Friday, June 21

LDC short-staffed, AFSCME claims

[JUNE 21, 2002]  A shortage of technicians, staff members who give direct day-to-day care to the remaining 243 residents of the Lincoln Developmental Center, is causing an average of a thousand hours of overtime each week, according to members of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 425, the union that represents most of the LDC workers.

AFSCME says the shortage exists because the Department of Human Services has transferred technicians to other facilities.

"They transferred 16 staff people, nearly all techs, to other facilities to care for LDC residents that were going to be sent to those other facilities but never were," said Dan Senters, former AFSCME president and AFSCME spokesman. "That’s 80 shifts a week those people aren’t working at LDC."

 

"After we got the citation for pica (a behavior in which a person eats inappropriate materials) in September of 2001, a lot of individuals with those behavior issues were put on one-to-one staff ratio," Senters said. "Sometimes this was as many as four to five people in one area. This upped the numbers of staff that had to be on one shift, but management made no staff adjustment to compensate for it.

"About every third day, most of the techs are required to put in overtime. About every third day these techs are at LDC not 8½ hours, but 17. We have an exhausted, stressed-out work force," he said. The extra half hour is the unpaid lunchtime.

Adding to the stress of the workers who do the hands-on work of caring for the residents is the uncertainty about their jobs and the daily presence of monitors — employees of other state-operated facilities — watching their performance, Senters said. The function of the monitors, according to a press release by Gov. George Ryan, is "to help maintain a suitable standard of care for residents."

 

"Sometimes I question their motives," Senters said. "They are looking over your shoulder to see if you are going to make a mistake," he said.

Charlie Sanders, AFSCME local vice-president, said he has compiled a tally of workers actually on duty at LDC and compared it to the total required by the formula used by Department of Human Services, the state agency that oversees all facilities for the developmental disabled.

According to Sanders, Unit I needs 126 staff members and has only 119 scheduled. However, of the 119, only 107 are actually on the roster of active workers. The other 12 are not working directly with residents. They may be on administrative leave for various reasons.

"In the month of April, Unit I had 232 shifts of overtime, and in May it had 269 shifts," Sanders said.

 

 

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In Unit III, the only other unit on the campus now, 122 workers are needed and only 110 are scheduled, according to Sanders’ tally.

"Altogether we are 31 bodies short of what we need for a minimum," he said.

The overtime situation has been going on for more than two years, although not quite as extreme as it is now," Senters said.

However, Reginald Marsh, spokesman for the Department of Human Services, said LDC is not understaffed. "LDC has had and continues to have one of the highest staff-to-resident ratios out of all 11 state-operated facilities for the developmentally disabled. Two months ago they had the highest ratio." He also said the Lincoln technician ratio is comparable to that of other facilities.

 

He said overtime is an issue at LDC, as it is in all facilities, but a higher-than-usual absentee rate at LDC is part of the problem. Part of that is probably due to what was "the continued uncertainty" about the future of the 125-year-old Lincoln facility, he said.

That uncertainty may be over, since Gov. George Ryan has ordered LDC closed completely and hopes to have the campus emptied of residents and employees by Sept. 1. However, AFSCME is pursuing legal remedies to keep LDC open as long as possible. These include a court case that halted transfers of residents and is not yet resolved, and a hearing before the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board that must be scheduled before Gov. Ryan can close the facility for good.

 

In the meantime, Senters said, the staffing shortage is becoming a kind of vicious cycle.

"More people are calling in sick because they are under stress from having to work so much overtime and being constantly watched to see if they are making a mistake.

"They are working overtime, doing their jobs, and being punished because they are fatigued and afraid they might make more mistakes," he said. "And it is almost impossible for them to get an extra day off to rest up or take a holiday. In the meantime the staffing policy is causing stress and costing the state a lot of money for overtime."

[Joan Crabb]


Central School opening date
projected for March 2003

[JUNE 21, 2002]  Although it doesn’t appear that much is going on right now at the site of Elementary School District 27’s new Central School, more activity will be apparent next week, according to construction managers from the S.M. Wilson firm.

"Next week we ought to be seeing concrete poured at the site," said Bill Ahal. Interior masonry walls will also start going up at the Seventh Street site, he said.

