they don't-they do not request a financial review from us because of the dollar amount that we get. But because it's in our work plan, we are doing it and giving it to them, so I think that is something that we would be needing to look at too versus what is the DHS requirement and what is -- what they are willing to allow and what MRS is willing to allow.

   >> SARA: So it sounds to me, severe, we want to place this as an action item for the executive item is to continue discussing the need for a full financial audit and in lieu of a financial review and what rationale would we have and present that -- discuss that with Val and then determine next steps from there, so that would be an action item for executive committee.

   Are there any other questions or discussions on the financial report? 

   Okay, hearing no questions, Lisa did you join us on the phone? 

   You may be on mute but I think I heard somebody else come on so if it's not Lisa on the phone did somebody else on the phone join us that would like to announce themselves?

   >> LISA:  I am here Sara and I'm on mute.

   >> SARA: Be careful because I know you are driving and Lisa cook Gordon is present for our meeting. Thank you, Lisa.

   >> LISA:  You are welcome.

   >> SARA: A motion to place on file the fiscal year 2013 fourth quarter SILC financial report.

   >> CONNIE:  I'll make the motion.  

   >> SARA: Connie makes the motion.

   >> CAROL:  Second.

   >> SARA: Carol and Lisa seconds, all in favor.

   >> Aye.

   >> SARA: Any opposed? 

And I do believe I did that order wrong, I know we had discussion I think before the motion was put on the table so I apologize.

   Okay, the next item on the agenda is the state plan. So I'm going to turn this over to Kellie.

   >> KELLIE:  The committee of the whole met last night and we reviewed the final monitoring report for the SPIL for fiscal years 2011-2013 and the committee of the whole accepted the draft report that we reviewed. It was for those of you that don't know what a monitoring report is it had 18 performance target force the SPIL and a very thorough document and a lot of lively discussion and it's a job well done for IL.

   And I don't know did everyone get a copy of the report?

   >> VAL:  Yes.

   >> KELLIE:  So everyone should have a copy of the report. I'm under the Peach tab in your packet, fiscal year 2014-2016 SPIL is being professionally printed. If anyone is requesting hard copies see Val for those.

   Also in your packet SILC standards and indicators developed at the SILC Congress 2004, this is just included for reference or did you have anything else to report on this, Val?

   >> VAL:  No.

   >> KELLIE:  Just reference, sounds good.

   And the last thing is workgroup reports and the three workgroups met this morning and I guess we can have a representative from each group just do a brief synopsis of what was discussed this morning.

   >> KEN:  Ken Browde with the transportation workgroup. And we successfully received our survey data from the CILs. We had a reasonably good response and this is what could gently be described as a long-term process. As a result of the survey data, we are now mining the various publically accessible resources to determine which of the 83 counties actually have public transportation resources and what communities those resources serve.

   So our goal is to have each of our members for lack of a better word data mine various resources such as Michigan transportation, MDOT, things like that and then we will come back in February to share our findings and develop additional questions to ask for our main meeting. What we are trying to do is three fold. Number one, clearly identify which counties have any transportation at all, public or private. Second, identify if those transportation services are available, do they serve our constituencies and, three, if they are not available publically are they available privately and what cost and what barriers and then we are going to take that into our main meeting and further refine the information that we have to accumulate. A lot of regards and I'm not being facetious this is like the Winnie the Pooh process.  And, Robin, did I miss anything?

   >> ROBIN:  No, just that we are looking at who has what and especially who doesn't have anything.

   >> KEN:  That is about it for our group. Thank you.

   >> KELLIE:  Do we have any one to report youth and family services.

   >> MIRANDA:  Lisa has notes.

   >> SARA: Are you comfortable sharing a recap of the workgroup you are involved in over the phone, Lisa?

   >> LISA:  Can you repeat that.

   >> SARA: Would you like to deliver the recap of your workgroup while you're driving?

   >> LISA:  I think it must be best if Collette or Miranda or Rebecca did that.

   >> SARA: Colette had to leave due to a crisis back at the office so Miranda.

   >> MIRANDA:  Colette took her notes with her and I don't know if my voice will hold up, we received information back from the data surveys and had 10 out of the 15 CILs respond and we found that of those 10 they are providing services to youth and family which we found encouraging.

   One of the other questions on there was what other information do you need and so now we are focusing on that and we are going to meet January 6 I believe and each of us in the members is going to bring three resources that we feel would be important for the general public to know and then we are also going to take a look at SILC's website and I know Val sent an e-mail out earlier, however, not all of us had responded and so we are going to take time and we are going to look at that to better provide a response to Val and staff on updates for the SILC website. That is what I can remember. Did I miss anything, Rebecca?

   >> REBECCA:  No, you covered everything.

   >> KELLIE:  Service delivery and I think Rodney is the best person to deliver our report.

   >> RODNEY:  Our group has been taking a look at data from BSBP, from the CIL network, from MRS and some information from DHS. And earlier we were able to show at the last Council meeting that we could map some of this data on to the state and the attempt here is to take a look at where there are service gaps and where there is things possibly being missed. Some of the preliminary data that we have taken a look at is this is an example, it's visual unfortunately but this is an example of Oakland county in Michigan and one of the prosperity regions and this information is showing, zoom in to it again, this information is showing services mapped by zip code. And what that is doing is we are taking a look at where are the MRS services, where are the DHS service and where are the CILs mapped on top of each other. We are going to combine this with the census data that Ken spoke of last night for the people who were here at last night's meeting and look at where the trends are and are the services reaching where individuals with disabilities are living? 

   We've had some interesting looks at some of the data. What we are seeing in some of it right now is that in some of the more urban areas we are seeing the CIL and MRS data grow and then when we go out in the rural areas we are seeing DHS data take over. So we are seeing some trends in that. At the next meeting we are going to map it with population information and then start to make some bullet point assessments as to what we are actually seeing with the data. That would be pretty much where we are at.

   >> KELLIE:  Thank you, Rodney.

   >> VAL:  I have a question, Rodney. But you may need to put your mic down before I ask it so you don't throw it at me.

   >> KEN:  I'll take it Rodney.

   >> VAL:  The maps are awesome and I realize they are basically, give him the gavel, thanks, put my hand out I realize they are basically visual but as the group moves along and we are closer to needing to finalize this, how -- what is our plan as staff for making sure that this is accessible for everyone and not just visual?

   >> RODNEY:  The visual portion of this is being used right now because in all honesty the trends become much more definitive when you can see them and I understand that that is an accessibility issue. What the hope would be is when we issue some of our bullet points and some of our results with that is that that would not be a visual report, that that would be something that would have narrative and numbers attached to it that would have a much better accessibility level.

   Right now the way that the maps are being utilized does lend to an accessibility issue and we have not really discussed that as a group. But it is something that we can also address as a group as well.

   >> VAL:  Thank you.

   >> STEVE:  As part of the group I want to applaud Rodney and all the effort he has put into creating these maps. I think that the final report is going to be in written format and I think that is the intent of the group and we are being very cautious not to cause causality from what these maps are showing. I think that the data that has been supplied, this is the first run at it based on zip codes and we need to go back to the groups that supply the data based on what these look like and the patterns that we are seeing and making sure that we are not drawing any causation stories from that because there are multiple variables we realize that are probably behind what this visualization looks like and before anything like that is extrapolated out, all groups need to be at the table because there are stories behind these numbers that may not be known in the group that is working on this. So I just wanted to asterisk that and we are cognizant of that.

   >> SARA: Rodney, I have a question, you may have answered it so I apologize if it's a duplicative statement but the colors you have yellow and red and blue, and in the charts, what do the colors indicate?

   >> RODNEY:  In that particular chart yellow would indicate data from MRS. Red would indicate data from DHS. Blue would indicate data from the CIL network and then green would be the data for BSBP. So that is kind of showing one of the trends that we are seeing and it's somewhat anecdotal so we have not dug into it deeper but seeing around the more urban areas we see MRS and CIL data be very consistent and very workable and when we go out into the rural zip codes we see DHS data start to grow and take over so we are analyzing in preparing questions to look at that, why that is happening.

   >> SARA: As the CILs engage and in their -- continue to engage in the strategic alliance with MRS and launching regional meeting with the Bureau of services for blind persons we should see some changes in how those numbers are depicted on those graphs in the future?

   >> RODNEY:  In the future I would expect to, this is fiscal 2012 so it is -- we would expect over time that that would show its success.

   >> SARA:  Thank you.

   Kellie, anything else on your report? 

Any further questions for Kellie? 

Okay, I can't see to my direct right so if you raise your hand and I don't see you holler my name please. So I'm looking for a motion to place the state plan report on file.

   >> CONNIE:  Make the motion.

   >> SARA: Connie makes the motion.

   >> MIRANDA:  Second.

   >> SARA: So a couple seconds Miranda or Robin and I keep screwing this up because we are supposed to have discussion after the motions.

   >> STEVE:  Discussion on the motion so it's okay to have it before.

   >> SARA: Is there any further discussion? 

Okay, all those in favor.

   >> Aye.

   >> SARA: Any opposed? 

   Okay, that motion carries to place that on file.

   Okay, we are about five minutes ahead so at this point we are scheduled to have our lunch presentation from Chris Rodriguez from the employment first in Michigan and Chris is with Michigan protection advocacy and I think what we typically do and Val can correct me is we typically go get our lunch, come back and sit down and then we invite our guests to start presenting to us.

   >> VAL:  I will check and see if it's ready.

   >> SARA: At this point we are breaking and we will let you know when lunch is ready and we will reconvene at Noon exactly. 

   [Recess]

   >> Lunch is served if you go to your right and immediate left will be where lunch is served and help yourself because we will get started right at Noon again.

   [Recess]

   >> SARA: I learned today we have a birthday in the room and it's actually a birthday of one of our newest members so Rebecca, happy, happy birthday.

[Applause] 

So maybe we can sing-happy birthday day to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Rebecca, happy birthday to you. [Applause] so in five minutes we will have Chris get ready to present to us, okay? 

Okay, we are going to get restarted. All you guys know with every Council meeting we want to bring a guest speaker in to educate us on the latest initiatives or topics that are of interest to us and Chris is here, Chris works for Michigan protection and advocacy services and I had the pleasure of collaborating with him with a few things so far and he will talk about employment first and I will let Chris tell you about how it developed and more about himself but I need to get you a microphone.

   >> CHRIS:  Okay, I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you about some of the things going on in employment and not just Michigan but across the United States and I'm Chris Rodriguez the director of public affairs and media relations for Michigan protection and advocacy and spent time doing consulting down in Washington with a few of the national disability organizations, primarily concentrating on their initiatives related to advancing employment among folks with disabilities across the United States.

