Resource center opens
By Joey Berlin
Originally published 01:24 p.m., April 3, 2008
Updated 01:24 p.m., April 3, 2008
Former Tyson Fresh Meats workers began filing in to the Mary Herbert Learning Center on Wednesday as the city’s Dislocated Workers Resource Center opened to help anyone affected by the Tyson layoffs.
By about noon on Wednesday, 26 inquirees had signed in at the room reserved for the resource center and began filling out paperwork and inquiring about assistance from a number of different local and state agencies.
Captain Jeremiah Burris of the Salvation Army, who was in charge of Wednesday’s activities at the workers center, was constantly in and out, often going outside to supply workers with boxes of food stored in the rear of a truck.
“We have four intake workers working to do the intake process, where they go through the paperwork to find the need ... do they need to sign up for food stamps, do they need this or that,” Burris said.
The United Way is serving as the city’s coordinating agency in charge of the resource center. Agencies represented at different tables included the Salvation Army food pantry, Newman Regional Health, Kansas Works, the state Department of Labor, Flint Hills Community Health Center, Westar Energy, Kansas Gas Service, Social and Rehabilitation Services, the Mental Health Center of East-Central Kansas, and Housing and Credit Counseling Inc.
The center will be open on Mondays and Wednesdays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Burris said the center was set up to begin analyzing needs and options for a maximum of four people every 20 minutes.
“Because this intake process takes a little time,” he said. “Assessing the need takes a little time. Because we want to be successful, we want to be efficient, and to really help the people. ... And at the end of the day, we’ve served 60 people. And so if we continue to do this, we should reach a pretty large percentage of the workers who have been laid off.”
Agency representatives were optimistic about how the center’s opening hours were shaping up. The Housing and Credit Counseling Inc. table is offering its services in both English and Spanish, including mortgage default counseling, debt repayment plans and pre-bankruptcy counseling.
“The biggest thing that we have seen ... has been, with the Spanish-speaking clients, their concern of their home,” said Michelle De La Isla, HCCI’s chief financial officer. “They’re homeowners, and they don’t know if there’s going to be another job that they’re going to be able to find, if they’re going to have to relocate.
“The biggest concern that people have is realizing that they don’t have a written budget, and having to write down to see how much they’re gonna receive from the unemployment, and to see if they’re going to be able to (pay) those bills on time, and the options that they have to salvage their credit.”
At the Newman table, credit collection agent Janae Brooks informed former Tyson workers about the hospital’s low interest-free payments and charity care program.
“Everything that we’re offering here today, we’re offering on a daily basis at (Newman),” Brooks said. “We just felt that we would come to the community instead of having them come to us.”
City Manager Matt Zimmerman, who said earlier that he was modeling the workers center off facilities used by the City of Wichita for previous employment crises, has indicated that it isn’t yet known how long the “one-stop shop” crisis center will need to be open.
“We’re just gonna gauge it as we go,” Burris said. “Maybe a month, we just aren’t for sure at this time. Could be three weeks, could be two months; we’re not really for sure. We’re just gonna gauge it as we see the need and go from there.”
People with last names beginning with A through M are asked to stop at the center on Wednesdays; those with last names starting with N-Z are asked to use it Mondays.
Dislocated Workers Resource Center
Address: Mary Herbert Learning Center, 1700 W. Seventh Ave.
Open: 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Mondays and Wednesdays.
Last names A-M are asked to use the center on Wednesdays, N-Z on Mondays