Snack bar vendor hopes his job goes to another blind person

Fifteen years ago, the community rallied behind Dennis Horn when the blind vendor was about to lose his snack stand at the Orange County Courthouse. Now, Horn worries the county will deny another blind person a chance to make a living there.

Horn, who has operated the small snack and coffee stand in the courthouse tower for 16 years, is moving on to another location. And he doesn’t want the county to award his old job to the highest bidder.

“By going out to [bid], you’re taking a job away from a blind person,” Horn, 64, told the Orange County Commission at its Tuesday meeting.

He and a representative from the state Division of Blind Services implored the county to work with the division to find another qualified blind person to operate the stand.

County officials, including Mayor Teresa Jacobs, said no decision has been made, and no bids have gone out. But Horn made an emotional plea to carry on the practice of having a blind vendor at the first-floor stand.

Horn, who lost his sight at age 30 due to juvenile diabetes, has operated the stand under a contract with the Florida Division of Blind Services, working from as early as 1 in the morning until 2 in the afternoon.

In 2002, just a few months after he began, the county was about to enter into a contract with a company that would have replaced Horn’s business with a deli, a snack bar and vending machines.

The federal Randolph-Sheppard Act gives priority to blind people to run food services in state and federal buildings. But it doesn’t apply to counties.

“[Someone] called the Orlando Sentinel, and the next thing I know you guys were down and you interviewed me and it made the newspaper, and I got some calls from the commission saying it’s not going to happen,” Horn said. “So I know the key to overcoming this letting the public know.”

Horn is leaving to take a job running a cafeteria at the state Hurston Building down the road, he said. Business has been dropping, especially since a more sophisticated jury system allows the courts to bring in smaller numbers of prospective jurors.

Still, he said, the business grosses about $185,000 a year.

The blind had the highest unemployment of any demographic in the country, at 60 percent in 2014, according to the National Federation for the Blind.

Anne Kulikowski, county director of administrative services, said county officials were “still in the planning stages of looking at what types of vending and food services we currently offer at the courthouse and what we’d like to look at in the future.”

She hinted the county could be open to the idea of working with Horn and the Division of Blind Services.

“We would very much like for him to take a look at what direction we’re going in,” she added.