Shasta County Supervisors vote to close organization that helps disabled locals find work
REDDING, Calif. — Late Tuesday night, on almost the last agenda item of a meeting that went until 10 p.m., Shasta County Supervisors voted unanimously to close the Opportunity Center: a county organization that works to provide employment opportunities for disabled clients.
Ray Thomas has a son who has benefitted from the center's services for many years. He's furious with how he says county administrators ran the organization into the ground.
"The people on the ground, here, doing the work, are amazing. The administration at the HHSA level—health and human services—has been deplorable. It's horrible," Thomas told KRCR on Thursday. "The support's not there, they did not do the research...So, they let the entire system down and they, essentially, killed a 60-year-old program."
Supervisor Kevin Crye says he has a heart for the clients but he, and other board members, were essentially forced to close the center because it's costing the county an amount in seven figures every year.
"I won't go into detail about the things that the staff has shared about oversights and things that have happened over the last, roughly, seven years since, I believe, Jane Work stepped down, but it's left us with, really, no option," Supervisor Crye told KRCR on Thursday. "We can't operate it at upwards of a million, million-two a year in the whole." Jane Work is the former OC program manager.
Justin Rogers is a client of the center; he works in the Shasta County mailroom.
"How has this program helped you?" KRCR's Mike Mangas asked Rogers.
"It's helped me in so many ways. I don't want to ever leave the mailroom. I've got so many friends there. The bosses have been really nice to me. I've learned so much," Rogers answered Mangas. "I plan on staying at the mailroom until I can't work no more."
Now the challenge will be to transition Justin, and about 100 other clients, to a private entity. The OC will close at the end of June.
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