Designs and Signs did a great job on our shredding truck!  Our shredding business has grown gradually…we now have some monthly pickups and continue to get new one-time customers as well.  Most businesses are really glad to have someone local available with the service and it is fantastic work for the people we serve.

Normally this time of year we do a lot of posting on the state budget.  It’s not that the state budget isn’t in the news, but it isn’t clear whether/how Streator Unlimited’s services could be affected.  The state already cut all grant funding, so that no longer hangs in the balance, vulnerable to reductions or elimination (did we think we’d ever miss those days?).  What remains is state Medicaid Waiver funding.  This receives federal match dollars, so has federal rules attached to it, and so is more difficult to cut.  Due to the new health care laws, the state cannot eliminate anyone’s funding for the next few years without losing significant federal dollars for all of the Medicaid program.

What the state could do is reduce the funding rates for SU and other community providers.  This is a possibility, given the plan to cut a lot of Medicaid spending in the state.  So far we haven’t seen a rate cut as part of a specific plan.  This may be due to the fact that community providers have been cut so hard in recent years that we simply can’t handle more and be able to deliver decent services.  It may also be because the state is closing institutions that house people with developmental disabilities and needs community providers to be able to serve them.  Even so, the state doesn’t have enough resources to go around and will have to make cuts somewhere.  We’ll be watching closely these next two weeks.

Thank you Bill for the pizza and bowling parties!  They were awesome!

Mike is a man of many interests and wide and varied knowledge.

A big Thank You to the Streator Lions Club!

We had our first night in the new home.  Everyone says they slept well.  Some people were out in the common area this morning, either watching the big tv or looking out our south-facing picture window into the beautiful morning.  Some people were hanging out in their bedrooms, enjoying their own private space.  Nothing but happiness as far as the eye could see….

Theresa and her 15 minutes of fame.  Are we remembering correctly that Mrs. Beasley was Buffy’s doll?  (For  our younger fans, and, gulp, maybe even our grown-up fans, that’s the Buffy of Buffy and Jody, not the vampire slayer.)

Thank you to the Lion’s Club for their $1,000 donation!  Streator is lucky to have so many excellent service groups.

The latest numbers are out for the PUNS (Prioritization of Unmet Need for Services).  This is the list of people with developmental disabilities who need services in Illinois but can’t get funding for them.  The total number of people waiting as of 3/12/12 is 21,663.  Broken down to local information it is 270 people in Senate District 38 or 137 people in House District 76.  Clearly the state does not have the resources to expand funding to this extent, but it’s incredibly important that the state use what resources it  has as efficiently and effectively as possible.  The support from the Streator community has helped us keep  our Workshop Program running and thus SU serves some of the people on this list–were they ever to get funding it would not only help them, but SU.

PUNSbydistrict

Thank you to the Illinois Clean Energy Foundation and Com Ed for funding our upgrade to energy efficient lighting.

Here’s a

and an after:

Mike hanging lights:

And Tony working in much better light than in the past!