Notice of Non-discrimination Title VI
Ozark Regional Transit (ORT) complies with all civil rights provisions of federal statutes and related authorities that prohibit discrimination in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance. ORT does not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, color, age, national origin, religion, disability, Limited English Proficiency (LEP), or low-income status in the admission, access to, and treatment of individuals in ORT programs and activities, as well as in ORT’s hiring and employment practices.
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Complaints of alleged discrimination and inquiries regarding ORT’s non-discrimination policies may be directed to:
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Joel Gardner
Executive Director (ADA/504/Title VI Coordinator)
2423 East Robinson, Springdale, Arkansas 72764
(479) 756-5901 | Email: ortinformation@ozark.org
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NOTE: Free language assistance for individuals with Limited English Proficiency is available upon request. ​This notice is available from the ADA/504/Title VI Coordinator in large print, on audio tape, and in Braille.
Disadvantaged Business Enterprises (DBE) Policy Statement
September 10, 2025
The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) published a final rule (49CFR part 26.1) on the DBE program on April 9, 2024, and provided guidance to help Tier 2 recipients comply with the new requirements. Tier 2 recipients are FTA grant recipients that award $670,000 or less in federal transit funds annually. They are subject to a subset of the DBE program provisions, including reporting requirements and the small business element. Ozark Regional Transit Authority (ORT) is an FTA grant recipient that awards less than $670,000 in contracting opportunities and is therefore categorized as a Tier 2 recipient.
Notwithstanding, it is the goal of ORT to ensure that DBEs as defined in 49CFR part 26 have an equal opportunity to receive and participate in FTA/DOT assisted contracting opportunities. It is also ORT’s goal to:
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Ensure nondiscrimination in the award and administration of FTA/DOT assisted contracts.
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Ensure DBEs can compete fairly for FTA/DOT assisted contracts.
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Ensure that only firms that fully meet 49CFR part 26 eligibility standards are permitted to participate as DBEs.
This statement has been circulated with ORT’s staff and is to be posted on the ORT website at www.ozark.org for public viewing.
Joel Gardner, Executive Director
Ozark Regional Transit Authority
Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Policy Statement
Ozark Regional Transit has a strong commitment to the community we serve and our employees. As an equal opportunity employer, we strive to have a workforce that reflects the community we serve. No person is unlawfully excluded from employment opportunities based on race, color, religion, national origin, sex (including gender identity, sexual orientation, and pregnancy), age, genetic information, disability, veteran status, or other protected class.
Ozark Regional Transit Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) policy applies to all employment actions, including but not limited to recruitment, hiring, selection for training, promotion, transfer, demotion, layoff, termination, rates of pay, or other forms of compensation.
All applicants and employees have the right to file complaints alleging discrimination. Retaliation against an individual who files a charge or complaint of discrimination, participates in an employment discrimination proceeding (such as an investigation or lawsuit), or otherwise engages in protected activity is strictly prohibited and will not be tolerated.
Ozark Regional Transit is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants and employees who need them because of a disability or to practice or observe their religion, absent undue hardship.
As Ozark Regional Transit's Executive Director, I maintain overall responsibility and accountability for Ozark Regional Transit's compliance with its EEO Policy and Program. To ensure day-to-day management, including program preparation, monitoring, and complaint investigation, I have appointed Gail Delancey, Human Resource Manager, gdelancey@ozark.org or 479-756-5901 as Ozark Regional Transit's EEO Officer. Gail Delancey will report directly to me and act with my authority with all levels of management and employees.
All Ozark Regional Transit executives, management, and supervisory personnel, however, share in the responsibility for implementing and monitoring Ozark Regional Transit's EEO policy and program within their respective areas and will be assigned specific tasks to ensure compliance. Ozark Regional Transit will evaluate its managers and supervisors’ performance on their successful implementation of Ozark Regional Transit's policies and procedures, in the same way Ozark Regional Transit assesses their performance regarding other agencies' goals.
Ozark Regional Transit is committed to developing and implementing a written nondiscrimination program that sets forth the policies, practices, and procedures, with goals and timetables, to which the agency is committed, and to making the EEO Program available for inspection by any employee or applicant for employment upon request.
I am personally committed to a workplace that acts upon its daily responsibility to treat all applicants and employees with dignity and respect, as well as equitably under the guidelines of our EEO Policy and Program.
Title VI Assurance
ORT (hereinafter referred to as "Recipient") hereby agrees that, as a condition to receiving any federal financial assistance from the Department of Transportation (DOT), it will comply with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 194, 78 Stat. 252, 42 USC 2000d-42, USC 2000-d-4 (hereinafter referred to as the "Act"), and all requirements imposed by or pursuant to Title 49, Code of Federal Regulations, DOT, Subtitle A, Office of the Secretary, Part 21, Nondiscrimination in Federally Assisted Programs of the DOT effectuation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (hereinafter referred to as the "regulations"), and other pertinent directives. No person in the United States shall, on the grounds of race, color or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be otherwise subjected to discrimination under and program or activity for which the Recipient receives Federal Financial Assistance from the DOT, including the FTA and hereby gives assurance that it will promptly take any measures necessary to effectuate this agreement. This assurance is required by subsection 21.7(a) of the Regulations.
Privacy Policy & Terms and Conditions
This section will cover each of our privacy policy and terms of use information. Looking for our On-Demand Transit privacy policy and terms of use information. Please visit https://www.ozark.org/on-demand-transit-privacy-policy-terms-and-co
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Privacy
Your privacy is important to us. It is Ozark Regional Transit Authority's policy to respect your privacy and comply with any applicable law and regulation regarding any personal information we may collect about you, including across our website, https://ozark.org, and other sites we own and operate.
This policy is effective as of 15 March 2021 and was last updated on 15 March 2021.
