[nfbmi-talk] signing contracts with the sighted and other silly stuff
joe harcz Comcast
joeharcz at comcast.net
Wed Nov 13 23:15:14 UTC 2013
From: July 18 20013 “Commission for Blind Persons” Meeting Verbatim
11 MR. EAGLE: My name is Mark Eagle. I wanted to
12 highlight a concern that I've noticed a trend since the last
13 18 months that's going on in the BEP. There has been four
14 different temporary locations that have been mis properly
15 labeled. People have said that there's no blind qualified
16 people to take over the Port Huron, the Secretary of State,
17 the Anderson Building and the Capitol when there was people in
18 the Lansing area that have been qualified and have been
19 temporary operators in high profile locations like this Mason
20 Building, the Supreme Court, the Victor Building. So this
21 concern is constantly going on where people are saying that
22 there's not an administration when there is multiple potential
23 operators that I can name off, but I'm not going to name
24 names. And this brings me to the idea that managing is -- I'm
25 trying to think of the word. Sorry. I'll go onto my next
1 idea. But that's my major concern right now.
2 MR. RODGERS: In response to the comment about
3 the four facilities that Mark's aware of that there may be
4 temporary operators, two of those facilities we have no
5 control over, that's the Capitol Building and the Anderson
6 Building. The Anderson Building facility was closed by an act
7 of the Speaker of the House of Representatives. So Pat Cannon
8 had no choice. He couldn't keep that stand open. We were
9 simply booted out. That's a fact of life that we have to live
10 with, and that was December 2011.
11 And we have been working with the Legislature
12 to get that facility back open. The Capitol Building was a
13 similar situation where we had an emergency situation, and we
14 had to negotiate with the Legislature in order to get the
15 Capitol Building stand running for the summer. And this was
16 not a matter of choice necessarily by us, but one of
17 practicality. And if we wanted to have somebody at the
18 Capitol Building, we had to go along with some of the wishes
19 of the Legislature. As to the Port Huron facility, and I
20 can't remember what the third one -- what the fourth one was.
21 Constance, would you address those other two, as to why we
22 have temporary operators there.
23 MR. ZANGER: We also had a situation at the
24 Secretary of State where we had to, on very short notice,
25 remove an operator. We do have a temporary blind operator in
1 that facility. The Port Huron vending route we also -- the
2 operator resigned on very short notice. The facility was
3 terribly degraded. It was very dirty, the equipment was in
4 disrepair, and there was no inventory.
5 MR. RODGERS: And as I recall, Constance, in
6 order to get somebody in Port Huron we had agreed to a limited
7 contract, correct?
8 MS. ZANGER: We did indeed.
9 MR. RODGERS: We had to negotiate a contract.
10 The Commission should be aware of that. And we couldn't just
11 say to somebody, we want you to do this, but we're going to
12 do, you know, like a 30 day lease or a 10 day lease or we're
13 liable to yank you out as soon as we get somebody. I mean no
14 business is going to want to go in there and help us out under
15 those kind of unreasonable terms. So we did have to negotiate
16 a contract, and that contract is still running, Constance, is
17 that correct?
18 MS. ZANGER: That's correct. And that entity
19 came into that facility, repaired all the machines, brought
20 them back into service, cleaned them, and stocked them at
21 their own expense. There was no expense to the Bureau of
22 Services for Blind Persons for that.
23 MR. SIBLEY: If I could follow up with a
24 question, if I may. So that's why those facilities are not on
25 the bid line, they're not available for bid right now, is that
1 correct?
2 MR. RODGERS: That's correct.
3 MS. ZANGER: Well, that's why the Port Huron is
4 not. The other facilities, the Secretary of State, that
5 operator's license was suspended. And we will not put that
6 facility back on the bid line until that suspension issue is
7 resolved.
8 MR. RODGERS: See, that person is entitled,
9 Joe, to go through the entire hearing process. And we
10 couldn't bid -- it would be a lawsuit, quite frankly. If we
11 put that on the bid line, and somebody else came in and took
12 over that facility, and then the operator wins his or her
13 hearing, we've got to kick that person we just put in there
14 out and put them back in there, if that's what their relief is
15 from either the hearing or the Circuit Court or wherever. So
16 we're in limbo until the hearing process is over.
17 MR. SIBLEY: I understand.
18 MS. MOGK: Terry, do you have a comment?
19 MR. EAGLE: Good afternoon. First of all, I'd
20 like to go back to the 1980's when I was in the program, in
21 the cafeteria program. And I'd like to reinforce what Joe
22 Sontag said. We had 119 licensees and four promotional agents
23 assigned to highway vending and snack bars and one cafeteria
24 specialist that at that time I believe had eight cafeterias.
25 I came into a time when state government was, in many
1 respects, overgrown, to be polite. We saw, during the Engler
2 administration and then continuing through the Granholm
3 administration, that state government was cut back.
4 And it's my understanding now that we have one
5 third less of the number of state employees that were there on
6 board in the 1980's when I was in the program. I started out
7 at the Secondary Complex at the General Office Building. And
8 then when the Ottawa building opened in February of 1983, we
9 actually opened on Valentine's Day of 1983 and I was there
10 another eight years, there were three of us in that location.
11 And those two towers were so full of people that it gave a
12 generous, and I mean generous, income to three blind
13 operators.
