The Peoria Citizens Committee for Economic Opportunity is again in need of a new CEO following the resignation of Denise Moore after just four months.
Moore cited a need to attend to her ailing parents in the Chicago area, but also pointed to dysfunction within the embattled social services agency’s 15-member board of directors.
“PCCEO was going through such a difficult time — a difficult time, quite honestly, of their own creation — that I was finding it more and more difficult to get the board to focus on what the important things were,” Moore said Wednesday in an interview with WCBU.
A former Peoria City Council member who previously served on the PCCEO board for nine years, Moore left the non-profit agency on Peoria’s South Side after releasing her resignation letter to the public on Tuesday.
“One of the things that I’ve said to them is that they need to spend more time setting that strategic direction and dealing with the financial health of the organization. Those are two things that they do not spend enough time addressing,” she said.
“Instead, they are more involved in the day-to-day activities, and I tried to impress upon them that you will have no day-to-day activity if the strategic direction and the financial health of the organization are not put back on track. Nothing else will be able to survive.”
Moore was PCCEO’s sixth top executive dating back to the 2022 departure of McFarland Bragg. Three of those leaders served in an interim capacity.
In April 2024, several employees were fired after an internal investigation of alleged improper distribution of gift cards uncovered “improprieties,” prompting an investigation by the Peoria Police Department.
Earlier this month, PCCEO was notified by the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity [DCEO] that its funding for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program [LIHEAP] and Community Services Block Grants [CSBG] was terminated — an amount totaling nearly $3 million.
“Community leaders need to really rally around that organization because they are in crisis, and I don’t see an easy or clear way out,” said Moore. “Looking back, there were several community groups calling for the whole board to resign, and I think that might be the best thing because they have no idea what they’re doing.”
DCEO noted “several years of persistent organizational and fiscal instability” as reasoning for the LIHEAP and CSBG terminations. Tazwood Community Services in Pekin will take over administering the $2.3 million LIHEAP funding for Peoria County in October as a one-year emergency provider.
“The primary issue with the agency right now is that they are behind in their audits,” Moore said of PCCEO. “Nonprofit organizations, especially community action agencies, have to complete an audit every year and submit that audit to the state. The agency is two years behind their audit submissions, and some would say three years behind, because a year that they thought was complete ... now has to be reopened.
“There was a forensic audit being done at the same time to try to address any concerns of fraud. Luckily, there was no fraud found. However, what was found was the policies and procedures that are in place at the agency had stopped being followed. As a result of that, the issues that they are suffering under now can be related directly back to their failure to follow their own policies and procedures.”
Moore said in her short time leading PCCEO, she attempted to get the agency headed in the right direction.
“I tried to help this board to understand what a community action agency is supposed to do, why they exist. I tried to reacquaint them with their mission and vision, and brought in individuals to try to teach them what a board member is supposed to do in their role,” she said.
Moore said she was able to get the state to release $3 million in other funding that was due to PCCEO, address more than $100,000 worth of past-due invoices, and reduce the agency’s monthly budget by between $25,000 and $30,000.
“There were many other things that were being put into place,” she said. “But once again, when you have board members who feel like they need to come in and literally be in the building, it causes a little bit of a disturbance.”
