SACRAMENTO, Calif — Following several years of difficulty due to the pandemic, members of the Sacramento-area Asian American community have raised concerns over the management of ACC Senior Services. The organization’s leaders counter the worst of their troubles are past as both sides agree they hope to see the organization continue to serve the Sacramento-area senior community.

A group of concerned community leaders in the Sacramento-area, the “Concerned Supporters of ACC” or “CSACC,” first gathered at the Aviator’s Restaurant at the Sacramento Executive Airport on Sept. 15. The group, led by Bill Wong and retired California Superior Court Judge Charles Kobayashi, outlined their concerns regarding the senior service organization.

Expressing Concerns
Kobayashi, who met with ACC’s president and CEO Connie Rusynyk, said he became aware of the multi-year, multi-million dollar deficit the organization accrued since the start of the pandemic resulting in a $13.7 million dollar loss from 2020 through 2024.

Kobayashi claimed Rusynyk, who took over the organization in October of 2023, had since helped turn the organization around and brought it back from the red starting in 2024. However the organization’s board of directors put Rusynyk on paid administrative leave and installed Jill Hays, the director of human resources, as acting CEO some time shortly before the Sept. 15 meeting.

Kobayashi connected with Wong, a recently resigned former ACC board member. Wong and Richard Uno both resigned at the end of July following the organization’s regular board meeting, citing the rest of the board was not heeding their concerns seriously enough.

“I don’t think that there was specific malfeasance or fraud involved with regard to the board members. I wanna make that very clear. I think that, it’s just a board that has not grown and adapted to a $50 million nonprofit,” Wong said. In the worst case scenario, Wong feared the organization might experience failure akin to the sale of other Nikkei senior facilities, such as Keiro in Los Angeles.

Following the meeting, the group of two dozen or so community members signed a letter citing 18 concerns they had with the organization.

Meanwhile, a separate group also started forming out of the families of residents at ACC’s Maple Tree Village facility, which offers assisted living and memory care. The independent group of concerned family members started raising issues over the quality of life at the facility, especially surrounding its kitchen staff and a major sewage problem that required the relocation of its memory care residents in early September.

Most recently, some 110 people gathered at the Belle Cooledge Library on Oct. 22 in Sacramento to discuss the concerns in an open house. The meeting, led by the CSACC and attended by several ACC board members, ended with all sides agreeing they should work together, although what shape that collaboration will take, has yet to be defined.

“All of the ACC board members I have spoken to as well as members of the staff leadership team all believe that ACC is turning the corner financially and that there is a renewed commitment to working with our residents, program participants, volunteers and the greater ACC community, so yes, I believe we are moving forward,” Betty Masuoka, a board member who attended the meeting, said in an e-mailed statement to the Nichi Bei News.

Masuoka also added that the organization’s interim CEO is working with Maple Tree Village residents and families to address their concerns. She pointed to the latest issue of the ACC News, the organization’s newsletter published on Nov. 4, which includes a response to the criticisms levied against the organization. She added that the organization plans to hold its own town hall on Nov. 19.

Financial Concerns at ACC
The CSACC’s concerns include the organization’s multi-million-dollar deficit between 2020 and 2023, as well as large attorney and accountant fees and a $2.3 million lawsuit settlement. Kobayashi said he researched the figures by looking over the organization’s IRS 990 filings since 2020 and questioned the organization’s financial situation.

The ACC statement in their newsletter, however, countered the organization is “in a good financial position” and is working to restore its monetary reserves. The statement added that the multi-million dollar legal settlement in particular, was not unprecedented, given that many other organizations in the state faced similar lawsuits at the time.

In an interview with the Nichi Bei News, Board Chair Jean Shiomoto said the pandemic hit the organization hard due to various reasons. The pandemic required additional protocols and staffing needs to maintain care at their facilities, while they were hampered by their inability to move new residents into their facility during the height of the pandemic.

“We had just opened Maple Tree Village in January 2020. The pandemic hit in March 2020. We weren’t able to continue to take in people to Maple Tree Village because of the restrictions on COVID,” Shiomoto said. “… But we were able to weather that because of the foresight of our past board members of making sure we had a good reserve, being very judicious in terms of how we managed our money.”

According to the organization’s statement, ACC currently holds $2.3 million in reserve with an additional $3.6 million on the way through the IRS’ Employee Retention Credit Program.

Shiomoto added, as their facilities returned to “normalcy” in 2024, they have since regained a positive cash flow and said the first two months of this fiscal year have been “strong” for the organization.

