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Disabilities board to buy company that makes candles
A plan would provide jobs for adults with disabilities.
LISBON — The Columbiana County Board of Developmental Disabilities plans to go into the candle-making business.
Steve Kline, a board spokesman, said it plans to buy St. Johnsbury Perfect Scents in New Waterford for about $500,000.
The board wants to use the candle company to create jobs for its adults with disabilities who work.
In the past, those adults took on various jobs from outside sources.
The adult clients at the CCDD work and earn wages at the Employment Development Inc. workshop in Lisbon and another EDI in Calcutta.
Those jobs have decreased as the economy has slowed.
Kline said the board has provided $150,000 to the candle company as earnest money, or deposit, on the sale.
He said the board may be able to get money through the federal- stimulus funding toward the purchase.
“It’s a godsend for us that it was up for sale,” he added.
Under the plan, the CCDD would get all the business’s materials and computer equipment and move the business to EDI in Lisbon.
Legislators are being lobbied to help provide funds or grants.
The candle business was started in 1992, had a fire and then reopened. The owners, Todd and Victoria Bray, were unavailable to comment on the sale.
According to the Web site www.sjcperfectscents.com, among the company’s top sellers are Bear Scents fresheners, which are teddy bears dipped and bathed in scented wax, and the S.A.L.L.Y (Save A Life Love Yourself) Bear, a breast-cancer-awareness bear, a scented room freshener with 25 percent of its proceeds donated to breast- cancer awareness and research.
wilkinson@vindy.com