VENTURA : Contract for Drug Program Weighed

The county’s director of alcohol and drug programs will recommend that the Board of Supervisors award a contract to a Ventura-based drug and alcohol rehabilitation center because it is near bankruptcy, the director said Wednesday.

Stephen Kaplan will try to formulate a proposal for the 10-year-old Khepera House in time for the Nov. 12 supervisors meeting, he said.

All county funds for the 45-bed program were cut off a year ago because of mismanagement at Khepera House.

Rather than granting the program funds, Kaplan said he will recommend that the supervisors “award a contract to Khepera so that they can become and stay viable,” he said. “It will be tailored to the more immediate situation. Then we’ll see what happens next year.”

Kaplan declined to give a dollar figure.

That sounds good to Khepera House Executive Director Dale McFadden. But if the program doesn’t receive some bailout money by Nov. 15, “Khepera is dead,” he said.

McFadden warned the supervisors in an Oct. 15 letter of Khepera’s fiscal plight, saying that he would recommend that the program file for bankruptcy if the county did not provide $20,000 by Oct. 22. “When I came in, the situation was desperate. . . . You can imagine what it is now,” he said.

Thomas E. Chaloupka, who was director of Khepera House for eight years, was sentenced Monday to 90 days in the work-furlough program for falsely obtaining $13,000 in county grants.