CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - Mountaineer Food Bank’s interim director, Dave Karr, was let go from his position by the agency’s board of directors Monday night, and there are no immediate plans to replace him, according to employees.
Stacy Burkhammer, who has served as the food bank’s financial director since September and its assistant director since the resignation of former executive director Carla Nardella in December, said the board chose to let Karr go primarily because of cost. Burkhammer and two other food bank employees are now sharing the executive director’s workload without change to their own salaries, she said.
“He was from Michigan, and we were paying all of his expenses, so with our financial situation, we decided we had the ability to handle things here locally,” she said.
Burkhammer said the agency would not seek another interim director, but would instead wait until it had secured its finances before seeking a permanent leader.
The situation at MFB is murky - in July, its computer system crashed, resulting in a costly fix and the loss of the agency’s previous financial information.
The food bank established a new governing board shortly after in August. Its previous board had been disbanded by Braxton County Circuit Court Judge Richard Facemire in August of 2013, after its executive director since 1981, Nardella, filed suit against the board, claiming that some members had missed meetings, held their positions on the board for too long and acted without a quorum, violating the board’s bylaws. The board had tried to fire Nardella the previous May, according to court documents. Nardella left her position in December.
Burkhammer said the agency always operates on a thin margin, but a combination of factors have led it to flounder in recent months.
“There were a lot of things that led up to this,” Burkhammer said. “Our equipment is very old, and when you have trucks that gather the miles that we put on them, they become a huge liability as far as maintenance issues - all of the trucks in our fleet have over 300,000 miles on them, and it becomes huge. You pair that with a complete computer breakdown - we lost our system in July - and it was extremely expensive to replace.”
The MFB laid off 17 of its 27 workers earlier this month, as well, and has scaled back the miles it drives to deliver and pick up food, asking food banks with the means and transportation to do so to pick up food from their donors directly.
“We are 100 percent nonprofit, and our day-to-day operations are largely based on the donations we receive,” Burkhammer said. “That’s how we operate, and with the workforce the way it is, we have a huge unemployment problem in our population, which means that the demand for more food is there.”
The West Virginia Democratic Party held a breakfast fundraiser at Tudor’s Biscuit World on Charleston’s West Side Wednesday morning, raising more than $4,000 for the food bank.
To donate to the MFB, visit their website at www.mountaineerfoodbank.org or donate by mail - Mountaineer Food Bank, Attn: Fundraising, 484 Enterprise Drive, Gassaway, West Virginia, 26624.
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Information from: The Charleston Gazette, https://www.wvgazette.com
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