14 So this is the reason why, some of the reason
15 at least from my perspective, as to why we don't have the
16 number of locations. There's another big problem with
17 security from the standpoint that now you enter a state
18 building and you have to be escorted, where you could, when I
19 was at the Ottawa building, we had the Lansing Tower apartment
20 building right across the street on Ottawa Street, we had
21 numbers and numbers of people coming there for both breakfast
22 and lunch. That's not available any more. The doors are
23 locked.
24 People can't come in and go freely about the
25 building. And so our locations are hurting. And I have been
1 complaining, along with other blind operators, as an advocate
2 for the last five or six years about evaluating these
3 locations. You speak about the Capitol. I was involved in a
4 Business Enterprise support team, and we made recommendations
5 about helping that operator, and nothing was done.
6 MS. LUZENSKI: Thirty seconds.
7 MR. EAGLE: The promotional agent that was
8 asked to do stuff did nothing to follow up. So it's really
9 disconcerting when you sit here and try to mislead people, Mr.
10 Rodgers, about what's happening and why things are happening.
11 Let me speak real quickly to the temporary operator thing.
12 You have people, sighted people, one after another after
13 another taking over our locations. And there are a group of
14 us that are willing to work. We've been trained. We are
15 highly successful. Mark is one of them. He -- you talk about
16 giving a contract to a private company for six months. How
17 about doing that for a blind person, instead of guaranteeing
18 us 30 days at most. Mark went in and worked one week --
19 MS. LUZENSKI: Time.
20 MR. EAGLE: -- at the Mason building, and there
21 was no inventory. He had to put his own money in. Did
22 anybody approach a blind person about going to Port Huron and
23 putting their own money and fixing up the equipment and stuff?
24 Hell no. It wasn't done, and it isn't going to be done
25 because there's not a focus on getting jobs for blind people.
1 And the route we're going with the franchising and fact that
2 Mr. Rodgers is not being honest to you -- with you about that
3 either --
4 MS. LUZENSKI: Time. Time.
5 MR. EAGLE: -- is that this program's going to
6 end up in the private sector with sighted people. And 84 or
7 78 blind people are going to be on welfare because the plan is
8 for work welfare to the blind.
9 MS. MOGK: Terry, thanks. We appreciate your
10 comments, but I would urge everyone, as we are all trying to
11 do, and I would urge everybody who comments to start with the
12 premise that everyone here is trying to work in the interest
13 of those who are blind and visually impaired. And I think
14 impugning the intentions of individuals is counter productive.
15 So I would admonish you to state your ideas and observations,
16 but without implying that there's an intention to undermine.
17 If the result is that, then that's a process we need to work
18 on, but the implication that there is a purposeful intention
19 to scuttle something I think is not helpful.
20 MR. EAGLE: With all due respect then, may I
21 have your personal --
22 MR. RODGERS: Do I get a chance to reply when
23 he's done?
24 MR. EAGLE: -- e-mail address so that I can
25 communicate and communicate the facts with this Commission?
1 MS. MOGK: The Commission has an e-mail box,
2 which you are welcome to e-mail. That is
3 bsbpcommissioners at michigan.gov.
4 MR. EAGLE: I'd like it uncensored through Mr.
5 Rodgers.
6 MR. RODGERS: I don't have access to it, Terry.
7 Nice try.
8 MR. EAGLE: It goes through your secretary.
9 MR. RODGERS: It goes through Sue Luzenski who
10 serves as the support person for the Commission. She has
11 access, you're correct.
12 MS. MOGK: Would you like to respond, Ed.
13 MR. RODGERS: Yes. Let's start with a couple
14 factual incorrect or factual incomplete facts dealing with
15 some of the facilities. The Capitol building was one of the
16 dirtiest facilities or public places I have ever walked into.
17 I cannot speak as to what the prior administration did to help
18 that operator improve, but like I said earlier today, I can
19 train you for 87 hours on how to mop a floor, if you refuse to
20 mop the floor, another three hours of training is not going to
21 do any good. That facility took a crew of people two days to
22 just clean it so you could get in there. It cost us over
23 $3,000 to clean that facility.
24 The Legislature was not going to let us put one
25 of our traditional operators in there for the summer because
1 we're in the process of completing an arrangement with the
2 Legislature for that facility and for the Anderson building.
3 And because of that, we had to go to the extreme measure of
4 having temporary people in there. Some of them are my staff,
5 and we've got nothing but rave reviews from the executive
6 office, from the legislature, and from the public in general
7 as to how nice the facility is now. I'm still talking, Terry.
8 I didn't interrupt you so I would ask the same courtesy, sir.
9 So that's why we have a temporary crew in the Capitol
10 Building. The Anderson building is still not open. We hope
11 that it will be open this fall. That is our long range goal.
12 As to the other two facilities that were
13 mentioned by speakers earlier, we explained to you what
14 happened in Port Huron and we explained to you what happened
15 at the Secretary of State's office. There are times that I
16 will do things that people will disagree with, and I accept
17 that fact. I try to make the best decisions we can at the
18 time and with the facts that are presented to us. Sometimes
19 our critics will agree with what we did and sometimes they
20 won't. It's just a simple fact of life that I'm not going to
21 be able to please a hundred percent of the people in any one
22 given day, and I accept that fact. It goes back to my prior
23 position as a judge when half the people who appeared in front
24 me were mad at me because they lost. Thank you.
25 MS. MOGK: Yes.
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