I always get a little anxious lying in bed , In the early morning and realizing that this holiday Labor Day is at the beginning of a month which I used to host my advisory board. I had my own advisory board because I was the manager for a innocuously small state office. I've referenced my state position a number of times in this blog. But I don't think I've ever really got into what happened to the position, office, advisory board and everything else associated with Access Utah, Inc. . Perhaps now I can write about the office because enough time has past. Like the had to be a waiting time before dramas and even comedies about war or allowed to creep into the entertainment of the general population.
I'm pretty sure I destroyed Access Utah Even though I cowardly I've held onto the story that the program was defunded by a radical conservative out of Utah County. I love telling the story that Access Utah got caught in a firefight between my boss and the senator – – which is actually true more or less. She did cut funding to my program thinking she was punishing my boss but in actuality I've been spiraling down to the endgame for years. I blamed everything over the last decade since the Y2K scare Of 1998.I used the year 1998 because that's what I became employed as manager for Access Utah, Utah's information office on disability questions. Briefly, the rent two phone lines and there were two of us answering the phones Monday through Friday eight the 5 PM. I also managed the website that had all things disability oriented not only for Utah but links for the whole country. So somebody from Utah could get information about disability programs and all the other states. That was a pretty good page. A part of the page is most proud I was “The Sales Bank” the sales bank was a static page where people who had equipment for disability, most importantly I dislike wheelchair vans, hospital type beds and anything else which might be of interest to folks with disabilities other families. I tried to keep the page as current as possible but you can only do as much as people will feed you content twice.
Anyway, we're funded by the four state agencies and what's a quarter we would meet when I would present the statistics for the preceding quarter. It was usually about an hour meeting those attending being forced to buy their bosses. Most the time I was at Access Utah, the bosses didn't care what we did they take our information five away and fund is for the next year when time came around. Following Y2K things seemed to change. The recession hit and all of a sudden funding sources begin to dry up on the large-scale which finally worked there way down to us. We were piddly, seriously, my budget was a little more than $100,000. This covered salaries, phone lines (true they were T1 lines but still) and the rent. Looking back I could've tried harder I think. I did do a lot of presentations, I did the main information fairs, a place I thought I could get interest in my program I was there. My visit to the Polynesian Festival brought that back full force. There was table after table of private nonprofits getting there trinkets and tokens out to whoever would stop by. We used to be one of those folks and so we would always be at these cultural events. This also meant that whenever there is a holiday or something where tables would be available we had to be there which meant that I didn't get the holiday is I had to work. True, I was a state employee and I can take the time at some other point in the quarter but still the holidays a holiday and you need to be off.
So the recession and I think to some degree the Internet killed Access Utah network.
As people became more and more savvy on how to search for information on the Internet there were less and less calls to the office. Division managers can no longer justify $25,000 a year that went into the Access Utah budget. And then, the nasty Sen. From Utah County pounded in the death nail And I was gone. Early retirement. Luckily or unluckily I also had the stenosis at about the same time would to the force me into early retirement so anyway you look at it my time at come. But the truth is hidden and perhaps that's best…
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