Funding effort for sheltered workshops could help Quality Products

By Steve Moyer

Nevada Daily Mail

Delbert Scott, Missouri Senator for the 28th Senate District has attempted to increase the per-diem paid to sheltered workshops in the past and will continue to introduce legislation to accomplish that goal. Currently sheltered workshops receive $13 for every six-hour shift each worker puts in. Scott hopes to increase that to $18 by 2009.

"For the past two years I have sponsored legislation to gradually increase payments to sheltered workshops," Scott said in a news release. "Although the bill was approved in committee each year and sent to the floor for full debate, time ran out in the session before the bill could be called up for discussion."

Scott said sheltered workshops face more than the usual business costs.

"Sheltered workshops are non-profit small businesses employing people who are deemed to be unable to work in a competitive work environment due to mental retardation, head injuries, blindness, deafness and other physical or mental disabilities," Scott said. "As with many businesses, operating costs are high. However, for Missouri's sheltered workshops, the strain of these costs is even more cumbersome, because unlike those in many other states, they operate mostly by relying on contracted work and the revenue that work generates."

Clem McFarland, director of Quality Products, a sheltered workshop in Nevada's industrial park, agreed and said the workshop has had a hard time finding enough work to operate on in the past but conditions have eased, if only slightly.

"We have to operate under state regulations that require one supervisor for every 15 employees, and the per diem payments help cover some of that administrative cost," McFarland said. "We've always operated on the income from our sales and the per diem, although the per diem hasn't been that large a percentage until business slowed down awhile back."

McFarland said the crunch that the workshop went through last year has eased, but it hasn't disappeared.

"We had an investor purchase 40 percent of the building we're in," McFarland said. "That has given us some operating capital to work with and we hope that we will be able to operate on it until we can get more work and pay that back."

One way that McFarland hopes the situation will ease is for local businesses that use the workshops services to grow and therefore increase the use of those services.

"This year is better than last year but it's still not good enough," McFarland said. "It would really help to have a large ongoing project to help tide us over slow times."

Quality Products produces a line of wood products ranging from small birdhouses to large shipping crates for export use.

"We're certified to build these pallets for export that have to be certified bug-free," McFarland said. "They're really more of a shipping crate that's three feet wide by eight feet long."