On Monday December 12, 2016 the Board held its final Board meeting for 2016.. All Board members were present.
There was no school report for December 2016.
The Mississippi office of Budget and Finance sent a letter out to all “Special Funded Agencies”… Special Funded means basically that your agency actually collects the revenue that is uses to operate it’s self…. Which the Mississippi State Board of Cosmetology falls into this category. These agencies were asked to choose from the following:
- To be changed to a General Fund Agency..
- To be combined with similar Agencies and share some expenses…
- Become a “Hybrid”…. Which means our Agency would no longer be controlled by the State…
The Board voted to submit option 2… Personally I felt that being categorized as a General Fund Agency would have been the best options.. Even though the Board is a Special Funded Agency it still gets an annual budget which is set by our Legislatures.. Just because the Agency may bring in $800,000.00 does not mean that the Legislatures will give them $800,000.00 to spend… I’m more worried about the combining of Agencies… Can you imagine what would happen if we were to be combined with the Department of Health!!!! Time will tell but it is certain there are going to be some over hauling of many State Agencies….
Vice-President, Glenda Honeycutt, raised some concerns that she felt the agency was lacking in doing timely investigation and responses for complaints… No direct feedback was given for this problem…
The Board made an rule change to Rule 2.5.A Outdated Licenses… The word “years” was left off …. Any person who has be licensed in this sate, and has expired for a period of three (3) must make application for approval for written and practical examination.
The Board voted to do an across the Board raise on all licenses and application fees $20.00. This will have to be approved by the Legislators during this current Legislative session… In my opinion the fee increase is definitely needed…
Hinds Community College in Utica has submitted an application for new school which is for moving their Cosmetology Department to the old Home Economic building… Wow they must really be spending that money to renovate and old building just to use as a temporary facility while their current building under goes the 1.7 MILLION dollar renovation.. It has been rumored that they are putting in complete wet station with its own portable dryer unit… Board Secretary Bertha Robinson and School Clerk Ms. Vergie was assigned to do the INSPECTION… Sure would like to tag along!!!!
Executive Director David Derrick updated the Board on the New Software… He stated that on 12/8 and 12/9 updates were installed and it has greatly improved the flow of printing licenses… However, Data Links is still having trouble trying to merge the old system records into the new software… So currently the office is having to verify data in the old system before processing individuals in the new system…
