Changes on WEOC board reflected in new strategic plan

CONWAY -- The Waccamaw Economic Opportunity Council is working on a new strategic plan that could signal to the public the magnitude of the changes on the agency’s board since the upheavals of the last couple of years.

Among other things, said James Pasley, the agency’s executive director, the new document will have a new mission statement and a new vision statement as well as measureable goals for all the agency’s programs with one-, three-, five- and seven-year deadlines for meeting them. High on the list of priorities, Pasley said, will be completion of a new Head Start Center in the Choppee community of Georgetown County, a project where problems over starting construction before financing was secured led to the downfall of two former board chairmen.

The new strategic plan also will define the board’s role as one of broad policy oversight rather than as a body with day-to-day authority over operations, said WEOC board chairman Harold Phillips.

The improper interference in day-to-day operations by former board Chairman Zacharius Grate and former member Adbullah Mustafa was cited by the S.C. Office of Economic Opportunity as a reason it threatened last year to close the agency.

The board struggled through much of Grate’s tenure as chairman, which included numerous closed-door sessions that did not comply with the state’s open meetings law. For much of the year, the agency was without an executive director after Grate directed the board’s firing of the former agency chief. In the interim before a new director was hired, he billed the agency thousands of dollars for traveling almost daily from his home in Georgetown County to WEOC’s Conway headquarters.

Grate admitted signing the contract to begin work on the Choppee center, but told neither board members nor the contractor that he had done so without having a bank loan to pay for the work.

Subsequent attempts to get funding were turned down by banks, who were too concerned about board leadership to advance the funding. Pasley said the agency is now close to securing that funding.

Eventually, the church that nominated Grate to the board withdrew its support of him, which meant he automatically lost his seat. The board had already begun the process of kicking him off, and did so for the former first vice chairman, David Eagleton, who was briefly chairman in Grate’s absence.

Eagleton was linked in board members’ minds as compliant in the Choppee loan process, but he denied the allegations.

Phillips, who joined the board shortly before its 2010 retreat, said the process of creating this year’s strategic plan was markedly different from last year’s.

“I don’t recall any strategic planning,” he said of last year’s effort.

Last year, the agency released a list of five words for its strategic plan. This year, Pasley said, the final plan likely will be 12 to 15 pages, whittled down from the current 20-page rough draft.

Phillips said it is important to set measureable goals for agency programs so that there will be benchmarks by which to judge work.

The federally funded agency serves thousands of low-income residents of Horry, Georgetown and Williamsburg counties with things such as rental and mortgage assistance, weatherization of homes and help paying utilities. It is also the administrator of Head Start programs in the three counties.

The agency’s new mission statement, he said, will be more inclusive of all the programs.

“It was time for something different,” he said of the statement, which board members recite at the beginning of each meaning.

Pasley and Phillips said the plan is being drawn after comprehensive input from board members, staff and members of the agency’s Head Start Policy Committee. That kind of input was absent from last year’s strategic planning process, Phillips said.

Pasley said a proposed final draft of the strategic plan will be presented to the board at its Dec. 20 meeting for approval.