September 24, 2024- KERA News- By Nathan Collins
Dallas city officials have apologized to Family Gateway, a nonprofit operating a city-owned homelessness shelter, for delays in cleaning up damage caused by late-May storms. The storm caused water damage to the shelter — which led to mold problems that closed its childcare area.
Ellen Magnis, the nonprofit’s CEO, told the members of the city council the city was responsible for the repairs — but it failed to act fast enough.
“As we know the delayed response resulted in even more damage,” Magnis said during Monday’s Government Performance and Financial Management Committee meeting.
Magnis said she got a late-June email from the city’s building services department about Family Gateway’s request for help in fixing the storm damage. Magnis said the staff got an estimate for the facility’s roof in 2023.
According to Magnis, staff told her the “funds for a new roof were not then and are not now — in 2024 — available” in either the building department’s budget or the city’s office of homelessness solutions.
“It then made me wonder if delays that we experienced following the sort were really because city staff didn’t know how they were going to pay for it,” Magnis told the committee. “As this email suggests.”
Recounting a mid-August meeting with city officials — and right before an insurance adjuster was going to inspect the facility — Magnis said one city leader said “in hindsight we should have had an insurance adjuster out there the week after the storm.
Some mold testing was done by a city contractor in early-August. Two childcare rooms on the facility’s first floor and two sleeping rooms on the second floor were identified as having mold damage.
“Once mold remediation work was underway, the crew informed us that the mold was quote ‘much worse than expected’ and cautioned us to explore the rooms above the childcare area where the most extensive mold was found.”
Magnis said when she reported the damage to Dallas city staff, she said staff said the crew “does not have the authority to speak on behalf of the vendor.”
After that, Magnis said Family Gateway called in their own testing company and confirmed four other areas with significant mold damage.
“The mold testing results were provided to city staff on September the 4th,” Magnis said. “And the response was ‘we can’t reimburse you for that’.”
Magnis said that she “did not respond well” to that comment and other comments made during the process — and said the city staff could attest to that.
“While we’ve had many positive encounters, I have also reflected on city staff responses that I have felt to be unsatisfying and appear to be aimed at limited work, rather than doing what is needed,” Magnis said. “I continue to come back to this thought, that perhaps these teams need a much clearer path forward on how to pay for out-of-budget urgent needs.”
Magnis said moving forward, it will be necessary to get more clarity on whether mold is truly storm related — and or caused by something else.
“I just want to say that District 12 loves having you in the district, you’ve gained enormous support,” District 12 Council Member Cara Mendelsohn said during the meeting. “This entire episode is shameful and disappointing and its my expectation that the city will fully fund remediation of the building.”
Mendelsohn has previously said she believes the ordeal was “irresponsible” and that she is “embarrassed to be a part of the city that didn’t take care” of the issue earlier.
City staff said during the committee meeting that Magnis’ recounting of the story was “accurate.”
“The bottom line is this, we weren’t responsive enough at the front end,” , said Donzell Gipson, an interim assistant city manager. “Hopefully we’ll do a better job of contract management…so it’s a very streamlined response back to any issue, whether its an emergency or not.”
Gipson said city staff is “going back to the drawing board” to figure out how to avoid similar issues in the future. That may include figuring out how to make sure emergency funds are more efficiently doled out.
“This was not our finest moment,” Gipson said. “I can assure you that staff spent many hours looking into this and we’re not very happy with the response either…things weren’t done well, and people have been impacted.”
Gipson said “there is nobody” working the city who’s been satisfied with what has happened.
“I think the city is, in its own way, globally saying that we apologize,” Gipson said.
Got a tip? Email Nathan Collins at ncollins@kera.org. You can follow Nathan on Twitter @nathannotforyou.
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