Information We Collect
Information we collect includes both information you knowingly and actively provide us when using or participating in any of our services and promotions, and any information automatically sent by your devices in the course of accessing our products and services.
Log Data
When you visit our website, our servers may automatically log the standard data provided by your web browser. It may include your device’s Internet Protocol (IP) address, your browser type and version, the pages you visit, the time and date of your visit, the time spent on each page, other details about your visit, and technical details that occur in conjunction with any errors you may encounter.
Please be aware that while this information may not be personally identifying by itself, it may be possible to combine it with other data to personally identify individual persons.
Personal Information
We may ask for personal information which may include one or more of the following:
Name, Email, Date of Birth, Phone/mobile number, Home/Mailing Address, etc.
Legitimate Reasons for Processing Your Personal Information
We only collect and use your personal information when we have a legitimate reason for doing so. In which instance, we only collect personal information that is reasonably necessary to provide our services to you.
Collection and Use of Information
We may collect personal information from you when you do any of the following on our website:
Use a mobile device or web browser to access our content, contact us via email, social media, or on any similar technolgies, or, when you mention us on social media.
We may collect, hold, use, and disclose information for the following purposes, and personal information will not be further processed in a manner that is incompatible with these purposes:
to contact and communicate with you, for analytics, market research, and business development, including to operate and improve our website, associated applications, and associated social media platforms, to consider your employment application, for internal record keeping and administrative purposes, to comply with our legal obligations and resolve any disputes that we may have.
Please be aware that we may combine information we collect about you with general information or research data we receive from other trusted sources.
Security of Your Personal Information
When we collect and process personal information, and while we retain this information, we will protect it within commercially acceptable means to prevent loss and theft, as well as unauthorized access, disclosure, copying, use, or modification.
Although we will do our best to protect the personal information you provide to us, we advise that no method of electronic transmission or storage is 100% secure, and no one can guarantee absolute data security. We will comply with laws applicable to us in respect of any data breach.
You are responsible for selecting any password and its overall security strength, ensuring the security of your own information within the bounds of our services.
How Long We Keep Your Personal Information
We keep your personal information only for as long as we need to. This time period may depend on what we are using your information for, in accordance with this privacy policy. If your personal information is no longer required, we will delete it or make it anonymous by removing all details that identify you.
However, if necessary, we may retain your personal information for our compliance with a legal, accounting, or reporting obligation or for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific, or historical research purposes or statistical purposes.
Children’s Privacy
We do not aim any of our products or services directly at children under the age of 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information about children under 13.
Disclosure of Personal Information to Third Parties
We may disclose personal information to: a parent, subsidiary, or affiliate of our company, third party service providers for the purpose of enabling them to provide their services, for example, IT service providers, data storage, hosting and server providers, advertisers, or analytics platforms, our employees, contractors, and/or related entities, our existing or potential agents or business partners, sponsors or promoters of any competition, sweepstakes, or promotion we run, courts, tribunals, regulatory authorities, and law enforcement officers, as required by law, in connection with any actual or prospective legal proceedings, or in order to establish, exercise, or defend our legal rights, third parties, including agents or sub-contractors, who assist us in providing information, products, services, or direct marketing to you third parties to collect and process data.
International Transfers of Personal Information
The personal information we collect is stored and/or processed where we or our partners, affiliates, and third-party providers maintain facilities. Please be aware that the locations to which we store, process, or transfer your personal information may not have the same data protection laws as the country in which you initially provided the information. If we transfer your personal information to third parties in other countries: (i) we will perform those transfers in accordance with the requirements of applicable law; and (ii) we will protect the transferred personal information in accordance with this privacy policy.
Your Rights and Controlling Your Personal Information
You always retain the right to withhold personal information from us, with the understanding that your experience of our website may be affected. We will not discriminate against you for exercising any of your rights over your personal information. If you do provide us with personal information you understand that we will collect, hold, use and disclose it in accordance with this privacy policy. You retain the right to request details of any personal information we hold about you.
If we receive personal information about you from a third party, we will protect it as set out in this privacy policy. If you are a third party providing personal information about somebody else, you represent and warrant that you have such person’s consent to provide the personal information to us.
If you have previously agreed to us using your personal information for direct marketing purposes, you may change your mind at any time. We will provide you with the ability to unsubscribe from our email-database or opt out of communications. Please be aware we may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity.
If you believe that any information we hold about you is inaccurate, out of date, incomplete, irrelevant, or misleading, please contact us using the details provided in this privacy policy. We will take reasonable steps to correct any information found to be inaccurate, incomplete, misleading, or out of date.
If you believe that we have breached a relevant data protection law and wish to make a complaint, please contact us using the details below and provide us with full details of the alleged breach. We will promptly investigate your complaint and respond to you, in writing, setting out the outcome of our investigation and the steps we will take to deal with your complaint. You also have the right to contact a regulatory body or data protection authority in relation to your complaint.
Use of Cookies
We use “cookies” to collect information about you and your activity across our site. A cookie is a small piece of data that our website stores on your computer, and accesses each time you visit, so we can understand how you use our site. This helps us serve you content based on preferences you have specified.
Limits of Our Policy
Our website may link to external sites that are not operated by us. Please be aware that we have no control over the content and policies of those sites, and cannot accept responsibility or liability for their respective privacy practices.
Changes to This Policy
At our discretion, we may change our privacy policy to reflect updates to our business processes, current acceptable practices, or legislative or regulatory changes. If we decide to change this privacy policy, we will post the changes here at the same link by which you are accessing this privacy policy.
If required by law, we will get your permission or give you the opportunity to opt in to or opt out of, as applicable, any new uses of your personal information.
Contact Us
For any questions or concerns regarding your privacy, you may contact us using the following details: