After a tumultuous year, the Homer Senior Center now rests on steadier ground, thanks to community support and productive collaboration between the organization’s administration and board of directors.

Homer Senior Citizens, Inc., disclosed “substantial” debt during a board meeting in November 2024 due to unpaid payroll taxes and invoices held over from the previous administration, Homer News previously reported. Board members in April voted unanimously to pursue Chapter 11 bankruptcy, after the Internal Revenue Service levied $138,000 from HSC’s bank account to recoup unpaid payroll taxes, in an effort to restructure their debt while still remaining in operation.

Homer News also reported in June that the senior center received congressional support from Sens. Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski, both R-Alaska, to facilitate the financial recovery process, including a formal investigation by the Criminal Investigation Division of the IRS and FBI into “potential misappropriation of funds” — a move that was described at the time as a “very positive step.”

HSC Executive Director Sarah Weideman and board president Shirlie Gribble provided an update on the organization’s financial and operational statuses to Homer News last month.

“It’s actually been a year ago, exactly as of yesterday,” Weideman said in a Nov. 14 interview. “I came in at the end of October last year … originally as a business consultant and was asked to stay as an interim executive director at that time.”

Upon accepting the role, new turmoil unfolded as the organization uncovered “close to a million dollars’ worth” of payroll taxes that hadn’t been reported or paid.

“That kind of stirred up some more questions about the financials,” Weideman said.

From there, the organization also uncovered approximately half a million dollars in unpaid vendor invoices, “not including the mortgage payments.”

“There was a lot of financial hardship that was uncovered, including none of the accounting books had really been kept up for that fiscal year yet, either,” Weideman said.

Since June, HSC has finalized the repayment agreement process with the IRS.The joint fraud investigation conducted by the IRS and FBI remains ongoing.

“We’re still uncovering things and still questioning and diving into various accounts,” Weideman said. “We’re still going through and just trying to figure out what was going on — where did money go that supposedly was coming in — but there weren’t really financial policies or clarity in any of that.”

She added that the organization has also rebuilt the missing records for fiscal year 2023 based on available information from bank accounts, receipt books and vendor invoices that they were able to request.

“It’s not going back through an audit process, but we rebuilt that one just so we could have it for transparency,” she said. “FY24 is at the auditors right now, and we’re about to be on track with FY25, which puts us in a good spot there.”

In additional good news, Weideman said that the senior center’s bills are “100% paid up” and they’ve been running in the black for the last four months.

“We were able to pay off one of the mortgages, and we are in agreement with the IRS and the repayment plan. It’ll be a 10-year process for that,” she said, adding that originally the senior center was facing huge penalties that she was able to get “completely abated” due to the theft and fraud underlying the situation.

“That was my second day of being the interim director,” she said.

Gribble, who was serving as board vice-president at the time, called the past year “intense.”

“Everybody worked hard to figure things out and trying to figure out what we could do,” she said. “We kicked in some fundraisers and those kinds of things … it helped for some smaller things for the center itself.”

Now that the organization is out of “crisis mode,” Weideman said, they’re looking to apply for larger grants and possibly federal funding to help provide for daily operations and programming.

“We can’t use federal funds or grants towards the IRS payroll — that’s a federal guideline. Donations can go towards that, but as long as we stay on the straight and narrow with our repayment plan — they actually gave us 50% off of our plan for the first year so we can get back on our feet, which was wonderful,” she said.

In the meantime, HSC is also looking at applying for “a few very large” grants to fund structural repairs to the center itself that are needed due to deferred maintenance.

“There’s never been maintenance,” Weideman said. “But we are starting on a five to 10-year capital project plan for that.”

When HSC decided to pursue bankruptcy at the end of April, the organization also elected to suspend their Adult Day Services program due to a lack of funding and staffing. The program is still on pause, Weideman said last month, but she recently attended the National Adult Day Services Conference held in Chicago this year and came back with resources to begin building a business plan to either reopen the program or start anew based on available staffing.

“Part of (the problem) is with state regulations — there’s specific numbers that we have to have for care providers versus those that are in the program, and that makes staffing really hard when it can fluctuate so much,” she said. “But the other piece to that would be enhancing our transportation program, which is an inhibitor, and changing the hours so that care providers can have a place to take their loved one and still hold a job.”

Weideman said she hoped to have that business plan by next fiscal year so that HSC can apply to the new round of state funding in FY27.

Looking back to where the center was last year, Gribble said that additional positive changes include HSC being “almost fully staffed” between resident caregivers and certified nursing assistants.

“Our kitchen is fully staffed, and we’ve got great chefs — the food has improved here almost 200%,” she said. “I think staff morale is also very positive.”

Gribble also noted the compassion that the community has for residents, highlighting that factor with an anecdote about local EMTs and Homer Police Department officers recently having lunch and engaging with residents.

Community engagement overall is up, Weideman said, from Meals on Wheels program numbers to the center’s congregate lunch program attendance and the potential addition of new art programs.

“The volunteer piece is slowly coming back, but we’re really looking to boost that,” she said. “We’re going forward.”

Both Weideman and Gribble credited the organization’s progress over the past years to a “team effort,” with Weideman providing direction and expertise and the board and staff working together to execute resolutions and keep the center running.

“I couldn’t do this on my own,” Weideman said.

Gribble added that the center “came this close” to shutting down before Weideman arrived on scene.

“We got the right fit at the right time — otherwise these doors would be closed,” she said.

Learn more about Homer Senior Citizens, Inc., their services and programming, and ways to support the organization at www.homerseniors.org/.