County changes treatment provider for court

But last week, Superior Court Judge Currie Mingledorff asked the BOC to approve a different provider – Winder-based Project Adam – as the provider of the services starting March 15.

The judge said only that the service level for the two courts had grown to the point where a new provider is needed. He introduced Gina McDonald, who is the executive director of Project Adam, and Taylor Jones, who in January replaced Sammy Hale as the coordinator of the two courts. Hale was fired after his arrest last year in Atlanta.

After the vote, Mingledorff explained to the Barrow Journal: “We’ve grown to the point where we needed to make a change, and we felt Project Adam brought more experience and was deeper in terms of the number of their people working there, and would be better able to help us as we continue our growth.”

However, there apparently is more to the change than has been publicly disclosed.

In a letter to the Light’s director, Fawn Alexander, BOC Chairman Danny Yearwood said the county was “compelled” to terminate the agreement because her company had failed to “timely complete and document clinical assessments and timely submit urine samples to external labs for confirmation testing.”

The letter said the county was exercising its right to terminate its October 2010 professional services agreement as of 11:59 p.m. March 14.

Alexander did not attend the board’s meeting Tuesday night. She could not be reached Wednesday morning for comment.

The Winder council terminated its $72,000 annual agreement with her homeless shelter in January 2011.