CONWAY — The house that brought down a university president has something in common with another government-owned home.
Like the two-story president’s house at the University of Central Arkansas, the chancellor’s home at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke also underwent hundreds of thousands of dollars in publicly funded renovations.
The tenants in both homes during that work were Allen Meadors and his wife, Barbara.
A food vendor was involved in renovations at the Pembroke home, just as Meadors had hoped one would be at the Conway house until the plan fell apart, he lost his job and an investigation ensued.
By the time Meadors resigned from the UCA presidency Sept. 2, the school had spent roughly $400,000 on the Conway house since June 2009, the month before he became president. An additional $700,000 could have been spent on it had a deal gone through that Meadors and board of trustees Chairman Scott Roussel incorrectly labeled as a donation.
At Pembroke, a total of $362,690 was spent on that school’s ranch-style home during Meadors’ decade as chancellor, according to numbers released last week by that university under the North Carolina Public Records Act.
In Arkansas, talk of further renovations on UCA’s 5,666-square-foot brick house came to a halt just days after Roussel announced the $700,000 offer from food-vendor Aramark.
The money that Meadors had told trustees was coming from a “private donor” and that Roussel had called a “donation” and a “godsend” at an Aug. 26 board meeting was actually part of a contract-extension proposal and would have been public funds once given to UCA.
After the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette learned about the contract condition, both men acknowledged that they had known about it all along and that they had made an honest mistake in not disclosing it.
But shortly thereafter, the deal was off, Meadors was out within days and an Arkansas State Police investigation began.
Now, some legislators are upset. And the Arkansas Department of Higher Education is asking all of the state’s colleges and universities to complete questionnaires on some contracts — those that are not bid, those that are bid but include “incidentals” such as the Aramark offer, and those that are for construction projects.
The findings will be turned over to the state Bureau of Legislative Research and then to a legislative subcommittee on higher education, said Shane Broadway, the department’s interim director.
Meadors did not reply to phone or e-mail requests for comment.
At Pembroke, $227,283 of the renovation spending was for the addition of three bedrooms, three bathrooms and a family room, said R. Neil Hawk, Pembroke’s vice chancellor for business affairs.
When Meadors became chancellor there, his two sons were teenagers. By the time he arrived at UCA, both sons were adults and no longer living at home.
Hawk said kitchen renovations at Pembroke totaled $60,253; window treatments, $14,947; and roof replacement, $60,207.
All of the money came from public funds, with $200,000 of it provided by the University of North Carolina General Administration, Hawk said in an e-mail sent by Joshua Malcolm, Pembroke’s general counsel.
In a separate response that Pembroke provided to another media outlet in 2001 and forwarded to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on Friday, Pembroke said the house’s “greatly outdated kitchen was renovated, saving many of the cabinets and other materials that were more than 30 years old.”
“This was a joint project of the University and Sodexho Marriott [Management Inc.], the University’s caterer,” the response added. “Sodexho Marriott furnished some of the new appliances to enhance its ability to prepare receptions and formal dinners.”
Likewise, Brad Crosson, Aramark’s district manager, said in an Aug. 26 UCA news release that whatever was done to the president’s house with the $700,000 would “aid us in entertaining the community at large and help fulfill the mission the university has.”
The 2001 Pembroke response put the kitchen renovation cost at $31,860 and said it came from the repair and renovation account. “The University also received a $10,000 gift from Sodexho Marriott to help purchase major kitchen appliances,” the response added.
It was unclear late Friday whether the “gift” was tied to a contract or was a no-stringsattached donation. Pembroke officials did not answer that question.
While Pembroke’s food vendor — which is now named Sodexo Management Inc. — agreed to provide substantial funding for the university or its foundation during Meadors’ tenure as part of its contracts, there is no indication in contracts reviewed by the Democrat-Gazette that the $10,000 kitchen funding was part of such an agreement.
Malcolm said in e-mails that the total $362,690 spent on construction and renovation came from public funds, $200,000 from the University of North Carolina General Administration and the remainder from state-appropriated funds.
It was unclear why the 2001 response said, “The kitchen renovation cost $31,860 from the repair and renovation account,” while Hawk’s information put the cost at more than $60,000. According to the 2001 response, the kitchen work was complete.
The UCA house, built in 1936, also underwent a $400,000 renovation in 1995-96.
The Pembroke work during Meadors’ tenure there was “the first major renovation” of the home in more than 25 years, according to that school’s 2001 response.
Pembroke added about 1,500 square feet to the house, bringing it to 5,462 square feet to update it, make it better for entertaining “and to provide adequate living space for current and future residents,” the response said.
The North Carolina school said the new area also was designed to meet building requirements under the federal disabilities act — an element that also came into play in discussions earlier this year about whether to renovate a downstairs bathroom at the UCA house.
In 2006, the Pembroke board of trustees approved a resolution honoring Barbara Meadors for her service. A news release issued at the time by the school said she supervised the remodeling and expansion of the chancellor’s residence “to accommodate a wide variety of University events.” It said she also served as host to a variety of university functions.
In Little Rock, Broadway said he expects information gleaned from the questionnaires sent to the colleges to be presented to the legislative subcommittee in January.
The Higher Education Department had a conference call with the colleges Thursday to clarify the information needed, he said.
“It’s going to take them some time to compile,” he said.
The questionnaire also asks the colleges about past-due debts that students owe the schools.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 10/24/2011