   To give you a quick background of kind of the movement of what has been going on for the last couple years, as far as the disability community is concerned, a lot of energy and a lot of momentum has been put behind employment is kind of the new frontier as to what should be tackled across the United States in terms of advancing the rights and privileges and independence of people with disabilities, specifically developmental disabilities.

   You will see several different entities on the national level, putting various different kinds of resources into this initiative. You will see the department of labor has issued grants over the last couple years specifically to do pilot programs across the country to try and advance integrated and competitive employment among folks with disabilities. The president has issued executive orders related to increasing the number of folks with disabilities in the workforce not only in general but also anything that has to do with government contracts. You will notice that the governor's association, this was a large one, Governor Merkle, I forget, what state is Governor Merkle from, does anybody know, somewhere in the northeast. Anyway the governor association is basically an association comprised of the different governors from across the United States and the chair is Governor Merkle and serves a term of one year and during that year the chair gets to kind of educate and take charge of an initiative of his or her choice. Last year Governor Merkle who is the current chair decided to take on employment issues as they relate to folks with disabilities so you see a lot of information coming down from that initiative. He also has a document called a blue print towards employment. In which that he published I believe a few months ago and you can look that up.  

   The help committee which is the United States Senate committee for health, education, pensions and health education labor and pension chaired by one of our great champions Senator Harkin from the state of Iowa is putting more energy behind employment issues and he hazard been a great champion and always supported employment initiatives but I feel as though he really put that at the forefront of his agenda. Unfortunately he will be retiring but this fight will continue.

   So as we see a lot of things going on in different states tackling this issue with different means of ways to tackle and some of them are looking into it in pilot programs and some states are tackling this from a legislative standpoint and some states are issuing executive orders through their governor and some states are filing litigation to make sure the proper resources particularly financially are going towards more integrated settings as opposed to places that are conventionally known as sheltered workshop and studies are popping up every day.

   What is going on here in Michigan and how can we be a part of this initiative and how can we take advantage of some of the momentum that is being created on the national level and in other states?  

   Michigan has always been at least from my understanding of the history granted I've only been here about a year and a half has always been on the side of being a more progressive state in respects to rights of folks with disabilities, certainly I think one of the greater accomplishments is the fact this state, unlike some other states, does not have any institution, state run institutions, residential facilities for folks with developmental disabilities and integration has been on the for front in the minds of the powers that be in the state of Michigan to make sure that folks with disabilities are being and have proper resource to get as much independence as possible in integrated settings.

   Now we take it that and apply it towards employment and try and figure out how we can make sure that people with disabilities, all kinds of disabilities, mental illness and physical disabilities are provided the proper resources to allow them the opportunity to engage in integrated, competitive employment alongside their typically abled peers in the community.

   So as we were thinking about that a group that was primarily spearheaded by the DD Council came together and we created a sub group of a number of different organizations and we started to figure out how do we start this movement here in Michigan. We decided to put together basically a mission statement and some language around what employment should look like for folks with disabilities here in the state of Michigan.

   And that is how we developed this employment first mission and principles which is the primary document that I'm going to try and walk you through today. I think everybody should have received that in their packet and hopefully you had a chance to briefly look it over and if you didn't I encourage you to take a look at it in the next few days and we will go over it today and this is not a lecture so if you have questions as we go through this please feel free to just blurt it out.

   So I'm going to take you through here. It starts out with the mission and the mission of employment of Michigan is to establish the expectation and promote opportunities for all working aged citizens with disabilities in Michigan to gain individual, integrated employment and engage businesses to value the contributions that employees with disabilities bring to the organizations. Individuals with disabilities in the workforce promote diversity, increased talent in the field and tax base and lower poverty rates and achieving this mission will enhance the employment, landscape to enable Michigan to compete with other states to bring in high demand businesses and jobs. So that is kind of the mission behind the employment first language that we have put together, basically providing opportunities for folks with disabilities to contribute to the workforce in a meaningful way, to commandeer appropriate wages and to do all that with integrated settings.

   And then we wanted to point out this is not only -- this is clearly going to help folks with disabilities create advanced independence, create self-esteem through their contributions in the workplace, help them create a better social kind of circumstance, I mean think about all the benefits that we gain through employment, our social environment is created there to some extent, our independence and our financial independence is created there, a lot of people I feel like gain self-worth and meaning through their occupations but not the only way but it's a contributing factor and are great things but we wanted to highlight what people with disabilities bring to different businesses as well. The Meijer Corporation is being highlighted right now as far as their efforts in creating integrated competitive employment for folks with disabilities. And when asked the question of from the CEO and the developers at Meijer the higher up executives why did you do this and the motivation behind it it's good for the bottom line financially having folks with disabilities increases diversity of our employees, helps our managers understand and develop different tools on management. Their turn over rates is a lot less than they were previously or they are expecting them to be. And this is just good business decisions.

   So we also wanted to highlight that.

   So moving forward that was the mission of the employment first language. We will move into the more specific language and it's important to remember that this is just kind of a framework and there is nothing in stone here. So it's more kind of broad strokes that can -- that we can use to guide us as we move forward.

   The next portion is a little more specific, we wanted to make sure that people understood what employment first met, what are the principles and what are the foundations and that kind of are founded within employment first language. So we wanted to start out by saying that one of the guiding principles or one of the first one is individual integrated employment is the first and preferable outcome for individuals with disabilities regardless of the level or type of disability.

   So this means that as services are constructed as funds are being appropriated in the state as education moves forward, as they try to develop skills related to employment in the education system that the preferable and the first outcome for these folks or folks with disabilities should be integrated employment. That's not to say that there are not going to be folks that could possibly be more appropriately served in more segregated day type facilities, but this is really meant to change kind of the perspective in which this should be the first thing, the first option that is explored.

   So we wanted to dive into a little more specifically and put some definitions underneath that. So what is employment or what is integrated employment in the paper? 

It means that individuals, individual means individuals not a group or an enclave and this is individual employment. Also integrated means alongside individuals without disabilities. Employment means a job available in the general workforce and in which the employee is included on the payroll of the business or industry or is a self-employed business owner.

   So by this definition situations in which folks are being provided vocational training or I guess you could consider it jobs in places like community rehab centers that are working on contracts, if that individual's paycheck is not coming directly from the employer and it's coming through the community rehab facility then we would not consider it to be the preferable outcome, we want folks to be integrated as much as possible and being paid by their employer just like anybody else would.

   Secondly employees with disabilities are compensated at or above the minimum wage but not less than the commiserate of wage by the same or similar work performed by individuals without disabilities and we are currently conducting a study and done a lot of work with the DD Council, the developmental disabilities institute at Wayne state and our organization Michigan Protection Agency can to figure out what exactly is going on in terms of C 14 waivers and self-minimum wage in Michigan and we are at the beginning of analyzing all that information but our preliminary numbers suggest that there is about over -- there is a little over 8,000 folks with disabilities in the state of Michigan that are being paid sub minimum wages at an average of $2.75 per hour. That is unacceptable and certainly not what we would consider to be successful under the principles that are being laid out here in the employment first language.

   As we analyze those numbers further we will write a report hopefully in the next few months. And we will get into more specific issues and more specific numbers but we wanted to make sure that that was a caveat, not a caveat but a qualification for what we deem meaningful employment to be and employment first to be.

   We also wanted to include employees with disabilities have the right to accommodation as necessary to achieve and maintain employment with the focus on the use of natural and current supports, this is something we wanted to reiterate and make sure that businesses were aware that folks with disabilities have the right to appreciate accommodation so that they can fulfill their responsibilities and thought it was important to reiterate.

   Number four is employment services and are developed using processes that align with the principles of person on centered planning, self-determination and informed choice based on the individual's talents, skills and interests. I think too many times we are finding that kind of the old way of doing things kind of went out there and find the job and then tried to put that person in that job and then we scratched our heads and wondered why that individual was not performed the way we wanted them to perform.

   And I think that leads to less productive individuals that are not happy because you are basically saying we found this job you will do that job and this is how that is going to work as opposed to really spending substantial amounts of time and understanding what that individual wants to do and understanding the challenges that that person might have in understanding the unique abilities of that individual and then finding a job that best suits their needs and not saying this is being done throughout the state but we just wanted to make sure that that is at the forefront of finding people employment, making sure that it's out there interests and making sure that it's up there -- that we do the proper accommodations if it's something they are interested in but need some help with, are provided in the amount, duration and intensities that allow persons with intellectual and developmental disabilities to work the maximum hours consistent with their abilities in an integrated employment setting.

   So we wanted to make sure that we are looking on getting people with disabilities employment that we are looking at -- we are defining employment as real employment, not a situation which an individual happens to work and let's say a segregated environment for three or four hours a week and we will call the employment and check the box off. We want to make sure the first and preferable outcome and it's important to remember we are not saying the other situations can't occur but that the first and preferable outcome will align with this criteria to make sure those are -- the individual is allowed to work as much as that individual can.

   That is 35 hours, if that is 40 hours or 20 hours, we just want to make sure we are understanding that individual's abilities and ensuring that they get the opportunity to contribute as much as they feel comfortable doing.

   Next, may include career exaggeration, job discovery and document and job carving and coaching and job training and benefits counseling and job service and job customization and these are some suggested different avenues in which an individual can take advantage of in order to find meaningful, integrated employment in the community. These are just areas that we would consider to be extremely beneficial and certainly avenues towards establishing the goal of employment.

   Lastly number five implementation of employment first must be based on clear public policies and practices that ensure employment opportunities of individuals with disabilities within the general workforce and is the priority of public funding and service delivery.

   This is kind of a statement that we wanted to put into kind of try and put more momentum behind this particular language saying that just because the DD Council may have adopted this, it's being supported by other organizations doesn't mean that is the end game there and we want to take this language into the departments and have them develop it or not develop it but adopt it and then implement it. The principles that have been written up here and right now we are working with the legislature or several different departments to get their opinions on it and see if we can't get them to support the language. That way we can actually see the words on this paper actually come to fruition or start to come to fruition through practices and policies that are carried forth throughout the state.

   We are looking at other states as we move forward with this. Each state has its own individual circumstances, political environments, different considerations aspects and characteristics, some states are moving this forward like I said through legislation and some are strictly doing it through more of bureaucratic policies and some states are doing it through executive orders through the governor, some states are pushing it towards the courts and litigation. I think all of these are interesting ways to move forward. I think that's going to take a lot of discussion around the table around different stakeholders and different individuals and agencies to determine what is the most beneficial avenue for the State of Michigan. And I think you will find different opinions when you go down there and I think I don't think there is any harm in document whatsoever. I think there is a lot of challenges as different departments in the state and organizations start to adopt it and you figure out okay we all agree that integrated, meaningful employment for folks with disabilities is where we want to go and we agree on all these principles but how are we going to get there I think is going to be the difficult part and it always is with any strong policies that are -- any strong initiatives that are moving forward and I think that is a bumpy road but without everybody investing in these types of philosophies we can't build on that.

