Scott Swanson
Brittany Maudlin has a very clear memory of the day the COVID-19 pandemic hit: Friday, March 13, 2020.
Maudlin, executive director of Sunshine Industries since 2015, has been on a vicious roller-coaster ride ever since. That was the day the state first shut down the organization, which has served local disabled adults since 1974. What followed was a sequence of heavy restrictions that severely curtailed its ability to serve clients and keep staff working, to the point that, Maudlin said, a month ago she saw the end nearing rapidly.
“We are losing $20,000 to $27,000 per month,” she said last week. “I cannot make that line go black.”
Circumstances were rosier in the late winter of 2020. Sunshine employed 36 people, who served some 85 clients. The nonprofit had $200,000 in the bank and planned to grow.
“We were looking at properties in Albany to expand to a second site,” Maudlin said.
When reports of the coronavirus began surfacing out of China, she said, “there was a lot of piqued concern, right out of the gate.”
That apprehension proved justified, as the state Office of Developmental Disabilities Services (ODDS) on March 13 closed Sunshine for two months.
“They said, ‘Shut it down. You’re done,'” Maudlin recalled. “Everyone, with the exception of a few salaried folks, was laid off. We were hemorrhaging approximately $53,000 a month.”
The organization did get some PPP “and every grant we could find,” which totaled about $500,000, but things were looking grim.
As the summer of 2020 approached, the state decided that Sunshine’s community janitorial and groundskeeping services were “essential,” and allowed some groundskeeping crews – initially manned by staffers – to work, she said. Since most of the client businesses were also shut down, there wasn’t much need for janitorial services at the time.
Bringing disabled clients back required a much more “rigorous” process, she said.
“We couldn’t just call them back. We had to have a team meeting. We had to tell them, ‘Here’s what we’re doing to mitigate the risks.’ They had to make the decision that they wanted to come back.”
Plus, ODDS severely restricted the occupancy of Sunshine’s 7,000-square-foot facility, at 1333 Clark Mill Road, to 10 people at a time – staff and clients. Cohorts of clients could be a maximum of six.
Maudlin said state officials seemed disinterested in actually closely reviewing the company’s situation.
“Some of the restrictions have felt a little bit arbitrary,” she acknowledged, noting that Sunshine’s facility can be literally divided into four independent sections, each with its own UV air filtration and heating system. “You can only have 10 people. I am sitting in a building that can be partitioned in four ways. They’re separate buildings, for all intents and purposes.
“I definitely have some difficulty understanding the methodology behind the rule-making.”
Sunshine adjusted its operations to maximize the number of personnel it could put to work, installing morning cohorts from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. weekdays, and afternoon cohorts from 2 to 6 p.m., plus weekend cohorts. It reinstituted limited janitorial services, but the operations took their toll on staff.
“We couldn’t serve enough people to have full groundskeeping crews, so we were severely undermanned,” she said.
Eventually, the cohort limit was raised to 10, and Maudlin petitioned ODDS to raise the facility’s occupancy limits.
“I couldn’t have administrative personnel and we had a ton of administrative work that needs to be done,” she said. “We are a business that produces a lot of paper.”
The state eventually allowed three administrative workers in addition to the 10-person limit. But when the delta variant hit last spring, the state reimposed the six-person restriction and Sunshine lost its variance.
“‘Figure it out,’ they said,” Maudlin recalled.
That required more innovation.
Sunshine, she noted, takes precautions at every point. Its facility is sanitized between cohort shifts, portable toilets stand outside for groundskeeping crew members and everyone wears masks and uses hand sanitizer frequently – “all kinds of things.” Grounds crew workers, for instance, are picked up and taken directly to work so they don’t even reach the Sunshine facility until 2 p.m., after the morning cohort has left.
“We can’t afford to bring it to Sunshine,” she said. ” If one person shows up and they have symptoms, that entire team is down. Everybody gets it. We really want to be here. They’re doing it, which is fantastic. That’s what we need.”
Still, Maudlin said, Sunshine has lost clients. Some have COVID-19 concerns, others have moved and still others find it too difficult, geographically, to reach the center.
She said prior to the pandemic, Linn Shuttle provided “dedicated buses” to transport clients from Lebanon and Albany, but that option is no longer available.
Sunshine Industries has also lost some key employees, some to the mandatory vaccine requirement but many to the on-again, off-again nature of their job security.
“You can’t feed a family on unemployment for very long,” Maudlin said.
Currently, the organization has 56 active clients, with another four waiting to return, out of a total of 70 contracts on the books. It has 24 staffers, and Maudlin said more are needed.
There have been some positives. One is “the incredible responsiveness” of the Sunshine Board of Directors – President Chuck Thompson, Vice President Keith Hartley, Kathy Dadey, Ann Black and Janis Crotts – as Maudlin put it. The board literally met weekly for the first eight months of the pandemic, because “that’s how fast things were changing,” she said. “We’re back to monthly meetings right now, but if I needed it, we’d be right back there. They’ve been absolutely wonderful to work with.”
Then, Maudlin said, earlier this fall she informed Linn County Developmental Disabilities, which handles case management for the clients who use Sunshine’s services, that the end was near.
“I told them we’re done unless we find some more money.”
That triggered a reaction from both the county and the ODDS, she said.
“They got us in touch with the state. I said, ‘We’re going to close if something doesn’t happen.'”
She also received assistance from County Supervisor Will Tucker, Rep. Jami Cate and state Sen. Sara Gelser of Corvallis.
“I haven’t been telling people we need help, but it got out there. They helped us in negotiating with the state. They were really wonderful partners in helping us see light at the end of the tunnel, some kind of stability.”
Maudlin told the state she needed at least 10-person cohorts and at least 30 people in the building.
“They actually got right on it. They asked a few questions: how we’re doing sanitation, how we’re checking for symptoms.”
The state gave her what she asked for, which enabled her to create a new cohort and bring back 14 new people over the past two weeks.
“We’re closer to where we were before we had to do six-person cohorts.”
Getting those numbers up has helped the organization’s bottom line, she said.
“If everything goes [well] and we have good attendance and nobody gets sick, we could make it to black by the end of November. That’s just to survive. That’s not to take care of the building, replace vehicles, cover staff time off.”
There has been little of the latter.
“Everybody is coming in every day,” she said, noting that she and her administrative staff are trained to fill in for absent support workers, the people who work one-on-one with clients and teams. “I’ve been out personally, doing janitorial work. The day before yesterday I was out covering a cohort for our facility because the person driving that route couldn’t come in.”
With a couple more employees and another van, Sunshine could be sustainable, she said.
“We’re taking donations. We haven’t been asking for any because the whole world is in the same boat.”
To connect with Sunshine, call (541) 367-2765.
Sunshine seeks sponsor for job
Sunshine Industries is seeking a sponsor to support the organization’s yard maintenance work at East Linn Museum.
Sunshine has held the yard maintenance contract with the Sweet Home Museum for over a
decade. The museum, however, has not been able to pay for some time and Sunshine has been
donating its services, which it cannot continue.
We are not in a position to continue to donate.
Cost of the monthly maintenance is $150 per month, which includes labor, supplies and disposal fees.
Jobs like these allow Sunshine to offer employment for disabled individuals at at least a minimum wage. Donors can pay Sunshine directly, which would allow the donation to be tax-deductible.
For more information, contact Brittany at (541) 367-2765.