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Asian center's woes escalate
By WAVENEY ANN MOORE © St. Petersburg Times, published May 13, 2001 ST. PETERSBURG -- The major group that hoped to help thousands of Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians and Thais in Pinellas County is in deep trouble, having lost its main source of money and five staffers to another agency that is now providing many of its services. Not only has the Asian Family and Community Empowerment Center (FACE) had its money cut, some of the services it provided will soon leave its headquarters -- the former SPIFFS building at 2201 First Ave. N. And the annual Asian Heritage Festival, which should have taken place this month at the Coliseum, has been canceled. The humiliation for FACE culminated in a dressing down Thursday before the Juvenile Welfare Board, which has underwritten most of FACE's costs with $170,000 in grants. Bun Hap Prak, who has led FACE for years, and his board members tried to apologize for their organization's failings. "Those happenings," Prak said, "I am responsible for. I want to say in front of you, I am sorry for what has happened." But Juvenile Welfare officials were in no mood to listen. They had already had enough. "I think we have been through all this," said Myrtle Smith-Carroll, chairwoman of the Juvenile Welfare Board. "I have a bad taste in my mouth." Prak tried to explain. Since February, when the JWB pulled its funding, he said, his organization had begun the financial oversight the board had requested and had expanded its board to include local leaders such as former St. Petersburg Council member Robert Kersteen and School Board member Linda Lerner. In February, the Juvenile Welfare Board, citing years of fiscal mismanagement, took away FACE's control of one of its major programs and the funds to run them and handed the duties to Gulf Coast Jewish Family Services, which became involved because of its work resettling refugees. But the services still occurred in the FACE building. On Thursday, the Juvenile Welfare Board took another big step. It voted to help move the Gulf Coast-run services out of the FACE center. The new location, Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church, 1801 62nd Ave. N, promises to become a key center for Asian social services. By the end of this summer, the Southeast Asian Preschool, long established at Lakewood United Methodist Church near Pinellas Point, is expected to join the relocated services at Bethel Evangelical. A lease has not yet been signed, but staffers at the Juvenile Welfare Board also are talking with Neighborly Senior Services about developing an Asian congregate dining program at the site, considered a more central location to serve Pinellas County's growing Asian community. According to the latest census figures, the Asian community has increased 67 percent, to 6,640, in St. Petersburg in the past 10 years. The group makes up 2.7 percent of the city's population. It was about a decade ago that Prak, a Cambodian refugee, began marshaling his organizational skills to help unite the diverse segments of culture and language that separated St. Petersburg's Southeast Asian refugee community. "We are grass roots and our community is emerging," Prak said. In 1994, with Prak at the helm, the Asian Family and Community Empowerment Center was incorporated with the goal to offer social, cultural and educational programs. "What we have accomplished over the 10 years, is bringing everybody to the same table, different ethnic groups, with different agendas," he said. Miriam Williams, clinical administrator at Gulf Coast Jewish Family Services, said her agency became involved in the issue because it had received a federal grant for the Asian refugee population from the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Beneficiaries, besides Gulf Coast were FACE, Catholic Charities and the Southeast Asian Preschool, a program run by United Methodist Cooperative Ministries. "It was a wonderful collaborative grant," Ms. Williams said. "Here we were, rolling along . . . when (the Juvenile Welfare Board) alerted us about longstanding fiscal mismanagement at the Asian Center. We became concerned that our federal grant dollars would be at risk as well. So then things happened very quickly." Ms. Williams said Gulf Coast Jewish Family Services is putting together an advisory group of Asian residents. "We would like to do it right and help this community," she said. "We are not here for the long term in a leadership role in this community. We hope to turn back the control to some Asian group in the community, but we don't know who that will be." With FACE's loss of income, Prak said he has offered to take a pay cut and that members of his few remaining staff are willing to do the same or even work for free. The Juvenile Welfare Board may put a lien on the 11,000-square-foot building FACE owns and purchased with the help of a Community Block Grant it received through the City of St. Petersburg. The lien would be to satisfy the approximately $35,000 the center owes the Juvenile Welfare Board for unreimbursable or questionable expenses. The center never really learned how to accomplish its mission, said Jim Mills, executive director of the Juvenile Welfare Board. "They were part of our neighborhood family center efforts. For all of them, there was a learning curve, but I think what happened here is that the learning curve never topped out," said Mills, who added that the center began receiving Juvenile Welfare Board money in 1994. "We had serious enough concerns that we went through and tested everything. We saw enough things that troubled us. . . . Expenditures that did not seem appropriate." Board member and State Attorney Bernie McCabe's response to Prak's apology and remedies was blunt. "All these are fine things," said. "Why did you wait so long to do that. . . . It was not until the end of the day, when everybody got irritated with everybody else that you finally did it." Prak, wearing a traditional Cambodian shirt, answered quietly, "That's a good point." He was followed by Thomas Souk, president of Asian center's board. Speaking in halting English, he thanked the board and apologized. "We try to do our best," he said. Board member Jeanne Malchon responded that the board is responsible for the way taxpayers' money is spent. "I don't think any one of us here questions your intent or some of the things that you have been able to accomplish in the community," she said. "The question is that we have certain standards, certain requirements for every organization that we fund." She added: "We've been going through this for three years that I have been on the board. We tried to work with you people." Public Defender Bob Dillinger, also a board member, may have been the angriest at Thursday's meeting. Referring to a letter signed by Souk, he said: "You come here before us today to ask us to help you again, when you write a letter . . . that says this whole incident is comparable to a public park daylight date rape with Asian FACE center as the victim? You come before us and you want us to help you and you make those kinds of accusations? Is that what you teach your children?" Later Prak explained that what prompted the letter was the fact that Gulf Coast Jewish Family Services had moved on to his center's property and taken over its programs. The letter, he said, was Souk's idea. "Of course, English is not his first language and then he assigned it to staff to help write it out," Prak said. Mills, the JWB executive director, thinks there are two reasons for the Asian FACE center's problems. "Perhaps what it boils down to is bringing people together is not necessarily enough," he said. "In many communities, there is at many times a disconnect between the talents that are necessary to bring diverse populations together and the talents needed to operate the programs."
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