   That is where we are at now and I can take any kinds of questions.

   >> KEN:  Ken Browde, first of all, great work and keep it up. Has the Social Security Administration ticket to work been of any benefit to your efforts?

   >> CHRIS:  I don't know a lot of the history. I know the program and I know from a Federal level. I think in order to accomplish this I think there is going to be several different after news and I think that is certainly one that can help bolster the end game which is getting folks with disabilities into integrated employment opportunities. So I don't think it's prohibitive by any means, I think it's something that we have to continue and that has to adapt along with these policies. And of course there is going to be other issues. I mean let's say we can change all of this tomorrow and we could get all the folks making at least minimum wage, what does that do to their eligibility for their supports and services? 

So all this, I mean there is a lot of moving parts and able act on the Federal level and ticket to work programs and looking at the Medicaid buy in programs and Medicaid expansion, there is no sense in elevating folks to a financial environment which would prohibit them from being eligible for the sports and services that allow them to get that job in the first place. So I think programs like that certainly need to be in place. But need to move along and need to, I shouldn't say move along but need to evolve along with the current language here.

   >> KEN:  Thank you.

   >> SARA: Does anybody else have any questions? 

Connie does.

   >> CONNIE:  You are from Michigan.

   >> CHRIS:  No, I'm from Texas.

   >> CONNIE:  I mean now.

   >> Chris:  Yes.

   >> CONNIE:  I sat in on Bobby Silverstein a couple weeks ago and we were talking and you were talking about phasing out minimum the sub minimum wage. I know he came across with a lot of recommendations for us to get a hold of our senators and representatives because that is one of the things that is sitting idle down in D.C. along with.

   >> CHRIS:  Workforce investment act and reauthorization.

   >> CONNIE:  Quite a few things and it's not moving, nothing we are working for is actually moving.

   >> CHRIS:  I don't think anything anybody's working for is moving in Congress.

   >> CONNIE:  Usually 500 passed by now.

   >> CHRIS:  That is where Congress is right now but it doesn't mean we shouldn't keep working towards these things. As far as sub minimum wage goes, some of the work that we are doing currently to gather all that information is just going to be to kind of paint a more articulate picture of the employment circumstances for folks with disabilities here in Michigan as opposed to really trying to change any of that currently because that is a Federal issue and we are kind of concentrating on what we can do to change what is going on in Michigan right now. That's not to say that we are not also involved in a lot of the organizations are also involved in Federal legislation such as the authorization of the workforce investment act which is talking about do agree lot of different things with voc rehab and moving it from one department to another and it consults 14 C waivers and similar to what this language does, does everybody know what a 14 C waiver is? 

   We will go over them real briefly. A 14 C waiver is a waiver that can get a nonprofit or for profit, whatever to pay an individual with disabilities under minimum wage based on the level of productivity of that person. That is what that does. It's been around since the 1930s I believe. It was originally established to try and increase employment opportunities for Veterans coming back from World War I and II that lost a limb or were unfortunately rendered disabled because of their service but it still exists today and it's a big issue. There has been legislation filed on the Federal level to do away with it completely. I believe that was filed by a Congressman out of California. That is not going anywhere currently. That is not expected to go anywhere. But it is being addressed with the workforce investment act, reauthorization that is currently made its way through the Senate committee on health, education labor and pensions. But what we are finding right now is even as beneficial legislation goes through the Federal process you are seeing such different ideology coming out of the Senate and coming out of the house and they can each pass it but they are so far apart that there is very little chance they will be able to reconcile when they do a conference committee. But as far as the workforce investment act we are watching that and hoping it picks up more momentum after the holidays but you are absolutely right it's a difficult situation.

   One of the ways we are trying to address sub minimum wage here in Michigan is the fact that the sub minimum wage if you have the waiver it's based on the level of productivity of the individual. So for example if I let's say if I'm putting together a widget and they find somehow and this all has to be documented on how they do this, I am the typical, typically abled individual doing this job and I can put together ten widgets in an hour and I make $10 an hour and then you bring in a person with a disability and do the same job and the wage is set at $10 an hour but they can only build five widgets per hour. So under this, if they have 14 C waiver then you can legally pay that person $5 an hour, right, because their productivity is 50% or what I do, I'm the benchmark, the typical individual. Now how do we get past that without changing the law or while the law is being changed? 

What we need to do and gets done through principles is find the individual a job which that can be more productive and it's not matching people up with jobs that don't meet their skills and don't meet their motivations and what they basically want to do. My boss and I have this conversation all the time. If you put me into a position of mechanical engineer I'm going to perform very, very poorly because number one I don't like engineering and I don't have the skill set to perform that job. But put me into something that I enjoy and something I'm trained to do and something that I'm motivated to do and I perform much better. If you abide by these principles here, I think you will find that taking place at a greater propensity therefore people won't be qualified for the sub minimum wages because their productivity levels will be on par with that particular individual.

   So I don't know if that answered your question.

   >> CONNIE:  Well, I had main but I wanted everybody else to know what was going on.

   >> CHRIS:  Things are being followed and not to say issues we elated to folks with disability are not moving on the Federal level because we have the conventions for CRPD conventions on the rights of persons with disabilities and the treaty is moving forward and seeing the able act, able act basically is a piece of legislation that would establish basically like a personal trust that would allow folks with disabilities to earn money that would not be counted into their eligibility for their Medicaid I believe, would not support services in that so that is a huge thing with employment because again we wants to make sure these folks don't lose their benefits because we are giving the opportunity to make money but not enough money to cover a lot of the specific and all too often expensive types of supports and services they may require.

   >> SARA: I thought I saw a hand on my side of the table and I will keep my mic just to keep control and I think Miranda you had a comment; I know I personally have a comment as well.

   >> ROBIN:  Robin Bennett. What about the pool of individuals who you can search all day for a job that fits their skills, but they might -- they might only fit in this sort of environment that a sheltered workshop provides. Is employment first proposing completely getting rid of sub minimum wage payments? 

I mean, is that going to then get rid of those options for individuals with a low enough or with skills that are in the lower range so that is all that they are -- found they are capable of doing, are those going to be gone?

   >> CHRIS:  That is a good question and a point of argument and where the rubber hits the road and flare-ups and there is nothing in the language to suggest that any of those things are going away. This language says specifically is that integrated, competitive employment would be the first and preferred outcome. But that there would be other options but just that those are not the go-to options. We are trying to change what this language -- what we are perceiving now is what we have seen in the past is typically the presumption that they will not be able to work but some will and great examples and we want to try and turn that around and said presumption should be that people with disabilities can work, might there be individuals that unfortunately are more appropriately served in places like sheltered workshop? 

   Maybe, but we wants to make sure that as these people, as these folks are getting out of the education system or while they are in the education system that people are expecting them to work because when you base your expectations so low it isn't surprising when you find that, wow, the unemployment rate for folks with disabilities is at 27% or something like that, not unemployment, the employment rate is at 27% because the expectation is that these folks are not going to work but when you base the expectations that these folks will work I think you will see that rise greatly and to where that hopefully would become more of the norm rather than the exception. But to answer your question in the language there is nothing that says those places are not going to exist anymore although I have to say that the bottom part here, when it says implementation of employment first must be based on clear public policies and practices that ensure employment opportunities of individuals with disabilities within the general workforce and is the priority for public funding and service delivery. That gets a little tricky. So what that is going to say is we are doing studies right now that would suggest that a majority of our money that goes to helping folks find employment is getting geared towards finding these people employed in segregated settings. So by adopting this to a certain extent you could expect more funding would be flowing into making sure that folks get integrated employment as opposed to folks getting sheltered employment. But, again, it's not taking an option off the table right now.

   >> ROBIN:  And for what I have seen from individuals like -- what I've seen with parents of children with developmental disabilities, they just want the option on the table. If that is the best option for their child or their adult child they just want the option to remain to be there. But I agree with this, it should be the go-to that they can work and they can be able to integrate every person with a disability can be and then from there you work with an individual on what is best for them.

   >> CHRIS:  Right, exactly, I don't think any of the language would go anywhere if we said we are shutting down sheltered workshops, period. My brother in Texas attends a day half sheltered workshop place every day and I think those places hold value specifically probably more so because there is just nothing out there for folks with disabilities once you get out of the education system and they do allow a social setting to make friends and things like that but that is not to say those types of benefits that come from those couldn't come from a conventional, integrated employment setting.

   >> SARA:  Miranda.

   >> MIRANDA:  In my day job I work for a center for independent living and we are in the process, our board is adopting this language, we are just waiting for a final vote that will come this month and not expecting any problems. So I know at my local CIL we are looking at this and it came about from a phone call from a local consumer who realized he was making less than $1 an hour and working with somebody making minimum wage and he didn't think it was fair and so we are looking at it now and I got assigned to the case and we are looking at other options and he has now chose tone be a volunteer, not with us, he found another place and said he would rather volunteer than earn less than $1 an hour because he thought he was being made fun of and he finds more value in his life volunteering and so if I can get your contact and keep in touch we have some research too we have been doing. Thank you very much for the information. I think it was very good and something we all need to be aware of.

   >> SARA: The blessing and curse that I have on this Council is I don't represent my employer. I represent, I'm a person with a disability and represent that group so I am not speaking on behalf of CILs at this moment, so for those of my bosses in the room, preface it with that. I had the pleasure of sitting on a meeting on Wednesday where we had some really great dialog around this and really vetted some things out and some national experts to the table and Bobby Silverstein was one of them and Chris, and others from the economic Justice group did a phenomenal job in representing this initiative.

   As I walked away from it I had a few thoughts and I really felt like I needed to throw them out at this moment is I think the preface of what we are doing is awesome and aligns with independent living and we want to go and included in the communities, we want to see people paid a fair wage. I'm tired of seeing people paid at a reduced wage. $1, $2 is bullshit and we have been working so many years to get people with disabilities to be valued as equal contributors in our community and we are allowing people to pay less than minimum wage, we are supporting that. At the same time I happen to have wonderful partners in community rehabilitation organizations and I think they do phenomenal work. I think we can continue to have those organizations to fill a service need in our communities because of the alternative, if we are shutting those down the alternative is people go home and sit home and do nothing all day while we did a really bad thing. But the fact is we need to create systems where we can get people to be paid at least a minimum wage.

   I do and Chris heard in the other day from a couple other groups but I do take exception to principle 1 C and where it defines employment being as being paid by the employer, that business. When you look at the trends and the number of people that are employed through staffing agencies, employers, even like Dow within my own community that start people out through Kelly Services or Manpower and if that was a person with a disability what we are saying is that it doesn't count as integrated employment because they are being paid by a staffing agency. I don't think that that is the intent of what this is but it could be interpreted as that.

