Under Fire, Southwest CDC Runs For Cover

BY TONY WEST/ A troubled neighborhood’s resource for scarce public funding is imperiled by longstanding mismanagement in a rogue agency. Yet the Nutter Administration appears to be doubling down on it instead. What’s in it for the City, that it’s putting so much attention into controlling the action in – of all places – Southwest Philadelphia?

Southwest Community Development Corp. is that agency. It is a private, nonprofit venture, like many other groups that represent grassroots Philadelphia. Its Managing Dir. Donna Henry, who has been with the agency since its early days more than 20 years ago, has been mired in controversy for two years, as evidence emerged of chronic account-fiddling and also of duty-dropping. This CDC couldn’t keep its business straight, it seemed. It was in need of reform.

Late reports, though, suggest the Philadelphia Office of Housing & Community Development is putting its chips on the establishment and pressing to get rid of the whistle-blowers. That’s the real news: not that some shlub service agency fell into bad management practices, but that city government prefers to keep it that way.

OHCD provides crucial funding and advice to Southwest CDC, along with all its 60-odd peers in town. Officially, it is not supposed to tell CDCs what to do. Unofficially, a CDC is as likely to defy OHCD as a City Council Member is to tell his biggest donor to go jump in the Delaware.

Ever since an exposé of Southwest CDC’s crisis was published in the Public Record (Oct. 14), the CDC has curled up like an armadillo – understandably enough. Paul Moore, chairman of the CDC’s Board of Directors, won’t answer any questions. So no one, at this date, knows what the Southwest’s position on reform is.

Three weeks ago, Moore said the CDC is actively looking to replace Henry, who has gotten the agency into legal difficulties by, among many other things, pirating an employee’s payroll deductions to cover operating expenses.

But Moore is offline to everybody now, as is the rest of the Southwest CDC board. He does not respond to inquiries for information from anybody – a hallmark of Southwest CDC operations for decades. “Secrecy” is the password at this notoriously closed operation.

Brice Baker, a dissident board member who was named to represent the community, said that at a special board meeting Nov. 1, a motion was passed that no board member must talk to the press without prior approval by the entire board. He declined to talk further out of respect for this vote. But other board members say they have received no notice of such a vote. So it may not have happened. Without Chairman Moore’s input, no one can say.

The special meeting was arranged to enable OHCD’s Dir. Of Neighborhood Program Coordination Belinda Mayo and her assistant Larry Lane to counsel Southwest CDC how to deal with its present management difficulties. Mayo’s job is to ensure community input for all the community groups across Philadelphia that OHCD funds.

Oddly, insiders say, Mayo focused her fire on this agency’s community organizer, Edith Dixon, who has become too close for comfort with Eastwick and Kingsessing residents in some important causes, and for its treasurer Craig Melidosian, who has reported possibly illegal business practices at the CDC. Mayo’s advice, according to sources, was that the CDC find ways to sack both these whistleblowers.

Through a spokesman, Mayo denied this. “Like most funders, OHCD does not manage the day-to-day activities of the organizations that it funds. It does not hire or fire staff, nor does it add or remove board members,” said OHCD’s Paul Chrystie.

However, in a Nov. 5 letter, Mayo called for the Board to investigate “allegations of mismanagement of the organization” by Henry. So apparently she does get involved in CDCs’ internal personnel affairs after all, every now and then.

WHAT’S AT STAKE?

All this might seem like a tempest in an outer-ward teapot. But significant money has been invested in certain Southwest Philly projects. Here, the Nutter Administration has taken a stand on two developments that were not popular among neighbors – but that Southwest CDC helped advance.

A proposed halfway house for returning criminal offenders on Woodland Avenue was axed after an upwelling of community fury. Many Southwest Philadelphians feel their neighborhood has become a dumping ground for social problems and the proposed facility became typed as a “prison” (which it was not). Regardless, a Zoning Board of Adjustment hearing earlier this year killed it. Dixon was instrumental in organizing community opposition to this project.

Dixon also assisted the Eastwick community in sinking a Korman plan for a 700-unit development on environmentally sensitive wetland this year. The Nutter Administration had supported this initiative. And it was Dixon’s pay that had been filched in part by the CDC for four years, apparently to cover operating expenses. That’s why some in the Southwest are speculating there is mayoral payback in play here. Is Nutter trying to control his own slice of action next to the airport? Why else would the City go after underlings in an obscure, struggling nonprofit with such vigor? To answer these questions, the Public Record tried to interview OHCD Director Deborah McColloch, but she would not make herself available.

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