Strickland saves the day

The Employee Development Department (EDD) has for some years offered support and services to professional job seekers in Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks and East Ventura County. Organized as OPEN (Outstanding Professionals Employment Network), this semiautonomous group has designed and developed a training course and support services to help professional job seekers find and obtain new positions.

We noted in June that our computer screen projector highintensity bulb was about to fail. These bulb assemblies are expensive- $290- and are guaranteed for 10,000 hours. Ours had 132,000 hours usage and sometimes cut out because of overheating or filament damage.

Since the projector is essential for our training course, we requested a new bulb in June, but EDD told us that procurement was held, awaiting an approved budget from the state of California. After the budget was approved, the purchase order was held for another 30 days "while the approved budget was allocated." We were unable to confirm that the new unit had been ordered. We even offered to purchase a bulb assembly from our volunteer contributions, which is against the EDD rules, but weren't assured that we'd be repaid.

Our EDD representative tried to help, but his own bureaucracy defeated him. He got the runaround from people who should know better and was treated disdainfully and rudely by the state procurement office when he tried to learn the status.

I escalated this within the Oxnard office but again couldn't obtain confirmation that the order had been placed or an estimated delivery date.

Frustrated by the inability of the EDD to confirm that a purchase order had even been placed, I called state Assemblymember Audra Strickland's office in Westlake Village. Jennifer Masterson, the EDD staffer, listened carefully to my complaint, and promised to discover what was going on.

Within two days I was called by the state procurement office, promising to investigate the purchase order and received a second call confirming that the purchase order had been placed. Sure enough, the bulb assembly was delivered to us yesterday, Oct. 24.

Strickland's office has more important and significant projects to be concerned about, but I'd like to publicly thank them for helping a frustrated citizen cut through the red tape of a simple purchase.

Thanks to their efforts we'll be ready to offer our training course again Nov. 5 through 9. Don Ballantyne Training committee co-chair Thousand Oaks