   I have a few notes so excuse me a second. The other point I wanted to say is we have to continue to work with organizations like Meijer, like Walgreen's, like Dow chemical and Dow Corning and Kellie could name a few businesses who are understanding what it means to hire qualified people in their workplace and leading this in Michigan and it's going to be very critical that we find more and more businesses to hire people because they are the demand side of the economic equation. We can do everything in our power to help people with disabilities prepare for employment but unless there are jobs available to them and corporations are embracing their diversity practices to be inclusive of people with disabilities, all the work that we are doing is we are not moving the bar and not making a big difference and I'm so excited to have been a part of several initiatives over the last few years where employers are really stepping up and being great leaders.

   But, Chris, I commend you guys on this, this is awesome. You got the conversation going through this. And I don't know so putting my work hat back on and the CILs individually like Miranda said may be adopting this but as a network we will be discussing it on December 16th and we are excited to be a part of this conversation, so thank you.

   >> VAL:  Thank you for coming today, Chris. I appreciate it very much. I wanted to put this in a SILC framework at this point. Realize that the DD Council brought this to our office and asked us as a Council to take a look at it. They have adopted it as you see it in your packet. But they are hoping that before the day is over with that we will either be able to support it in concept or in theory or adopt a portion of it so you will notice as we move into new business you are going to see this again so I didn't want you to sort of say thank you, Chris, now we can move on to it. But before the day is over with I think you need to realize you're going to be asked to consider supporting it in theory or in concept or adopting it or tabling it, but it is an action item for this afternoon.

   >> SARA: Thank you, Val, Carol.

   >> Carol:  Point of clarification, Chris, I thought you said something about more money is spent keeping or maintaining people in sheltered type situations with sub minimum wage and rehabilitation where people are competitive employment system, I found that kind of hard to believe, do you have the figures?

   >> CHRIS:  I have the figures and can get those to you. The way that it's broken down, it says okay out of the development how many are served 17,340 I think for employment services and breaks it down and says how many of those people are in integrated competitive employment. We have a number. And how much money was spent supplying with supports and services and breaks it down and the next goes to nonintegrated employment services and breaks that down and how much money and more money goes in to being spent on folks that are in segregated than integrated so you ask yourself and I try and be as honest as possible why is this? 

   From -- if I was to go back and forth with somebody, and I said well this is wrong, this shouldn't be happening and I was on their side, I would say, well, clearly, the folks that have more need and this is probably true, the folks that have more need and require more support and services are less likely to be in the circumstances of integrated employment and more times than not require more services than equal more money, that is an explanation for it, but that is true.

   >> CAROL:  And planning and informed choice and I think that is a big piece, this is very controversial and not controversial among the people sitting around the table, but I also sit on the MARO board and it's very controversial in rehabilitation community in Michigan and I think the biggest kind of concerns have to do with the economy in Michigan and where do the employers exist to do this and it's all about employment and employers and the employers need to be on board and have the financial resources to hire people at wages that can support this. And my part of the world which is rural if somebody is in we are not well served by rehab organizations either but I would like to see some information about how many people are not doing anything, how many people with disabilities are sitting home because there is not the resources, they are not connected, there is not the employment, they graduate or age out of high school and there is nothing for them. We honestly feel that some of the people that we work with are fortunate to have a place to go, to have work, to have a meaning to their life and they will tell you that same story.

   And my reservation there is no public transportation. You don't have a car or somebody that can drive you around and have money for two cabs that exist in the county you will go broke. So there are a lot of concerns about the implementation of this and I guess I would like to know more about if something like this does get accepted what impact will that have about the people that are currently using the services. I heard many people say that I cannot afford to operate my organization and pay people minimum wage even though I would like to do that and they are currently in rehabilitation for informed choice and person on centered planning and I think that is the piece that people point out is the choice and there is a concern that this would take away the choice.

   >> CHRIS:  Right.

   >> CAROL:  The employer with high unemployment rates particularly in rural Michigan, my concern would be it would be denied.

   >> CHRIS:  That is why we specifically wanted to make sure this is the first and preferable outcome and not the only outcome for folks with disabilities because you are absolutely right they do serve a purpose and there is not always going to be employment opportunities and I think you bring up an excellent point, there are so many different approaches, not really approaches but this has to be a completely comprehensive approach to make it work, involved with transportation, you have to get involved with the business community making sure they understand the benefits of hiring folks with disabilities, you have to get into education, voc rehab and everything has to come together to really make this work and I think those are all part of that but I feel as though if we don't adopt something this document or something similar then we never will be forced to try and push those things. But at the same time we are also keeping all the other things on the table as well. But just that they are not the first and preferable outcome.

   >> CAROL:  Many people in this room and the relocation community, in your community that remember the times when there were nothing and I have a Special Ed teaching degree in 1975, that is when IDEA was passed and my first classroom between the ages of 3-21 that had never been to a school before and nobody knew what to do with them and if you are not toilet trained you couldn't come to school before that and we went through the institutionalization and you know what that was like when there were not choices and there were not options for people and nobody wants to go back to a time when that is the option for people to say you are employed.

   >> CHRIS:  I think there are a lot of lessons to be learned. I mean, there is a very similar parallel to a certain extent in phasing out the state-run residential facilities for folks with disabilities and phasing out or trying to move folks into more integrated settings in employment. Now, I'm sure everybody in the room can understand down in Texas at least this is an example there still are state-run DD facilities, right. And everybody says well if it was up to me we would shut those down tomorrow. Do you know what happens if you were to shut a place like that down tomorrow? 

   Where are these people going to do and what will they do and you leave folks more detrimental than you would otherwise than just keeping them open. So you are right, nobody is saying we are going to shutdown really anything at this point. Or phase anything out right now, at least not in this language and not in the state of Michigan. Because, yeah, where would they go and do all day long, they wouldn't see the friends they made, they wouldn't have any types of -- anything other than sitting in a room at somebody's house or God knows what. So I think those are all things that are in people's minds as we move forth and it needs to be done in a responsible way as opposed to just kind of a blazing saddles we will shut this stuff down because we done agree with it approach and everybody is taking into consideration and another reason why we are not taking a hard stand on shutting down C 14 waivers right now because what would happen, can those places honestly financially survive and provide the benefit or perceived benefit of what they are doing and there is issues of C 14 and passionate conversation and maybe that gets tackled down the road. But as of right now we are just looking to try and basically make a statement of where we would like to be and then once we decide we will go there then the hard work is how are we going to get there. But we can't do that until we all come together and say, yeah, this is what we committed to.

   >> CAROL:  Hard work is involved and what happens after some things change, the institutionalization in Michigan has been a great process and slow and moved along and when people left the institutions they had planned in place but what happened three years later? 

I worked with 11 homeless programs during that time and I can tell you where a lot of people were coming from, they were off their meds and wandered the streets because there wasn't a connection, there wasn't any place for them to go. Why didn't independent living centers program get started to begin with to address all the unmet needs that people were finding and not being filled by the service providers in the systems.

   >> CHRIS:  Absolutely right.

   >> CAROL:  How does that happen?

   >> CHRIS:  How do we get things done and if you wanted to implement this in legislation, if you read legislation, proposed legislation on new programs or implementing new things, literally sometimes half of the entire document is just how are you going to layout determining outcomes and collect data and how are you going to basically make sure that this thing works so those are all things that get put into if this was legislation I want reports on how many folks are now in non- -- are in integrated settings and for how long. You can stipulate all those things so we are paying attention and all those things are documented and all those things go into studies so I think that is excellent, developmental disabilities side of desegregation of state-run facilities went smoother than MI side from what I have read and the MI said they did an irresponsible job and shutdown and people ended up on the streets or in jails and there is a lesson to be learned there and what we have to observe in situations of integration in this particular employment. They are similar and have their own moving parts but at the same time you can't shut these places down. A lot of states take a more aggressive approach that we are currently suggesting is they will shut the front door, that is the big one, shut the front door and let everybody grandfather in but as people move into places we will change things. That is one way to do it but we are not being that aggressive with this language.

   >> SARA: Thank you, Chris, I know we have a lot to talk about and looking at the time and we want to end the meeting today slightly earlier and we will move into the next agenda item. Do we need a brief break after lunch to get reconvened? 

What is the wish of the group? 

Okay thumbs up means what?

   >> KEN:  I saw a lot of people saying they would like to head out to the hallway.

   >> SARA: We will take a ten-minute break and start with the agenda under old business.

[Recess] 

Next on the agenda is what we would call action required items and SILC work plans and I'm turning that over to Valarie.

   >> VAL:  During our past meeting you were gracious enough to approve the SILC budget and at that time you did it without work plans because Michigan State plan had not been approved yet. And I promised to bring forward a work plan for both MRS and BSBP at this meeting for your approval.

   So what you have in your packet under old business are two separate documents of work plans. The first one is titled BSBP and that work plan is exactly what you see and have previously approved in Michigan State plan for independent living with the exception of the first paragraph which basically says this is one part of a two-part agreement that covers our core funding. So today I am asking for your approval of the BSBP work plan which is attachment A to our BSBP grant and do you want to do these separately or do you want to do them jointly?

   >> SARA:  Jointly.

   >> VAL:  Sara said jointly so if we move over to the MRS work plan, which, again, is the related information from our state plan that deals with the MRS portion, with the exception of the same first paragraph you see in BSBP and in additional in the last page above signatures it says in addition SILC will assist in this one has a number five added to it which says SILC will provide information as requested regarding utilization of assisted technology, activities and other identified projects as agreed.

   And that is something that is added above and beyond our state plan because it relates to data that MRS may be requesting related to a special project that the CIL network is doing, it's also allows us to collect the data and compile the needed reports for DNM for the statewide assistive technology project.

   Other than that again it's exactly what is in our state plan. And I would appreciate, I would appreciate a motion and support of these two work plans.

   >> KEN:  So made.

   >> CONNIE:  Second.

   >> SARA: Motion and Connie seconded. Do we have any discussion? 

Okay hearing none all those in favor.

   >> Aye.

   >> SARA: Any opposed? 

Motion carries.

   >> VAL:  Thank you.

   >> SARA: Under new business we will have Val explain to us the reporting requirements under 704 submission and she may say this but I will emphasize it as well, you received in your packets a 3-4 page document that talked about training and technical assistance needs. And she is asking for the feedback from the Council so that she can composite information incorporated in the 704 report for SILC and it was requested that we mail them back to Tracey and there is a self-addressed stamped envelope in there but December 4th but if you have a chance to do that today and hand deliver it to Val that will also assist too but she is asking us for input on what types of training and technical assistance needs and we owe it to Val to share our voice with her so she can reflect that accurately in the report so I will turn the rest over to Val.

   >> VAL:  The 704 is a Federal report that is -- goes to rehab service administrations. There are to parts of it. Part two is completed by each individual CIL that received Federal funding, they send it in to really that upload it into the management information system at RSA and SILC gets a copy of it and we use that information as we monitor our state plan and in planning for our next state plan. So that is one piece of information that we collect every year.

   The other part is the state is required to do a combined report from the DSU so it's MRS, BSBP and SILC, that is a title one or part one report. We had a meeting split up who is doing what by when. The report needs to be signed by the Council. It is due to be up loaded by December 31 and what we need to do for SILC to do its part today is for the Council to empower the executive committee to review our report when it's completed and authorize the SILC chair or designee to agree to sign the report. This document is going to be made available to the DSUs as well as the SILC executive committee by December 12th.

   We, again, have to have it into the system by the 31st. If you would like it mailed to everyone or electronically sent to everyone we can do that too. But again the need is to have a motion empowering the executive committee to act on your behalf.

   >> SARA: So we are looking for a motion to empower the executive committee to act on behalf of the whole Council regarding the 704 submission.

   >> CAROL:  Motion.

   >> ROBIN:  Second.

   >> SARA: Robin second and any discussion? 

All those in favor?

   >> Aye.

   >> SARA: Any opposed? 

Okay, that motion carries.

   Okay, the second item under new business is employment first which was the proposal that Chris Rodriguez just shared with all of us and had some good discussion about and we have been asked by the developmental disabilities Council to support and adopt and support that motion as a Council.

   >> VAL:  Adopt or support, adopt and/or support.

   >> SARA: Adopt and/or support. So looking for a motion.

   >> CAROL: Can you explain the difference, what would the difference be?

   >> SARA: I don't know what the difference would be; I guess adopting it means adopting the principles and vision or mission of that principle, that document.

   >> VAL:  Supporting is supporting the concept.

   >> SARA: I'm looking for a motion or perhaps some more discussion around that.

   >> STEVE:  For many Council meetings when things like this come before the body I asked the question is in the purpose of the SILC Council? Can we in some way tie this document back to the SPIL which we are charged with preparing and monitoring? Endorsements of position statements, this seems would be in the realm of the CIL network though I personally and professionally completely support this. I just have to put that out there on the floor, is in the body and is that appropriate for this body to make an endorsement to support the general concept I would like to put that out there for discussion.

   >> SARA: And Steve I'm not sure I can exactly address your question. What strikes me with this is I feel like with the way this current SPIL is written and what the current mission and vision of SILC is this aligns with what we believe, believe in full integration of people with disabilities and I guess what I'm saying is I think it's in alignment with what we believe so is there something symbolic by endorsing it that would move this forward differently in policy? 

I think our current SPIL addresses our full believes in this and Val wants to add to your question.

   >> VAL:  One of the underlying requirements of our state plan is a partnership and working with our partners and other statewide disability organizations. The DD Council, who is the organization that brought this to us and asked for our consideration of support is identified as one of those entities in our state plan and, yes, I think it's very in line with our agreeing to support their leadership in this area if that is what we as a group feel.

   >> SARA: So I can support the vision of it because currently it aligns with SILC and what is in the state plan but I can't endorse the principles, that is me personally?

   >> STEVE:  What I would like addressed is the concept of what it is that we are being asked to do. DD Council or another issue coming in front of this Council from any general member of the public that we are asked to endorse, what is the basis for our endorsement, what is our touch stone for that endorsement? 

And I always need to come back to the SPIL in terms of this body doing that. And if there is a way that we can tie that to the SPIL I just want to have that understanding. Because there is the potential for others and other issues to come before this body where we set precedent and that that becomes a function of what this Council does which to me it has to go back to the SPIL because we are charged with monitoring, evaluating and monitoring the imitation of the state plan and I need to be sure it's tied to the objectives that are currently in the state plan that we are monitoring and that we recently approved.

   >> SARA: Do we have any other input or discussion around this topic? 

I don't have a motion on the table. So is anybody wanting to make a motion so we can have an official discussion and vote on this and I understand exactly what Steve is saying and I'm not trying to negate that Steve, I'm trying to put it officially on the table. Okay, we don't have a formal motion on this so it sounds to me like it might go out as an action item for further discussion down the road but at this point we don't have support to we don't have a motion to support adoption for supporting this at this point.

   So with that said okay Robin.

   >> ROBIN:  Could someone -- I'm still stuck on the idea of support versus adopt. Is it if we adopt it then it becomes kind of like Steve was saying sort of part of the filter that we look for everything we do through or if as opposed to supporting it or going, yes, this is in line with a lot of things this bill says and our vision and we support you doing this?

   >> VAL:  Support is a concept. When you support something, you're agreeing to stand behind the concept or the idea. When you adopt something, you are saying everything that is in this document we agree with.

   >> ROBIN:  Okay.

   >> SARA: I think we support it by the very nature without actually officially supporting it when you look at the mission and the vision of the SPIL and the mission is to promote across spears of life and Michigan is for full inclusion for person with disabilities so I think a formal adoption is really a reiteration sorry formal support is a reiteration of what our current values and believes are as a Council and our philosophy around independent living so I think for me personally I can't adopt it and vote no if there was a motion on the table but to support it, it is saying I already do support full inclusion with people of disabilities and that is why we are here.

   >> VAL:  They are asking for it on the record.

   >> SARA: Unless somebody wants to make a motion we don't have any, Miranda.

   >> MIRANDA:  Okay, so just to clarify support is saying the concept, so I would like to make a motion that for I know our believes and mission already goes with it but just for that formal support for the DD Council I make a motion that we support the concept.

   >> ROBIN:  I second.

   >> SARA: We have support and a motion to support the concept of employment first and a second from Robin. Any discussion?    

   Okay, typically when we vote we don't hear everybody say yeah or no and I want a roll call vote and do we have someone here to call our names?

   >> KAREN:  Can I have the roll call back?  

   >> SARA: We are supporting the concept of employment first and not adopting the principles and Ken discussion is still open.

   >> KEN:  You seem -- Ken Browde, we seem to have looking at the map we need to open the discussion and I think we are dancing on the head of a pin by supporting the difference of adoption and support and I find Steven's statements about such an adoption or support possibly being outside the scope of our function yet I find Sara's argument that goes with the tenents of why we are here and what we are doing. So I'm wondering if perhaps we should table this for further discussion and examination at the EC and then come back to the Council with our recommendations.

   >> SARA: Are you making a friendly amendment to table the motion?

   >> KEN:  Done, yes.

   >> SARA: Do I have support for the friendly amendment.

   >> VAL:  Does it have to be accepted.

   >> SARA: Do you accept the friendly amendment to table this for further discussion?

   >> MIRANDA:  I would like to see what people think.

   >> SARA: Miranda would like to see what people think, do you want to see what people think through accepting the friendly amendment to have more discussion or have more discussion here.

   >> MIRANDA:  Have more discussion.

   >> SARA: I'm reneging of the roll call because we want more discussion.

   >> CAROL:  I have the mic so anyway I think it's too soon. I think we have not really thought about this issue and the impact and I understand that the DD Council is a big partner but isn't MARO also a good partner? 

So I think we don't have enough information and I think being asked to it's kind of jumped way up into why, what is the hurry?  I don't understand. We clarify and they asked us for support or adoption and that is their terms too. We clarified what our meaning is but we don't know if that is what they mean when it comes back to them and I guess I don't know, Steve, I think your point about is it our role to take things that anybody might Britain forth and make a decision and vote on them in support or not, is that really what we are supposed to be doing here? 

And I guess that is why I like Ken's idea to take more time, have the executive committee explore what the ramifications of this might be and then come back to the next meeting or do it by phone really if it's that important.

   >> STEVE:  In the past we had organizations and folks come before this Council and ask for, endorsements and support for what would result in this Council engaging in advocacy which is prohibited and if it's not in the SPIL we don't do that and centers for independent living do that and conceptually again they are before us asking us to support and endorse. When you look at the SPIL under section 2 it states collaborative relationships necessary to support persons with disabilities in the state of Michigan are supported and enhanced through coordinated activities with the Michigan rehab Council, Michigan inter agency for infants and toddlers, developmental disabilities, all of our organizations. Collaborative relationships necessary to support. That is what we are supporting is those collaborative relationships. When these issues come before us I'm just thinking that there is the potential for a slippery slope here depending on who walks through the door next and is that the function of this body or should these be deferred to those organizations that do the advocacy. I support this 100% personally and professionally and as a Council member but not sure it's a function of the body to do this because you open up the door to the slippery slope of issues that once we set a precedent and it has been set in the past and I'm not sure it was the appropriate thing for this body to do and that is all I wanted to have considered.

   >> SARA: When we vote to adopt the mission and vision of the SPIL and all of the objectives in the SPIL and it aligns so closely with what this is stating except for some of the principles that are in that document. Did you want me to read that to them?

   >> VAL:  Not necessarily, I was giving it to you for reference.

   >> SARA: More discussion on this topic before we call a vote, Ken?

   >> KEN:  Ken Browde. Sara, you made a really compelling point and I respectfully ask you to clarify, good point, you said that you would support it but you would not adopt it.

   >> SARA: Because I don't agree with the principles that are in there. I support the vision that all people with disabilities -- the first place we try to help them get employment is in an integrated place and me personally how I feel. I don't want to endorse or -- I don't want to adopt something that isn't the best place where employment that may not be the best place for a person with a disability, anything that hinders choice and prevents people from not exploring options and choose for themselves, that I have a hard time with. But what I'm saying is that I'm not seeing personally the need -- when we adopted the SPIL, this is so in line, there is no difference in the mission and vision of this employment first and what we adopted in the SPIL so I'm struggling with why we have to adopt it or support it and I do think there needs to be conversations around unintended consequences.

   >> KEN:  That is where my head is at. And kind of locked up with Steve, no pun intended, did I really say that?  Good grief, as far as going outside the perimeters of our resolution.

   >> STEVE:  For me this is actually the other way around. We have already adopted this through the SPIL. They are endorsing the SPIL. I would like to suggest that, that them coming to us and they are now endorsing the tenents of the SPIL and not the other way around.

   >> SARA: That is a paradigm shift. Okay, we have a motion on the table and we have support for that motion that the Council support the employment first concept. We had a friendly amendment that Miranda declined to accept so are we ready to call a roll call vote on the original motion?

   >> MIRANDA:  Can I go back and say it's okay what he said? Because I just wanted more input from everybody else but it sounds like we definitely all agree that we need to decide.

   >> SARA: We may have a voting quorum right now. We need to reestablish a quorum; could we just have Karen do a roll call?

