May 3, 2006

Published in Wake Forest, NC

            George C. Jones Sr., the interim director at the DuBois Center since early March, said Tuesday, “According to the CPA, we’ve paid everybody we’re supposed to pay.” Jones said they had paid people based on the information they had.

            Jones has also told former center employees that the center – or the mental health counseling program – is out of money.

            Those statements are not what Jones has been telling the investigator for the North Carolina Department of Labor. “They just made payroll last Friday, and they admit some people are still due money,” Henry Sasser, the deputy administrator in the wage and hour bureau of the labor department, said Tuesday. “It is my understanding they plan on paying everyone. They have told the investigator they know they still have some payroll to go.”

            Sasser also said the labor department would be pressing the center to fully pay everyone. “If payroll is not made (this coming) Friday, we’re going to be talking to them about when they will be paid.”

            Sasser said the labor department is only concerned that people are paid the amount owed them for their work. “As long as they make payroll, we don’t get involved in the other stuff.” And the department does not care where the money comes from as long as the employees are paid.

            If people are not paid, however, Sasser said, the department will look for the person or persons, as a board or as individuals, who made the decision to work people and not pay them, and the department can go after individual assets. “We have to be able to prove they made that decision” not to pay.

            On April 11, Jones paid some of the former DuBois Center employees for work done between Feb. 21 and 28. On April 21, the checks were for work done between Feb. 1 and 20. The report showed both payments.

            Jones and the CPA, Lee Jackson of Smithfield, did not pay $7,149.25 for work the counselors and case managers did in January and previous months and billed in February, although the amounts were listed on the two-page report Jones gave Jerry Wright, the deputy director of the new W.E.B. DuBois Community Development Center, early this week. Because of the vagaries of Medicaid and Medicare, hours worked up to 12 months before may be backbilled. Jackson was paid a $7,500 advance for his services.

            Looking at the payment report, Wright said, “That’s what he gave me, and he said they didn’t have any more money. We don’t know where the rest of the money went to.”

            Among others Jones did not pay were the support staff members for the mental health counseling program. Those would include Bettie Murchison, who resigned as the DuBois Center director at the end of February along with almost all the center’s employees; Drew Bridges, the staff psychologist; Wright, a janitor, and an accountant, 12 people in all. Murchison is now the director of the DuBois CDC.

            “I’m thinking that’s not everybody,” Murchison said of the list of those paid. There are more than 100 people employed in the counseling program, but not all have billable hours each month. Early Tuesday Murchison said she had not yet had time to check Jones’ list against the list she has of those to be paid from the $142,777.       

            In early April, Jones said the 10 employees then at the DuBois Center, including himself, were paid. “The county provides most of this money.”

            The mental health counseling employees are paid a month after they submit their billable hours. For instance, work done in January would be paid at the end of February. The $169,399.38 transferred to a CDC bank account late in February was to pay the employees for their January hours.

            Another group of people, the 38 or so young adults enrolled in the HopeBuilders program, have not been paid recently.

            Murchison said students are owed four paychecks. The CDC has paid the students twice and needs to be reimbursed. The students are paid $7 and up for the 20 hours a week they work as interns at local businesses.

            Monday, at least one young mother of two was about to be evicted, and CDC staff members were trying to find the $400 to prevent that. In a crunch, they were going to contribute.

            Jones and Lawrence (also known as Eugene) Perry, the president of the National DuBois Alumni Association, have filed a complaint with the Wake Forest Police Department, alleging Murchison and other staff members removed several items from the center that were the center’s property when they moved out on Feb. 24 while Perry watched and changed the locks. In March, Perry advanced $5,000 to a Smithfield attorney, Kenneth Hinton, for his work on legal action against Murchison, including the $169,399.38 moved to the CDC account. Murchison said it was transferred because she feared Jones and Perry would not properly pay the employees. The CDC used the money to pay the January payroll.

            Lt. Trent Coleman said Det. Richards is investigating the complaint.

            Murchison said she has not heard from Richards about the investigation. She said earlier the items belonging to the center were removed in error because of the hasty move, were personal items, or, in the case of a number of computers, were owned by White Street Computers and loaned to the center.

            Jones and the DuBois Center are continuing to operate the contract with the Wake County Public School System for the alternative school, Students On Line for Success. Murchison said she was confident the two teachers she hired last fall are being paid properly because the school system “is really particular” about accounting since the school bus scandal.

            The after-school tutoring program is also continuing at the center. It is partly funded by a $2,500 grant from the Koinonia Foundation and operated and underwritten by the Banks Kerr Family YMCA in Wakefield.

            The Y will also sponsor Camp High Hopes at the DuBois Center this summer, offering a free six-week camp for 100 youngsters from the DuBois neighborhood and the River Haven apartments on Capital Boulevard.

            The board of directors for the alumni association met last weekend at the center. Jones referred questions about the meeting to Perry, who did not call back. According to staff at the DuBois CDC, board members along with the attorney and CPA were entertained at a lunch at the Holiday Inn Express in Wakefield. In the past, board members provided snacks or a light lunch at the center.

            Monday Jerry Wright was handing out checks for work done in March to the counselors, case managers and all those employed through the mental health program run by the DuBois CDC. Everyone who came in to get their pay was ebullient, hugging Murchison.

            “It’s our first official paychecks,” Murchison said. “Everyone is happy and, I think, reassured.” The employees have been very loyal and steadfast during the past two months, she said.

            Part of the reason Murchison resigned and incorporated the DuBois CDC was because Perry and the alumni board were not taking any action to recertify the counseling programs employees as required by the state. Murchison said they could not just walk away from the serious problems their clients have, including suicidal impulses and child abuse.

            Murchison said in April she would like to resolve the problems between the two groups through mediation, and the Wake Forest Human Relations Council discussed the situation with a view to mediation last Thursday. Mayor Vivian Jones was at that meeting, Mitchell Lawson, the chairman, said, and he was absent because of work. The group decided, Lawson said, to wait and discuss it again at this month’s meeting on May 25 after some of the dissension has cleared.

            The DuBois Center operates out of two renovated buildings on the historic campus: the gym and the former ag/shop building that houses a computer lab, the center offices and an office for Wake Forest Police Department lieutenants.

            The 17-acre campus was home to the DuBois School and High School from 1926 through the spring of 1970, when it became the Wake Forest-Rolesville Junior High in the integrated county school system. It was converted to a middle school before the school system abandoned the campus after the Wake Forest-Rolesville Middle School on South Main Street opened.

            The buildings deteriorated for almost 10 years before the National Alumni Association of DuBois High School purchased the property and hired Murchison.