An agency that provides far-reaching public services for vulnerable people in Hancock and Washington counties is navigating turmoil that its recently fired CEO said threatens its stability.
Downeast Community Partners, the region’s community action agency, has faced multiple years of financial difficulties and recently gave up the administration of its biggest program — the federally funded Head Start program for children — to another agency. Its board of directors also fired CEO Rota Knott earlier this month, less than a year after she was hired.
The board of directors now says that it is working to find new leadership.
But the instability — which came to a public head when Knott sent out a press release on July 3 criticizing her firing — raises questions about how effectively the organization can keep offering its spread of vital services, from fuel assistance to transportation. The troubles also come when many agencies and nonprofits around the state that rely on federal funding are struggling to meet the needs of their communities or are unsure about their futures, as the Trump administration has frozen, cut or otherwise disrupted funding to Maine.
Community action agencies are regionally based groups that coordinate services for low-income people and try to eliminate the causes of poverty, primarily through a federal grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that is administered by individual state governments.
Downeast Community Partners aims to improve the quality of life for communities in the region and reduce the impact of poverty there, according to its mission statement. It formed in 2017 as a merger of two previous service agencies, Child and Family Opportunities and the Washington Hancock Community Agency.
Its programs include heating assistance, transportation, home weatherization and repair, adult day care, help for aging people to stay in their homes, service navigators, financial and family coaching, assistance from nurses for new mothers and their children, youth development programs and meal assistance.
Until this year, it also ran the area’s Head Start early childhood education programs. It gave up the grant used to run those programs this summer and another regional agency, Aroostook County Action Program, now runs them in Hancock and Washington counties.
The former CEO, Rota Knott, said in late June that Downeast Community Partners had fallen behind on its financial reporting and was ineligible for Head Start, but could apply to run the programs again in the future.
Knott was hired in August last year and wrote in the agency’s 2024 annual report that it was making strong progress toward resilience.
Less than a year later, Knott sent out a press release detailing some of her concerns with the agency’s board — an unusual step for the leader of any public-facing institution. She then notified the press about her termination several days later.
In an interview with the Bangor Daily News after her first press release but before her firing, Knott said she was concerned by the board’s response to alleged threatening behavior toward her from a former employee and that it was symptomatic of larger issues.
The agency had not completed a financial audit in three years, she said at the time, and staff turnover had made it difficult to find information about past finances or practices.
Last fall, the agency was found to owe MaineHousing $1.7 million in pandemic-era funds because of previous mismanagement, the Ellsworth American reported at the time. It had to temporarily pause some programs as a result and planned to sell some of its properties to pay the debt.
“This has not had an impact on our programming,” Knott told the newspaper. “Our clients continue to receive the same level of services.”
Public tax filings for Downeast Community Partners and similar agencies around eastern Maine show that its recent financial problems appear to be unique, but not extreme.
In the latest year available, 2023, it brought in $14.2 million overall but had an operating loss of more than $300,000. The agency was in and out of the black before that, losing more than $250,000 in 2017 and ending other years with a net gain in revenue.
Neighboring agencies rarely lost money in the past decade, and typically less than $150,000 when they did, according to tax filings.
Unaudited figures from Downeast Community Partner’s 2024 annual report say it had more than $11 million in expenses, but do not list revenue. In the introduction to that report, Knott and board President Anne Perry wrote that rising costs were continuing to put new pressures on the people they served.
In the interview in June, Knott said that the agency recently started working with a national group to help get its finances in order. But she alleged that years of financial problems and not meeting grant requirements had put some of its other service funds in jeopardy, and federal backing for some of its programs is already uncertain as the government cuts funding.
Knott referred questions about the specifics of those cases to the agency’s board members, who did not respond to a request for an interview.
The board instead sent the BDN a statement that said it could not discuss personnel matters in detail but had made “the very difficult decision to part ways” with Knott and was already preparing for strong interim leadership while it looked for a new CEO.
Knott has also filed a complaint to the Maine Department of Health and Human Services that alleges the state agency pressured the local board to fire her. Knott provided a copy of the complaint to the BDN. She couldn’t be reached for further comment Thursday.
The Maine Department of Health and Human Services, which coordinates federal grant funding, did not respond to a request for comment and more information about the operation of the agency.
Having locally based action agencies rather than larger statewide ones helps because people who live in the communities they serve understand the needs there and how to best deliver programs to them, Knott said in June.
“It is so important that they be delivered in their communities by people in their communities,” she said.