21652: (Hermantin)Sun-Sentinel- Haitian center to appeal lost grant (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Haitian center to appeal lost grant

By Gariot Louima, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 1, 2004



The chairman of the leading agency serving Haitian immigrants in Palm Beach
County said Friday he was astonished by the Children Services Council's move
to revoke a $548,974 grant, and will appeal the decision that will cripple
the nonprofit group.

Council directors voted unanimously last week to cancel the grant to the
Haitian Center for Family Services because of ongoing management troubles,
said Marlene Passell, the council's spokeswoman.

The Haitian center is the second agency to loose a CSC grant in a month. The
long-troubled Village Foundation in Delray Beach lost a $725,000 award.

"We've had ongoing problems with both of these agencies," Passell said. "The
board has to be responsible to the taxpayers and to the clients to make sure
that the services are being provided by agencies that are fiscally and
programmatically sound."

Passell said the Haitian council won't lose funding until the council finds
another nonprofit agency to offer the after-school and family programs
offered at its offices in Belle Glade, Riviera Beach and West Palm Beach.

"Our goal is to make sure that the clients continue to get service," Passell
said Friday, adding the CSC wants to meet with Haitian center staff to plan
the transition.

The Haitian center's chairman, David Harris, feels such a meeting is
premature.

"We're not going to talk transition because we don't agree with their
decision," said Harris, who also is the director of Florida philanthropy for
the MacArthur Foundation. "We know they definitely work hard to hold
agencies accountable. We just don't think they had the correct information."

Losing the Children Services Council grant would reduce the agency's budget
-- once close to $1.5 million -- to about $500,000. The center recently lost
$423,000 when the federal government reduced the amount of money given to an
AIDS program.

Harris blamed some of the center's problems on a previous board chairman. He
said he and the newly appointed executive director, Wordy Nicolas, have
worked hard to keep the organization together financially.

"As a result of having to put Humpty Dumpty together again, our
reimbursement requests to the (Children Services Council) were late," he
said. "Because those reimbursements were late, we ran into cash flow
problems... that agency is now using the cash flow issue to penalize us."

The CSC launched an investigation of the Haitian center last summer after a
former employee and members of the Haitian community complained of nepotism,
fiscal mismanagement and a breakdown of the agency's governing body.

A council review found former board director Patrick Leconte paid his
brother's company, of which he is affiliated, close to $34,500 over several
months for consulting work. Board directors and employees routinely took
personal loans from the agency, the CSC found. Patrick Leconte wrote himself
a $5,000 check, records show.

West Palm Beach police are investigating Patrick Leconte for fraud and grand
theft. He was removed from the board of directors and his brother, Thierry,
was fired. A new executive director was hired in January.

Despite the change in leadership, many serious problems remained, a CSC
staff report said. In a matter of 10 months in the last budget year, 15
employees had resigned or were terminated. The Haitian center has
continually had problems paying its bills and asked the CSC in February for
an early reimbursement.

A month later, the agency told the CSC it would be in "financial straits for
the next six months." And almost all of the center's programs are serving
between 21 percent to 30 percent of the people they were supposed to be
serving.

Harris countered that the Belle Glade office is helping as much as 60
percent of the people it is under contract to serve. He added that the
after-school program in West Palm Beach is flourishing.

Since the CSC began reviewing the Haitian Center's programs, council
officials have had "a difficult time obtaining required documents" or
scheduling meetings with the center's staff, a CSC report said. The center
was given until January to comply with a 27-point corrective action plan,
but failed to do that. And the center owes a $77,331 cash advance the CSC
gave the center to run some of it's programs.

"Yes there were cash flow problems, but those problems existed before we got
here," Harris said.

"We've been operating in good faith. We're not taking out loans. We're not
hiring our brothers. And then we get hit with this? We could have saved many
hours working on this if they wanted to close the agency."

gariot_louima@pbpost.com

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