It appears The World is still disinterested in the conflicts and mismanagement at the county preferring instead to again beat on ORCCA for problems associated with a 70% growth in food distribution in the last five years.
Here is ORCCA’s response to tomorrow’s front page “news” story.
Dear Community:
ORCCA would like to clarify many of the issues raised by the recent media account of our food handling practices. We are committed to following the standards set by our partnership agreement with Oregon Food Bank which forward on standards set by the USDA, Feeding America, and the state of Oregon. In an attempt to be more transparent in regard to media inquiries about ORCCA and our relations with community partners, ORCCA prepared information for the World Newspaper and have posted on our website so that the public can view the full details.
The process for distributing food to hungry people has gotten increasingly complicated over the last five years in light of increased food safety and tracking requirements. At one time most food was canned and in shelf-stable packaging, now fresh and frozen food compose a major portion of the available food supply. Increases in food recalls over the last 3 years as well as increased standards for food safety, civil rights training have all added to the complexity of food banking. Whenever possible South Coast Food Share works to reduce this complexity without reducing the choices of our member agencies.
The South Coast Food Share Network has increased the amount of food it distributes by 70% in the last five years, and has had to implement processes to address both the increased complexity of distributing food and the increasing volume while trying not to increase costs. South Coast Food Share has adopted a communications system that can work for a network consisting of over 30 agencies spread across two rural counties with varying degrees of technological resources. Not all partner agencies have reliable access to a computer, and so having a fax system as well as email systems ensures that in the event of a food recall we can immediately notify all of our partner agencies. SCFS offers training opportunities and meetings to ensure that pantries understand and have the tools to meet food safety, civil rights, and other requirements. To assist agencies SCFS has offered and provided new fax machines at no cost to the agencies that requested them.
In December, we worked with a team from Oregon Food Bank to improve our billing and ordering processes, and in the beginning of January, we amended our process to reduce the paperwork. To ensure the chain of communications we also keep a log of food orders that come in are received and when they are responded to. These helps us to identify a problem with a food order in time to get the information and place the order. When we do not receive a response for whatever reason, it is our policy to try to contact the Partner Agency again and arrange to get a response by fax or by email if necessary. Because nutrition a basic need, we feel it is important to follow up to make sure that a Partner Agency gets the food it needs.
The number of people served by each agency and the agency’s service category, determine how much of the SCFS network food supply will be allocated to each agency. We offer each partner agency food from all the sources they are eligible to receive. The amount of food available in the network can vary throughout the year as food donations can increase or decrease. The kinds of food can also vary. This means that a pantry might not see the kind of food they wanted available. Partner agencies may also choose not to order the food that is available, or may choose to order less. However, SCFS does not discriminate or assume what a partner agency might need, and we offer them all choices that are available to them.
ORCCA is committed to working with our partner agencies to resolve concerns and work together in our joint mission to feed, house, warm, and educate children, families, and individuals on the South Coast.
Sincerely,
Oregon Coast Community Action
I don’t even want to go look. I have noticed a very disturbing trend, this pack of boys goes after females. The male head of Bandon Hosp. announces terrible computer glitches resulting in real harm to the employees, hear one peep??
They go after the ladies from Fairview,MGX,Jody,the women at the food bank for gawds’ sake, some say it’s a grab for ORCCA’s funding. With this pack of dogs, one has to wonder. But we have to keep on,these boys have had their way with no obstruction whatsoever. Like I said, what will they do now that the citizens are watching and recording, which should be the job of the local NEWSpaper, but we don’t have one, we have a stenographer for SCDC, the Chamber, the Port. No argument there.
Fascinating what the paper considers news. Even if Clark is a mean CEO is it news? How ’bout Roger Ailes of Fox or Steve Ballmer of Microsoft or, hell, Martha Stewart. Those examples and more have brought employees to tears or had them running to the nearest paper to say how rough it is working for them.
ORCCA has grown not shrunk so Clark must be doing something right and if a few noses get twisted along the way it may be unfortunate but not unexpected. This is the paper’s way of diverting attention away from Barton and pals being caught lying about solid waste.
And, for those who may have forgotten, this is another organization that felt the touch of your friend Barton. He was a one time Board Member. He was appointed to the Port Commission and then kicked off by the governor; appointed to the airport board and then failed to get elected; now appointed to SCDC (by whom nobody knows or will say).
After reading the above early today, I read the many page article of the daily (except SunDAY, FriDAY, and some HoliDAYS) bird cage liner. Two inches into the many column, many page, article the yellow journalism starts implying – of course the bird cage liner never seeks fact – that Ms. Clark is gulty of causing the financial failure of her former employer. Cowardly, like lobbing a hand grenade and running. Thankfully, with the reassignments at the bird cage liner, with most unseasoned reporters now being labeled editor, with Mr. Ritchie who has been in this country less than a year being reassigned from county government reporting, he can’t do too much damage to the citizens. It would have been nice to open the paper and find current NEWS regarding anything county or city government. Especially the newsworthy controversial matters. Win deVriend’s letter to the editor comes close.