The Board moved its regular scheduled meeting of October 26 to October 19 due to the Premiere Beauty Show in Birmingham… Meeting was called to order, all Board members were present.
The Board set agenda for Violation Hearings on Monday January 11, 2016. I asked Board Attorney, Jeff Jernigan, if the Board could appoint one Board Member to be a Hearing Office instead of having to pay the whole Board to be present for this BOARING and TIME consuming process… Boy did this cause a stink… Mr. Jernigan stated that they still would need at least 3 members present… Then the stink started…. My thought process on this is since in January of 2016 the Board is having hearings on violations from 2013… Instead of doing one batch a month lets cut back on the expense and have 2 hearing dates a month to try to catch up????
The agency received and official complaint… Complaint #1475-2015 was assigned to the Executive Director, David Derrick and Board member Bertha Johnson to investigate.
Executive Director David Derrick reported to the Board that the Equipment Audit had been completed and all Agencys equipment had been accounted for…
Vice-President Dorothy Ennis asked Mr. Derrick if the Desk/Performance Audits had been scheduled yet. Mr. Derrick sated that he had not been given a specific date yet but felt it would be sometime in November. I asked for clarification on the difference in these 2 audits.. A Desk Audit is done to ensure that the Position/Title matches the pay… A Performance Audit is to make sure that there are sufficient checks and balances with in the agency.
The Board hired Ms. Denise DeRosett with Conerstone Consulting Group to work with Executive Director David Derrick in preparing the agencies FY2017 budget. Ms DeRosett was present to answer and questions the Board may having concerning this budget… Ms. DeRosett explained to the Board the process which she had to go through in order to verify current funding with future funding… She stated to the Board that she had to work extremely hard to reconcile reporting on previous budgeting information. Ms. DeRosett also noted to the Board that the Cosmetology Agency has some of the lowest salaries as compared to other state agencies… She also noted that the agency was doing a lot of REFUNDS!!! That’s a strange thing??? Last year the agency refunded at total of $15,000.00.. But it’s what she stated next was what I have been wanting to know for the past 4 years but have never gotten a answer that I believed….. TOTAL NUMBER OF LICENSE HOLDERS!!!!! Professional Licenses—-32,441 Salon Licenses—5,456 Schools—-53 Total–37,950… The Board passed a motion allowing the agency to use Ms. DeRosett services to assist the agency in the training for the use of the new MAGIC system, “Department of Finance System” as well as assistance with finalizing of the FY2017 budget and the FY2018 budget….
The Budget Submitted for FY 2017 was for $918,376.00!!!!!!
The Board has been seeking bids for NEW OFFICE SOFTWARE… The current system is VERY old and VERY out dated.. This topic has come up several times over that past few years and each time nothing has been done about it… At this meeting the Board accepted the quote with Data Lynks and entered into a contractual agreement in the amount of $34,600.00 to write all new software programs which will include on-line renewals…. YEAH!!!!
I informed the Board that after all the hard work it took for the schools to achieve having our Post Secondary Status listed on our school licenses it was a BIG disappointment that it was listed only on our renewal and as part of our school name…. Executive Director David Derrick stated that he would get with Mr. Buddy Sharp to get that fixed…
Board meeting adjourned at 1:30 pm….