Features

Q&A with Whitney Pastorek

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For a year-end interview, we spoke with Whitney Pastorek, a writer and community organizer who most recently has served as the executive producer of City Cast Nashville.

Features

Q&A with Rico X

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Rico X has worked with young people throughout his career and recently was named the chief mission delivery officer of the Girl Scouts of Middle Tennessee.

Features

Learn More about the Internal Audit of OHS

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The Metro Audit Committee decided in September to conduct a financial audit of the Office of Homeless Services (OHS). An overflow room was set up to accommodate all the people that were interested in this meeting, including those called in to testify during the public hearing, which was limited to eight people, each allowed to speak for two minutes. The audit request was submitted by Councilmember Ginny Welsch. The following is a summary of her justification for an audit (copied and pasted from her letter to the Audit Committee):

“Since the creation of the office, serious questions have been raised regarding the leadership of OHS Director April Calvin, and numerous documented examples of mismanagement have been brought forth, including but not limited to:

Financial mismanagement and/or potential fraud related to expenditures of both federal ARP and Metro funds as well as contract compliance;

Lack of oversight of Metro facilities, including Strobel House, resulting in harm to residents and staff opening Metro to liability;

Staffing and hiring mismanagement;

Overall mismanagement resulted in the failure to improve housing outcomes despite a massive influx of federal and Metro dollars, and failure to deliver on its chartered obligations to coordinate Nashville’s homelessness response through shelter management, outreach, planning council support, and maintaining an inventory of third-party service providers.”

More specifically, Welsch claims that local journalists and advocates have reported $3.2 million in suspected financial irregularities including:

$569,000 in improper invoicing to Depaul USA, which is the contractor that runs Strobel House together with OHS;

$565,000 in improper use from Metro’s Landlord Engagement funds;

$130,000 in charges on a single department credit card;

$2 million of temporary federal funds used for permanent positions, which Welsch states would create “a future ‘funding cliff’ that will require an injection of Metro general budget funds.”

Welsch’s letter also points to other finance questions, some of them I would consider administrative moves that may create more transparency once corrected. Other claims include:

Unsustainable staffing structures, including when running Metro’s cold weather shelter, and circumvention of the Metro HR hiring policies;

Lack of transparency surrounding safety incidents at Strobel House; and

“Operational collapse despite massive funding increases,” in which Welsch points to

The lack of housing placement increases despite an increase in millions of dollars in investments.