   >> Val it stays into effect until you say it's not next and if you don't roll call it -- okay, under rules of order, once the quorum is established it remains in effect until the published time that a meeting ends unless someone points out through action or a roll call vote that you have lost your quorum. So if you choose to do a roll call vote and you no longer have a voting quorum, then your vote on this and anything else that happens on your agenda you do not have a quorum to take action on.

   >> KAREN:  How many do you need for a quorum?

   >> VAL:  What was my note, there were 13 individuals originally, out of that 6 of them have to be individuals, not -- individuals with disabilities, not affiliated with a state agency or a CIL and as I look around the room I'm seeing one, two, three, four, just point of clarification.

   >> SARA: So it matters what entity we work for and represent that will determine a quorum and not the actual number of bodies in the room compared to the number of bodies in the room compared to the Council.

   >> VAL:  When you are voting on an action 51%, we had this conversation before, 51% of the voting membership have to be individuals, not plowed by a state agency or a CIL with disabilities.

   >> SARA: Steve has a question.

   >> STEVE:  From my understanding that is in terms of what the makeup of SILC needs to be in terms of voting membership. However, in voting our bylaws state except as otherwise provided in these bylaws a simple majority vote is needed for official action and not divided up who you work for or represent, it's the voting membership of the Council.

   >> VAL:  Which is what our bylaws say, yes, you are right. I can assure you there are states where action of the Council has been overturned because when RSA did the review they saw that 51% of the members that were voting were not individuals with a disability, that did not work for a state or a CIL. And they made the Council go back and redo action when they have come in for their review. But as for what our bylaws say you are exactly right.

   >> SARA: I tend to support and lean to what our organizational bylaws state and if there is some issues with our bylaws and we need to get those clarified but at this point our bylaws say simple majority Steve as you read it was the majority of Council members, what is the total number of Council -- voting Council members we have.

   >> VAL:  15.

   >> SARA: Mike, are you still on the phone? Mike, are you on mute? Lisa is off the phone, she texted me. Okay, I think we have nine voting members out of 15, that constitutes a quorum, correct? Okay.

   >> VAL:  Sorry.

   >> SARA: The motion on the table is to support the employment first initiative. And, Miranda, I believe you asked could you accept Ken's friendly motion now?  And Ken's friendly motion is currently a friendly amendment to table; and, Miranda, do you accept his friendly amendment?

   >> KEN:  Table and review. 

   >> SARA: To executive committee for further discussion and bring that information back to the full Council in February.

   >> KEN:  Correct.

   >> SARA:  Do you accept his friendly amendment?

   >> MIRANDA:  Please do not use abbreviations and not everyone knows what EC means.

   >> SARA: Executive committee, thank you for that reminder and Robin needs to accept it.

   >> VAL:  She was the second.

   >> SARA: So you are the second and Robin do you accept the friendly amendment.

   >> ROBIN:  Yes.

   >> SARA: I'm not calling roll call regarding the friendly amendment. All those in favor?

   >> Aye.

   >> SARA: Any opposed? 

   Motion carries.

   Thank you for that. Okay, the next item on the agenda under new business is the executive director evaluation and I wanted to share with the full Council that annually the executive committee of SILC is charged to conduct a performance evaluation of our executive director Valarie Yarger and they conducted a 360-degree evaluation seeking input from the Council and designated state units partners and staff and centers for independent living sorry and centers for independent living and based on the response rate and quality of the input we received the executive committee deemed this a successful approach on Thursday November 21 Ken Browde and I conducted the performance evaluation and had specific objectives we would like to see her focus on and an example of some of the items we asked her to develop a three-year proposed blue print for the state plan development and present it to the executive committee in February at the executive committee meeting, to annually visit each CIL and pursuit of the SPIL goals involving the CIL network and provide ongoing reports to the Council regarding information collected during those visits and also continue to coordinate and collaborate with the CILS and IL partners to gather information about the advocacy efforts and bring information forward in the summary report to the Council at the committee of the whole meetings. Valarie has an employment contract that is between herself and the Council and that contract currently expires December 31st of 2015 and states each with each satisfactory performance review and additional years added to that contract and based on feedback we receive we will be extending Valarie's contract and offered her a cost of living pay increase which was included in the fiscal year 14 budget that was passed by this Council in September and it will be modified to reflect that increase. So I wanted to thank all of you that participated in providing feedback and special recognition to my fell executive committee members for all their hard work on this process, they were so critical and ensuring this was a success and I want to thank Valarie for your ongoing commitment to people with disabilities and to SILC and to know your work is very much appreciated by us so thank you.

   >> VAL:  My pleasure, thank you.

   >> SARA: Okay, I don't need a motion to accept that. Thank God.

   >> VAL:  Yes, at this rate thank God, I agree with you.

   >> SARA: The next item on the agenda is public policy and I just wanted to make everybody aware that the mental health and wellness task force that the governor commissioned and the leadership of Brian Calley has been working with members of legislature and department heads to better understand and develop strategies to serve people with mental illness in our state and that commission will be wrapping up its final report here in the next several weeks and so if there is anything that is relevant that comes out of that we will -- I'm sure it will be shared forward with this Council.

   So that was all I had under public policy and now we are at reports and as I said I really want to try to get out of here early because of the snow to the north, it's about ten until 1:00, if we could wrap all of this up by 2:00 or 10 to 2:00 thank you we can try to wrap all of this up and get through public comment by 2:30 that would be the goal, so my first report that we have on the agenda is from Connie Kiggins who attended ReCon a few weeks ago and she will give us a report and we will go into DSU reports before partner reports.

   >> CONNIE:  Val and I were at Traverse City for the ReCon conference and there were approximately 300 people there. We had a SILC booth and we went healthy and gave out apples and gave away luggage tags, quite a bit of information was shared. Thank you, Connie.

   >> SARA: Can everybody follow Connie's lead, please? Just say what you have done, what you do and how great it was really quickly.

   So Lou I will turn this over to you for your report for Michigan rehabilitation services.

   >> LOU:  I will do my best MRS happy to say we met rehabilitation goals for fiscal year 13 with over 6600 people with disabilities able to gain and maintain employment. We knew we wouldn't reach the level we reached last year and we lowered our goals as a result of it and knew we would have Counselor shortages that would affect our ending numbers but we did hit the goals that we established and I'm proud of our staff and people we work with that we were able to do that.

   About 53% of the customers we work with who reached the point of having an individualized plan for employment make it into employment so a little over half of the people had a plan and made it into employment and working to make this higher and want it to be higher but it does compare favorably with non-disability employment programs and other state voc rehab agencies.

   Although not all of the statistics are reported yet nationally for fiscal year 13 MRS I'm sure will remain one of the most cost effective programs in the country and in terms of costs per employment closer we are currently half the cost expense in terms of getting people into employment is what the national average is.

   We expect to remain and state with one of the highest hourly wages in the country. We are third right now at about $13 per hour.

   And we expect to remain near the top in terms of the number of rehabilitation per rehab Counselor. Right now we lead the country in terms of the number of people we place into employment per rehab Council.

   Customer satisfaction rate bumped up and we are at 85.4%. Our return on investment continues to be strong for every dollar spent in fiscal year 12, $9.26 is returned to Michigan economy within three years, another way of saying it's that for every 13 cents invested by the state legislature $9.26 enters the economy in terms of increased earnings. In 12 there was $17.8 million in increased annual earnings for customers going to work, $19 million in additional Federal and State taxes paid. And separate from the return on investment calculations but of interest is that we spent about $38 million with Michigan vendors and about $13-$14 million of that was spent with community rehab centers established for independent living as partners.

   A little over 27% of our customers have hearing impairments this past year 21% with mental illness, a little over 18 1/2 percent with learning disability, 16% with physical disabilities, 10% with cognitive disabilities, 5% with substance abuse disorders and very few .9% with visual impairments that wouldn't qualify for BSBP.

   We have some interesting things happening this year, including our second year of collaboration with the Michigan Transition services administration to increase work opportunities for youth with disabilities. And we will talk about some things that MRS and other parts of DHS are doing to help people transition into employment and Corrigan's work teams and we have recently been approached by the institute for community inclusion at the University of Massachusetts to be part of a demonstration project and assistive receiving Social Security disability insurance to reach substantial gainful activity and have gone across the country and done research on those VR practices that best move people from receiving SSDI into gainful employment and they have asked us to implement as a research demonstration project some of those things and we are just in the early steps of talking with them about that. But we are hopeful it will be resolved $600,000 per year for three years to have the demonstration project.

   Michigan Career Technical Institute, our training center is working on their strategic plan which plans to create shorter term training and to offer training in community settings.

   The initial plan will be shared with DHS leadership in the next month or so.

   We developed a joint training and referral plan with DHS to serve the youth and Justice System who have disabilities and continued to collaborate with DHS and serving foster care youth.

   We had a couple staff members here, if you will kind of raise your hand, Jennifer Gay, Jennifer works on the contracts with the CILs. And Tom Jones who is in contracts and monitoring and evaluation and I'm going to hand this off to Tom for just a minute to talk a little bit about monitoring for CILs and I will take more questions.

   >> TOM:  We want to beef up in the next year is contract monitoring. We have had staff reductions as you know and a move of departments and we have not been monitoring the CILs like we hope to in the future. We have a 6 point strategy for contact monitoring and based on continuous improvement, it's not a gotcha approach it's looking at how we can work together to improve services in the CILs.

   The six points of the strategy are number one pre-award monitoring. Before we issue a contract award, we have the specific set of steps to go through and check and see if the CILs are in shape for it.

   The second is quarterly reports and you all submit quarterly reports as you know and we are going to review those carefully.

   The third is to review monitoring reports from other organizations that provide money to CILs like D.C. H and DA and DD Council and so on.

   We think we can learn quite a lot from reviewing what other monitors are doing.

   The fourth is risk assessment. DHS has given us a very simple risk assessment tool and we plan to use that.

   And the fifth is off site desk reviews in line with the Federal compliance guidelines that you are all pretty familiar with if you have ever been through a Federal review.

   Finally, only if necessary, an onsite visit and following the Federal compliance guidelines for that.

   >> LOU:  Any questions for Tom or I?

   >> SARA: If an organization is accredited and for their three-year review you would also look at something like that or CMH contracts to provide services that are not core services, they would be core but not core but current state core contract like supports coordination or community living supports and would you also use monitoring reports for those organizations.

   >> Tom:  I think those are examples.

   >> SARA:  Thank you.

   >> LOU:  Okay.

   >> SARA: Okay, thanks Lou. Ed Rogers is -- was schedules to be here to do the Bureau services of blind services report but Lee Monday are you doing that in lieu today?

   >> LEAMON: Yeah, I can pitch hit this. The Bureau of services of blind persons and probably say we were successful in achieving our goals in rehabilitation for fiscal year 2013. We have had some down slope force a period of time but the last fiscal year we were successful in that. As we look at independent living program as well, we increasing in that the agency increased and provided services to approximately 3800 individuals this past fiscal year so we have continued to improve and providing services to persons that are blind and vision impaired.