 

However, the target date for opening the new 47,000-square-foot building has been moved from Jan. 1 of 2003 to at least March, in part because of the need to cut costs to keep the new school within its approximately $6 million budget.

"My best guess is that we will be moving into the new school sometime between March and August of 2003," Superintendent Robert Kidd said. Central students will move into the new building; then junior high students will move into the old Central School while the present junior high building is demolished and a new one built.

At its regular meeting Wednesday evening, the District 27 board continued approving bids for construction work on the new school. Bids were approved on equipment for the gymnasium, including a divider curtain mounted on the ceiling, six basketball backstops, four of which will be adjustable, and plastic rather than wooden bleachers. Gym equipment came in just slightly over budget, Kidd said.

 

The board also decided to stay with the original specifications for pulse-type boilers rather than look for a cheaper alternative.

 

 

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Board president Bruce Carmitchel said he believed it would be better to spend a few dollars more for the better-quality boilers, which would heat the building more evenly and are more fuel-efficient. Kidd said he thought the district would eventually get its money back on savings in fuel consumption.

Ahal reported that the district may have to rebid kitchen supplies, as the manufacturer that came in with the lowest bid has suddenly gone out of business.

 

"The owner took everything the company had and is gone," he said. "It just happened today. The company will have to forfeit the bid bond, but the low bid we had is not there anymore," he said.

Superintendent Kidd told the board that the district’s property tax rate dropped a little over 7 cents per $100 equalized assessed valuation this year, due to a $4.4 million increase in the total assessment of the district. He said 80 percent of the district’s assessment comes from houses and very little comes from farm ground, which is losing value right now.

The total tax rate last year was $3.11 compared to this year’s $3.04, he said — the lowest tax rate in the district since 1994. This will add $75,000 to the education fund, $9,700 to the building fund and $3,800 to the transportation fund, he said.

[Joan Crabb]

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Homeland Security Summit in Springfield

[JUNE 21, 2002]  SPRINGFIELD — The Illinois Terrorism Task Force and the Illinois Fire Service Institute hosted a two-day Homeland Security Summit on May 20 and 21, using a grant provided by the University of Illinois Partnership Illinois program. The summit was in the Studio Theater at the Public Affairs Center on the University of Illinois Springfield campus.

"The central goal of the summit was to bring together local leaders from throughout Illinois in order to create a genuine dialogue on homeland security issues," said Gov. Ryan. "Not only that, but also to make policy recommendations about where state homeland security policies and programs should go from here."

 

This summit is the culmination of 18 regional Homeland Security Workshops that have been conducted around the state over the past three months. The summit also builds on the 16 regional Homeland Security Seminars that the governor sponsored for first responders and the public in November and December of last year.

More than two years ago, Gov. Ryan created the first-ever statewide Terrorism Task Force. Under the direction of the Illinois State Director for Homeland Security Matt Bettenhausen as well as Illinois Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Chamness, the task force has provided an ongoing interagency forum to develop homeland security policies and to direct state efforts toward planning, preparation and response to terrorism in Illinois.

"One of the clear lessons of Sept. 11, 2001, is that local actions are critical to protect Americans against terrorism," said Illinois Homeland Security Director Matt Bettenhausen. "Terrorist events and threats in the U.S. will occur locally and will require local responses and resources. Response and recovery plans must be prepared and exercised. We also must work to develop plans that will prevent or even pre-empt a terrorist attack."

 

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According to Fire Service Institute Director Richard Jaehne, "A key consideration in bringing this summit together has been to include those individuals who have a critical role to play in planning for and responding to a terrorism event."

The summit provided various break-out sessions allowing individual participants to discuss specific areas of homeland security and to further planning for dealing with different types of terrorist threats Illinois may face in the future.

In Logan County, local leaders and emergency response agencies meet every three months to share information and participate in practices through LEPC, the Local Emergency Planning Committee. Dan Fulscher serves as coordinator.

A number of local leaders have been attending preparatory seminars in their field of expertise, not only through their professional organizations, but also through some of the newly formed emergency response organizations. Logan County ESDA Assistant Director Terry Storer recently attended an "Effective Communications" seminar in Marion.

[Illinois Government News Network
press release / Jan Youngquist]

 

 

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