The Columbiana County MRDD Board faces some financial challenges at its two workshops that could result in employees being laid off before the end of this year.
The county has two sheltered workshops that are run by the MRDD board. At the Lisbon workshop, people with disabilities do a variety of jobs for local companies. One is building chemistry kits for a professor.
"There is over 90 different models of chemistry kits that we'll deal with," said Steve Kline, Director of Public Relations. "And it goes to show you just how good our consumers are and how adept the are. And basically what happens is, we'll build these chemistry kits, and we'll ship them off worldwide."
But with the economy, things have gotten tough for the workshops.
"A lot of our businesses that we've done business with, they lay off internally," said Bill Devon, Columbiana County MRDD Superintendent. "Of course, they're not allowed to contract out. They've pulled a lot of those jobs back in. We expect to get a lot of those back as the economy improves."
Enrollment has also declined because some people have left the MRDD workshops for better paying, privately run centers. That paired with the loss of work may mean four or five people getting laid off.
"You always try to do a quality service, serve the clients," said Devon. "And right now with the loss of enrollment, we just have to adjust to what enrollment we do have. And as we hopefully increase enrollment, we'll bring people back."
However, the MRDD board is trying to evolve in the way they do business and said that even with layoffs, they will still be above the state requirements for employee-to-client ratio.