   As we look at some of the transition activities, we are expanding in our transition activities increasing to develop transition programs with the school districts and reaching out to some of the districts that is in the northern lower part of the UP and to develop transition activities in those areas.

   And also we are working with the school districts throughout the state on developing some collaborative programs to discuss the services with the activity of the school districts in order to increase our services through transition youth. We have looked at what the percent of the case load and with the programs we are increasing our youth and in the programs.

   We use youth vision program to as kind of a catalyst to bring in individuals and as we share with the school district and helping them to appreciate this process we are finding and finding more individuals at an early age because we try and start with them at age 14 when we were experiencing for a number of individuals coming to the program at senior age like 17 years old and many of the opportunities that are available to them were not -- they were missing because of they didn't graduate at that particular time so this process is beginning to provide things about the districts as well as plans to recruit referrals.

   We also, too, continue on the event because at our center in Kalamazoo it's on a ten-week cycle or semester and in between those many times we had those adjustment programs where the individuals receive training in those areas.

   We have worked with and continue to work with the mission works and accomplish some programs with them that we are getting direct, some direct job placement services and job placement fairs with the Michigan works and looking forward to that to help us increase in providing employment opportunities for our consumers.

   The Bureau has experienced some staff shortages and members and individuals have retired and at this time we are replacing some of those that have retired. So we have some new staff and it's going to take a little time for individuals to get up to speed and looking forward to having a successful year and in both areas in our vocational program as well as in the other programs.

   And I can't think of anything else.

   Also, one of the areas too is in talking about the Bureau as it expands and we have the new division and it's called bad. Business services development program. And this program we are looking for how it will assist us in expanding business opportunities for persons who are blind and visually impaired. And the winner of the program is here and I would like him to say a few words and that is Rob.

   >> ROB:  I recently have been brought on board to head up the business assistance and development program and so far my mandate is in flux at the moment but it's to work with Leamon's group with clients they identify that are looking for a business track as an owner and to also go out and recruit others that may not be aware we have this opportunity for them to go into business and to market and promote folks going into business and help support and enhance those that are already in business who are running these businesses in the state, this was an initiative started by the governor and hopefully I will be able to increase business by blind persons in the state.

   >> SARA: Okay, I failed to ask you if you had any questions for Lou when he finished up. I know Tom asked a few questions but so perhaps if you have questions for Lou or Leamon and Rob, questions for Rob, why don't we take those now.  Is there any questions for any of those folks?

   >> LEAMON:  I need to add one other things and it's always that way, you know.

   We talked somewhat yesterday I guess at the meeting but anyway the Bureau along with Sara developed an agreement with the CILs and that we will be working with various CILs throughout the state to promote or to encourage or to collaborate on ways that we can increase the services, working with the centers for independent living and I think this is an excellent opportunity again for the community to become aware of the Bureau of services and how as we work with the centers for independent living to collaborate to increase services and I did not want to forget that because it was a long time coming and I appreciate all the work that has gone into that staff as well as Sara and her group. Thank you.

   >> SARA: Thanks, Leamon. Okay, why don't we go to Carol next for the 121 project?

   >> CAROL:  Our project visions are 121 vocational rehabilitation project on the Indian reservation has just completed its third year in a five-year grant and we are into year four and what is interesting in our grant process is that RSA is not held the competition for these grants for three years and the reason for this is because somebody has challenged the definition of reservation, Indian reservation in the grant and going through a whole public comment and legal review to see how that comes out.

   So what RSA has done is they just extended each grant for one year at a time until they can hold a competition and they assure us that this will be the year that the competition will be held, so fortunately we are not come peeing this year, we have one more year after this because there are a lot of grants and 83 in the country and we are on a five-year rotation so there be a lot of competition this year and I had to bring that up because Denise and I were talking at lunch about why are we the vocational rehabilitation on a reservation in Michigan when many other states with more than one reservation is multiple projects. It's basically been because people very few tribes have applied over the years and we had ours since 1995 and once or twice I have encouraged other people to actually follow through with an application and it's a very difficult application to write and we wrote it for eight years and we were rejected every year before we were funded and it's like not I will do this once and if I don't get it I won't do it again. Also, we have also talked about doing maybe an application that could go across reservations and could include more reservations with our grandfather but the funding has been limited and not enough funds for us to request to do that because each year there is only enough money to fund existing projects and so if somebody new gets funded that means somebody who has a current project no longer has that money for the project so it's not like states where everybody gets funding, it's a true competition.

   So I wish that were different because I think that there are about 540 reservations in the country with 83 projects and that is quite a gap.

   I also wanted to say this is my last meeting and my hopeful, maybe she is not hopeful, I'm hopeful after today's meeting, Mia Smith is Counselor at our vocation rehabilitation program and she has been a Counselor with us for ten years and so I have been trying to convince her for a few years that she really ought to do this and I think I finely achieved it so I said come to a meeting and you can meet everybody and get familiar and this is one of the most active meetings I have seen for a while and it was interesting and also wanted to, she has not been to Lansing before and in our part of the world people go to Green Bay or Chicago is closer than Lansing so yesterday we drove around and saw the state capitol and also showed her important things like where is the Lansing mall. So anyway so hopefully the governor appointment will all go through and Mia will be here as our representative in February, so I just wanted to add one other quick thing and last time I talked about our supportive housing initiative we are doing on the reservation and this would be supportive housing for people who are homeless or returning from substance abuse treatment or coming back from prison or jail. And we had hoped to open on December 1st but construction is not yet complete and we are not ready. But in talking with some folks today, the whole concept of person on centered planning I am excited because that is the motto to follow as we work with people in this situation and we all will be developing a plan and I think the concepts of the CIL really fits nicely into the model we are trying to develop so I want to thank you. I always like coming to Lansing because I rob good ideas from people and I can go home and go guess what? So anyway I just wanted to thank you all. I appreciate the time that I have spent here on the Council and I know it's been a longer term than most because I didn't have a person to come in from our project and that is a requirement is something from our project is on the Council so I hope you will all welcome Mia next month and she can be here for the next ten. Anyway, thank you.

   >> SARA: Thank you, Carol, I'm going to deviate from the agenda because it's an appreciate moment to recognize Carol for all of the years she served on our Council, from 2006-2013 Carol has been a wonderful voice at this table, has taught all of us a lot of things but the one thing I admire about Carol is she is very calm. My first experience with Carol was actually when I was in graduate school, I think I interacted at various times maybe at conferences but I really got to see Carol in action when she spoke to us at graduate school and at that moment I decided I would like to be Carol when I grew up.

   >> CAROL:  And she grew up.

   >> SARA: I personally learned a lot from you over the years so thank you so much.

   >> CAROL:  Thank you.

   >> SARA: For the work you have done for us, and give credit to Val for picking this out.

   >> VAL:  Give credit to Tracey for picking this out.

   >> We have a few pictures.

   >> CAROL:  I am feeling short but not small. 

[Applause]

   >> Mia we look forward to working with you as well and happy you get to be a part of our Council hopefully, I'm encouraged and I think that it was great for you to be able to come down and spend some time with us this week. Our first opportunity to meet Mia was at the bar yesterday so we kind of bonded there.

   >> MIA:  No better place that than.

   >> SARA: Collette, are you on the phone? So she add an issue at the office she had to go back and attend to so going in order of reports, she did give me her written notes that she wanted me to read to you so I hope I can do her report Justice before we continue on with the remaining reports.

   She is with the Michigan Department of Education low incident outreach. And she has a few updates she wanted us to share. She is pleased to announce the Bureau of services for blind persons and low incidents outreach which I will refer as LIO are bringing Karen wolf to Lansing on March 25th of 2014. She is a nationally known expert in the field of transition and her topic will be transition and career outcomes so she mentioned this might be something that we would be interested in attending.

   Her second item is LIO has more outreach classes occurring than ever before. They have ten Braille classes statewide including Marquette and multiple adaptive technology classes are currently going on.

   You think you have great handwriting until someone else has to read it for you.

   The third item is LIO has set up collaborative meetings with Bureau of services for blind persons, ISDs and local consultants for students with a visual impairment. They are finishing up the region's short -- in order for everyone to access and understand the services available through BSBP. They have gone great and do look forward to follow-up.

   Item four is camp T in Greenville has a new website and if you have student groups it's $50 a day food included for you to go and go on climbing tours or go up the climbing tower and experience their camp for the day.

   She gave me the website, it is www.camptulsmeheta.org, maybe we can look that up and send that out to everybody, okay, thank you. But when she was telling me about this camp being available to student groups for $50 a day she also said when I inquired about this that other groups can rent the place for adult groups can rent it $50 a day and fully accessible for all disabilities and the food costs are $20 per person a day for adult groups whereas the youth groups and student groups they are included in the $50 a day so if you are looking for an interesting and cost effective play for a retreat for your organizations it might be a good place to check out.

   Number five was please go to the website to their website for all the happenings in the near future, it's www.cenmi.org.

   Okay, those are Colette's updates for you.

   Next one on the group I have Brian is the next on our list; Brian is from Michigan protection and advocacy services.

   >> BRIAN: Good afternoon, everybody. I'll be short. I was going to tell Carol if she wanted to talk about that stand next to me, anyway, Brian from Michigan Protection and Advocacy Client Assistance Program. Just to give you an update, as you know, Chris was here and so the agency is actively involved in that initiative when it comes to employment. The client assistance program, I just submitted my annual report for approval and it looks like our numbers are pretty normal. We opened 137 cases this year meaning that we are -- we actively investigated them, those are not -- those don't include INR but 137 cases, most of those were MRS, a few with BSBP and again this year we had zero cases with CILs. Now, again, is that a good thing or is that a bad thing? We are hoping it's a good thing because I know we have been trying to get out there to do our outreach presentation. I do have plans on -- it looks like I will go to the Traverse city CIL shortly to do a presentation up there and at the same time I'm going to be going over to the MRS office in Traverse city so I can kill two birds with one stone.

   And agency wise we are still trying to hire a new attorney because one of our attorneys took another job and a new CAB advocate starts on Monday, a gentleman by the name of Charlie Rose will begin working with us on Monday and looking forward to Charlie coming on board.

   Any questions?

   >> SARA: Any questions for Brian? Okay, thank you, Brian, how many CILs have you visited so far?

   >> BRIAN:  Six.

   >> SARA: Six, good, thank you.

   Next is Denise Stork-Philips from Michigan department of museum services.

