(Updated 5 a.m. with complete rewrite; Clarifiation 10:49 a.m.: title is interim CEO)
STAMFORD, Conn. — The Norwalk Economic Opportunity Now (NEON) Board of Directors’ plan to name a new interim CEO Thursday night was nearly scuttled when board Chairman Michael Berkoff found out yet another board member had resigned, leaving the agency without a quorum to do business.
However, by 10:40 p.m, board member Elizabeth Dukes had rescinded her resignation and voted via email with the 15-member board to approve the Rev. Tommie Jackson to step in as interim CEO of the troubled anti-poverty agency.
The vote was 14-0, with one abstention. New NEON board member Michael Geake, who recently lost his bid for re-election to the Norwalk Common Council, seconded the motion to appoint and voted in favor of Jackson.
Berkhoff said Jackson had been picked “based on his background and recommendations that he has run and turned around programs such as NEON in the past.”
“We feel optimistic with Rev. Jackson,” he said. “We’re going to have an assessment of where we stand as an organization, both management structure, operational structure, and where we stand with the programs to see if there’s anything that would facilitate to pull some of them back.”
Jackson is replacing interim CEO and President Chiquita Stephenson, who was put on unpaid leave of absence after employee’s paychecks bounced Tuesday. Non-essential employees were furloughed Wednesday, leaving only three programs in operation. NEON’s child development program – a continuation of the federally suspended Head Start program – is closed, leaving hundreds of families without day care.
NEON Communications Director Scott Harris said 50 employees were furloughed, and 49 remain at work. He said the energy assistance program and the after-school childcare program for Stamford children were still running, but could not remember the third program. Those were the programs that have funding.
Thursday’s meeting began in a turbulent way when about half a dozen employees forced the board to hear their complaints, although public speaking was not on the agenda. Berkhoff was put on the defensive, forced to defend the board’s actions.
“I will not continue to work and not get a paycheck,” said one woman, demanding answers about the situation. “… We’ve had board members come on, board members leave, we are still in this problem.”
She said employees have been lied to for 18 months and needed an answer within 24 hours.
Berkhoff later said she was referring to 18 months of payroll problems. He told her he hoped to have answers for her by Monday or Tuesday. He said he had been working on fixing NEON’s problems for 10 to 15 hours a day.
She said he needed to give the employees answers because he had put their supervisors on furlough.
“For you to come and say I’m working on it, with all due respect that’s not good enough,” she said. “You should have stepped in with a plan of action. You have people here who are diligently working to keep this agency door open because we believe in the mission statement. Way before you came here we believed in the mission statement. … You don’t have an answer for the safety of this building. You don’t have an answer for the compliance with the contracts. At least give us some answers now.”
Berkhoff said the board is working with the governor’s office and with the cities of Stamford and Norwalk.
Jackson is the pastor of Stamford’s Faith Tabernacle Baptist Church. He was was hired to lead Stamford’s Urban Redevelopment Commission, the Stamford Advocate reports. He has served as on the boards of various city and area organizations, including St. Luke’s Life Works, the Stamford YMCA, and the Southern Connecticut Urban League, the Advocate reports.
He said his first priority would be to get some much-needed cash to NEON.
“The first thing is to go back to the funders who have outstanding contracts with NEON at this time as well as those who owe NEON money for services provided and secure that funding for NEON as quickly as possible so that that money can be used to pay the staff and to continue existing services.” he said.
He hopes to get the employees their paychecks within a few days, he said. He would not comment on the possibility of more furloughs.
He said he was not ready to discuss the transfer of NEON’s Head Start program to Community Development Institute (CDI).
The hotline set up by CDI for Head Start parents had a new message Thursday night. CDI has obtained the licenses needed to share the two buildings in which NEON runs Head Start, it said. The licenses to share the Nathaniel Ely School and the Ben Franklin Center are effective Friday, but CDI had not gotten permission from NEON, the message said.
There has been a rumor circulating that Jackson has a son that works for NEON, that he is a spiritual adviser to Stephenson, that board members go to his church. The thrust of this rumor is that it’s the “same-old, same-old” at NEON, with nepotism and inside connections running rampant.
Jackson denied most of that. He does not have a son, he has two daughters and neither work at NEON or CTE, he said. Stephenson does not go to his church. Some board members do, he said.
“There are members of the board who attend the church but they had no idea tonight that this would happen,” he said.
Berkhoff defended Stephenson.
“Chiquita did a very good job, she is very capable person,” he said. “Currently, where we are with the finances of NEON, we need to have somebody with the ability to pull some additional government funds into the organization. After discussion, we felt that the Rev. Tommie Jackson could possibly accomplish that.”
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