TRI-COUNTY — The Big Bend Community Action Committee (BBCAC), a nonprofit established in 1956 to provide critical public assistance programs to low-income residents in the tri-county area, will soon dissolve as other area organizations take up its remaining programs.
The shuttering of the organization comes nine months after its chief executive officer and chief financial officer were fired for failing to complete annual audits for three consecutive years, leading to the loss of key grant funding for the organization. Several community leaders were brought in to resuscitate the failing nonprofit following the firing of top executives, including Big Bend Hospital District Director J.D. Newsom, who was acting as interim CEO.
Newsom said after months of cleaning up the mess at BBCAC — auctioning off 27 unused vehicles the entity was needlessly paying insurance on and more — it was clear getting back into good standing with federal grant programs was going to be extremely difficult, requiring paying $80,000 to retroactively file audits.
Leaders have ultimately decided to transfer the operation of BBCAC’s primary programs to other nonprofits and abandon the organization altogether. “Big Bend Community Action Committee, as an entity, will eventually go away,” Newsom said. “All of the messed up books and poor financials dissolve with the organization.”
The organization’s utility assistance and weatherization programs, which help low-income individuals pay for utility bills and lower energy costs through improved home weatherization, funded by the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, have officially been transferred to the Community Council of South Central Texas.
Newsom said there was at least a three-month period where “funding was in limbo being transferred from one organization to another,” and people who rely on the assistance program were left stranded. “I know it put people in crisis because they were counting on that assistance to pay their bills, and the money just wasn’t there,” Newsom said. “It just makes you mad because it shouldn’t happen, but it did.”
The Community Council of South Central Texas has since hired staff in Presidio and Alpine to help residents re-enroll and the program is now back on track, Newsom said.
The transportation program BBCAC was running, commonly referred to as TRAX, has officially been transferred over to the Family Crisis Center of the Big Bend. The Family Crisis Center board was officially voted onto the BBCAC board on January 17, with all remaining BBCAC board members resigning. BBCAC staff and offices in Marfa and Presidio will now fall under the purview of the Family Crisis Center.
The TxDOT-funded program is currently helping transport elderly residents or those without vehicles to doctor’s appointments. Drivers take patients, including those that require daily dialysis, to Fort Stockton, Odessa and as far away as El Paso.
Leticia Carrillo, executive director of the Family Crisis Center, said the nonprofit agreed to take over the transportation services because its board of directors believed the service is both helpful for their clients — survivors of violence crimes and sexual assault — as well as the general public.
“While it’s not a perfect fit, we’re going to make it work because transportation is needed,” Carrillo said. “We don’t want to have people that can’t make a doctor’s appointment because they don’t have transportation. We’ve stepped in to fill that void.”
A consultant from the Hendrickson Transportation Group has been brought in for six months to help the Family Crisis Center improve efficiency and reliability during the transition period, Newsom said. “The transportation [program] is so critical for our communities that we’re just entirely focused on getting that back on track towards a valuable service for everybody,” he said.
In the past, the transportation service has been more robust, Newsom said, with daily routes taking people to the grocery store, post office and pharmacy, but the program has dwindled in the past few years and is now primarily providing medical transport.
Carrillo said the entity is currently looking to hire new drivers to join their team and aims to eventually expand local routes, creating a twice-weekly route from Terlingua to Alpine. “We’re hoping to grow it as soon as we can,” she said.
The Family Crisis Center currently serves the tri-county region in addition to Terell and Pecos counties. The transportation program overlaps with that coverage area in the tri-county region but includes Hudspeth and Culbertson counties, areas without any crisis center services, offering a potential future expansion for the Family Crisis Center. “Long term I think this helps them as well, to be able to provide services to a larger geographic area,” Newsom said.