   >> Denise:  I'm going to keep this shorter because everyone wants to get on the road and Lou as usual has great information and I'm just adding on to what he has already provided. In the last couple months director Corrigan has started to get involved with employers talking to them about what they need to get more disabled people as employees. I think several of you were at the business to business Summit that was held I guess last week that the governor attended and that was put on by Mike Sally and director Corrigan is in support of it and over 100 businesses showed up to the meeting to learn what they can do to bring more people on.

   In addition to the Summit we started a small workgroup within DHS that is working with our NRT which is our medical review team that looks at disability applications when they come in. MRS and local businesses as well as like Mike Sally organization to talk to businesses and come up with plans and strategic plan to move forward so we can work with businesses and find out what the needs are and it has been great and getting good feedback and by January we should have a concept to move forward we can flush out after that.

   Another project we are working on is adult services agency is doing a survey of all the counties in the state to find out what they are doing with durable medical equipment used that can be recycled or that people, not a lot of means can check into renting or leasing. They are just about done with this project and we are going to hopefully put all of those organizations that do take in used equipment and rent it out or resell it on our website. I am not 100% sure what that will do with it but there will be more information on that in the next couple months.

   That pretty much does it, 

   >> SARA: Any questions for Denise? And keep the microphone; I have a question for you. Anybody else have questions for Denise before I ask my question? So are you familiar with the assistive technology called AT exchange.

   >> DENISE:  I think I have seen their website and not sure if all of the counties are using it or if they are working with their own organizations but we wants to come up with a database so that people have resources if they need some assistance and I believe that will be one of the research that we will include.

   >> SARA: Several of the CILs have clean closets for durable medical equipment too.

   >> DENISE:  Would you mind providing me with that and I can give them to them.

   >> SARA: Want it to be inclusive.

   >> DENISE:  As inclusive as possible so people have the resources they need.

   >> SARA: Next is Kellie Boyd from Disability Network of Michigan.

   >> KELLIE:  Last, no pressure, thank you, Sara, quick updates from the CIL network. The first is the disability guide program, in September I spoke briefly about the new disability guide program that all the CILs are participating in. It is an evidence-based pilot underway and assisting people with disabilities and their families at the front end by identifying and removing barriers early in the process. So that they can access and navigate state systems to become self-sufficient.

   All of our disability guides are participating in motivational interview and training and have done that this month and will also do it in December and our program managers and executive directors will also be participating in motivational interview and training in January and February so that we can provide additional support for the program.

   Secondly, the CILs are continuing to cultivate BSBP and DHS to provide independent services and that is going well and doing the relationships and getting connected and helping people.

   The third thing I wanted to report is the Disability Network board of directors, I believe everybody problem received Sara's e-mail a few weeks ago but Disability Network Michigan recently held its annual members meeting and the board member elections. The organization is governed by a 7 member board comprised of the executive directors of the member organizations so the new fiscal year 2014 board members are:  Dave Emmel, and Dave represents Mid-Michigan, he is the chair of the board. Lesia she is from Jackson and she is the vice chair. Todd Whiteman is from Holland and he is our secretary and treasurer. Myself, I'm the SILC liaison and represent Oakland and Macomb and Rick Sides represents Detroit and member at large and Joe Hooper represents Southwest Michigan, he is a member at large as well and Ellen weaver from Lansing is our final member at large. So hopefully you will be seeing more of them in the coming months.

   The last thing I wanted to report is the CIL network is preparing to complete our annual 704 reports that will be submitted to the rehabilitation services administration by December 31st, '2013 and that is it unless I forgot anything from the network.

   >> SARA: No, thank you, Kellie.

   Moving on to other business, we recognize Carol for her hard work and I do want to take a minute to remind you that on the SILC website MISILC.org is a link to the comprehensive statewide needs assessment that is currently underway and if you could go on there and provide your feedback that will be very helpful, this is a coordinated effort between MRS, the Bureau of services for blind persons and SILC representing independent living and the state rehabilitation Council and they are trying to gather feedback to help get the data to feed to the next state plan I believe and share with friends and family.

   You know I know that we have so much information to manage through e-mails and through printed information and it's sometimes it's hard to keep up on everything and I just want to acknowledge the staff for doing a fabulous job in putting these comprehensive packets for us and we only meet four times a year as a full Council and a lot happens in between that period of time and so it's really incumbent upon us as we come to these meetings to read and be prepared and have questions developed so that we can really engage in the good work that we can do as a Council so I just wanted to give staff credit for all the hard work you put into preparing these packets and I want to give you guys credit for reading and preparing and being ready to engage as Council members.

   One thing not on the agenda I'm raising as a new issue is in the last several Council meetings since I have been chair I really struggled with the time limits that we have on our public policy, public comment policy and we currently give members of the public three minutes as an individual and five minutes as a group and I would like to present forward a motion to change that policy to allow five minutes per individual and 7 minutes for a designated representative of a group and so I'm putting forward a motion for that.

   >> KEN:  So moved.

   >> SARA: Ken supporting and any discussion.

   >> VAL:  You need a second.

   >> SARA: I moved it. I don't get to make motions at this Council and I move it and Ken supported it, any discussion, Carol.

   >> CAROL:  At the rehab Council we have two times during a meeting to have public comment and it was a request that was only at one time because it's hard for people to get there so I want to throw that out that in the morning time and an afternoon time or something like that.

   >> SARA: Is that a friendly amendment to my motion.

   >> CAROL:  Yeah.

   >> SARA: So accepted.

   >> KEN:  Accepted.

   >> SARA: Motion on the table with the friendly amendment is to change the public comment policy to reflect five minutes per individual, 7 minutes if you are somebody from a designated or designated representative from a group and we will offer public comment two times during the agenda and do we have any discussion on that? Ken then Connie.

   >> KEN:  I would like to entertain discussion that we just have five minutes for individuals and five minutes for representative from a group and five is five.

   >> SARA: Are you making a friendly amendment? Or can Connie.

   >> KEN:  I would like to get Connie to weigh in on this first and there will be an amendment, a bit irregular but what the heck.

   >> CONNIE:  I was going to ask if you're going to keep it still at 3 and 5 seeing you are doing it twice a day.

   >> SARA: No I am suggesting moving it to five and seven twice in the meeting and Ken is suggesting that we discuss five minutes no matter who you are two times in the agenda.

   >> KEN:  Making that a friendly amendment.

   >> SARA: The friendly amendment on the table is offering it two times during the agenda, the Council meetings and at five minutes per individual regardless of who you are representing.

   >> CONNIE:  Second.

   >> VAL:  Are you accepting?

   >> KEN:  I am accepting that, yes, I accept my friendly amendment.

   >> SARA: I accept your friendly amendment too. Any discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye.

   >> Aye.

   >> SARA: Any opposed? 

   Motion carries.

   >> KEN:  Information effective when?

   >> Sara:  Immediately. So moving into the portion on the agenda for public comment I will read the policy to you, as revised the following statement -- wait, I always do this, she has this paragraph that I'm supposed to read and I never read the right paragraph members of the public who wish to speak will be called upon by the chairperson, you will be allowed five minutes to address the group, the public must address the Council and not utilize this time engaging in dialog with the members of the Council during breaks we will have the tune to meet and engage in such dialog members of the public are requested to refrain from repetitious comment during this portion of the agenda. So as a courtesy to anybody on the phone do we have anybody on the telephone that would wish to engage in public comment? 

   I'm asking twice in case somebody is on mute, anybody on the phone that would like to engage in public comment for this Council? 

   Okay, I believe we have Mr. Sean Bennett here to give public comment and I have a really cute little timer so if you hold on Sean we will get you started and we are set for five minutes on my rooster or chicken, I guess I don't know but go ahead Sean.

   >> SEAN:  Good to be here today and I think you made a wise decision to allow opportunity for public comment to twice a meeting and for five minutes and really I think it shows loyalty to the purposes and the mission of this group to try to engage the public and be responsive to the public.

   I know often times a lack of participation is usually the problem but it definitely is a good sign to let people know that we are encouraging and this group is encouraging and wants to hear what the public cares about, what the public wants and so I think it's a good idea and for me I often found I have to speak too quickly and so this is definitely I think I hopefully can do a better job of speaking when I do.

   Today several issues but I think that my first issue of business given we are celebrating at this moment commemorating 50 years on the assassination of JFK, that I really felt that it would be appropriate to remember JFK's sister and her name is Rosemary and it deserves everyone's attention and it does hopefully it will give us lessons and make us stronger as we approach the future and what we need to do and ought to do as public citizens and members of a democratic constitutional society.

   So I did want to do that but I think before I mentioned the Rosemary Kennedy story to cover where I am and I have attempted to try to advocate for policy issues for many years and I have attempted to work with the group and at present I still feel that there is improvements that can be made so that as an advocate I would like to feel as though the group here is in a position to impact on policy issue. And I still feel that -- it kind of feels broken to me and it has in the past and felt sort of broken to me in that okay, I have a compelling policy issue that involves disability rights and I try to tell people in the group and in the past it sort of has fallen on deaf ears so to speak that no one cares. And no one wants to do anything. And they don't know what to do and if they -- even if they say you are right and they don't know what to do about it anyway and I think that so it is I think this is -- continues to be a challenge in realizing that we are I think we should see in the role of this group as advisers and instructors to the local CILs. We should also see this group working with the other disability organizations as in that role of working with the entire disability community that if there are ideas in this group that we have a conscious and we see there is something wrong that although the group cannot legally go out and lobby the legislature I think that we can communicate these issues to others in the disability community and I think especially if part of our role is to sort of train, and lead the CILs then obviously we want to be versed on the issues and so I definitely hope that in the future the group can, you know, be more effective in dealing with disability rights issues.

   How much time do I have left?

   >> SARA: 30 seconds or not quite that.

   >> SEAN:  Time flies and I didn't want to fail to mention Rosemary Kennedy that she was an older sister of JFK, she slightly retarded, because of a problem at birth and you look at the pictures of the Kennedy family you can find E nor mouse pictures and looks normal and part of the big family and what happened is at 23 years old the parents decided to give her an lobotomy and became totally disabled and invalidated and spent the rest of her life in an institution in Wisconsin and lived I think until for 90 years but she was just remove from society and removed from her family and removed from her own mind with the lobotomy and suffered that her whole life through and how can we remember this and someone with a slight disability then would be subjected to a medical fraud that would give them a catastrophic and this is the thing we want to see that does not happen in the future so thank you.

   >> SARA: Thank you, Sean, appreciate it. Do we have any other public comment here today? 

   Okay, my chicken did not ding and Sean you did a great job in sharing your points in five minutes and glad it helped you.

   At this point I don't see any other agenda items so I'm looking for a motion for arrangement.

   >> KEN:  So moved.

   >> CONNIE:  Moved.

   >> SARA: Do I have a friendly amendment to that, thank you everybody, have a great weekend and have a great Thanksgiving holiday and Christmas holiday. 

   [Meeting concludes]