MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT PCOC

Over the past couple of months I've been noting the various issues surrounding the Polk County Opportunity Council, the area's Community Action Agency which really does a lot of good work for low income residents but is best known as the local provider for the Head Start program. It's history has been marred by individuals --- including a former Executive Director --- who lined their own pockets and took agency resources for their personal use.

Recently, PCOC has seen more controversy beginning with their failure to seat the City of Bartow's designated representative on the agency's board of directors. Shortly afterward, the Lakeland Ledger found that the current Executive Director, after accepting a no-bid contract for leasing a Canon Image Runner machine, was wined and dined in Las Vegas under the guise of "training" about the machine. At the time, we asked: "Why the Executive Director? Why not the department head whose responsibility will include maintainence and using the equipment?" Then we learned that three senior staff members left the agency, and the former Finance Director says he refused to sign off on several no-bid contracts which were in violation of agency bylaws and possibly federal rules.

But THAT'S NOT ALL! THEN we learn that PCOC requested $150,000 to repair a parking lot that two experts say should only cost around $25,000, citing hurricane damage. And today the Ledger reports that PCOC requested $90,000 in federal money to repair two portable classrooms that it uses for the Head Start program at Medulla Elementary School, claiming they were ruined although officials with the Polk County School Board and internal PCOC documents state there was not even minor damage to either of them, and neither were ever closed due to damage. Not only that, but PCOC only owns one of the two portables that it sought money for...the other belongs to the school district!

Carolyn Speed, the executive director of PCOC, on Wednesday disputed any notion that the two Head Start portables did not suffer hurricane damage."We house students in both of those portables," Speed said. "It's our assessment that both of those portables need to be replaced.

After Charley and Frances, a PCOC report titled "visible hurricane damage" listed "no damage" to the Medulla Head Start portables.

But on Sept. 8, PCOC applied for $723,000 from Head Start for a long list of storm damage emergency fixes to 17 Head Start centers throughout the county. Included in the application was $90,000 for the two Medulla portables.