Concerns with Management and Operations
Other complaints criticized the organization management and operations. Notably, the organization’s ACC Care Center lost its five star rating with state regulators, while Kobayashi accused the organization of mismanaging endowments meant for the facility. CSACC also accused the organization of temporarily losing its nonprofit status in 2023 after failing to file paperwork.

The statement from the organization, however, countered the endowments were accounted for and that they continue to work to restore the Care Center’s ratings. Shiomoto also told the Nichi Bei News the organization never lost its nonprofit status.

“That’s a misstatement,” Shiomoto said. “This is where ACC had not filed the required reports with the (Attorney General’s Office of Registry of Charities and Fundraisers). And so because of that, we were put on a delinquent status, where once the required reports were filed, we were put back into good standing. And so we were just not able to do any collecting, any donations for 30 days.”

The organization’s statement also responded to concerns the Maple Tree Village’s community have raised. Tracie Namba Rutz, one of the leading voices among family members of residents who are speaking out, said her mother had been living at the facility for two years, and she had no complaints until this past spring after the site’s chef was let go. She cited cases where the dining hall ran out of entrees as well as generally ceasing to serve Asian-inspired meals, which were a draw for many seniors electing to move to ACC’s facilities.

In the same period, the California Department of Social Services visited Maple Tree Village four times. Three of them were associated with allegations of sanitation issues in the kitchen. While the inspector did not find anything substantiating the claims in May, an inspection in July revealed dirty floors and improper food storage practices. An evaluation report from Oct. 8 notes that the inspector met with someone who managed the kitchen in April, but subsequent visits lacked a full-time employee qualified to be responsible for a facility with 102 units.

Additionally, Namba Rutz and another concerned family member said the facility’s staff downsized over the year leading to fewer available medical technicians, times when the front desk was left unstaffed and overly long wait times when residents call for staff. Namba Rutz added in her complaint that administrators were often not around on weekends.

“We went through three chefs in two weeks, and that just set me off. Other people are concerned, we’re talking,” she said. “When my mom started there, there used to be four med techs, it is now one, or maybe two.”

After sending a letter on Sept. 21 to a number of ACC leaders in which she listed concerns, including lack of staff and the poor quality of meals, she initially did not receive a reply.

“Almost a week and a half went by and nobody responded, not even acknowledged. All I asked for was acknowledgment, I didn’t receive anything,” she said. “So I went to the council member and the assembly woman and asked for assistance on how I can get a response, to get someone to acknowledge my e-mail, and thereafter, immediately, I got one the next day.”

Soon after, Namba Rutz said the ACC staff arranged to meet with her and 10 other families to listen to their concerns on Oct. 2. She said ACC’s leadership promised the group they would address their concerns.

Masuoka said the organization continues to meet with the concerned families, citing Hays as the interim CEO is holding town hall meetings. She added that Maple Tree Village hired a new culinary manager at the end of October and is “implementing new ideas and suggested changes … in service of addressing quality and quantity of food.”

Other issues include the sewage backup in the memory care wing and parking issues, and the presence of ducks in the facility’s courtyard, which the organization’s representatives mentioned have been dealt with or are in the process of being resolved in various ways (they removed the ducks).

Affiliation with Meals on Wheels
Aside from the administration of its Maple Tree Village facility, the CSACC also pointed to ACC’s administration over Meals on Wheels Sacramento County, a wholly owned subsidiary of ACC with its own set of board of directors.

One complaint calls out a “resistance to the imposition of a reasonable management fee” to be paid by Meals on Wheels to ACC. Rusynyk, as president and CEO, proposed the management fee increase last year, according to her Nov. 8, 2024 President’s Report. The CSACC noted that ACC had “practices and policies that undermine” the president and CEO of the organization while also lamenting her being placed on administrative leave, noting Rusynyk’s two-year tenure had been key to stabilizing the organization’s finances in 2024 onwards.

The ACC statement, however, countered that the proposal would more than double the managing agent fee from what the organization had budgeted. According to Rusynyk’s 2024 report, the previously established fee was significantly below the industry standard and presented an “unjustifiable loss for ACC and burden to other ACC departments.” In order to “cover the true costs to ACC,” she proposed increasing the charge from 1.7% to 9.5% of gross revenue for the subsidiary, citing this would potentially bring in $750,000 a year to ACC. Meals on Wheels’ 2024 IRS filings indicate the organization brings in around $10 million a year and reported a net revenue of $226,206 that year.

Wong, ACC leadership and Rusynyk herself all declined to comment on her administrative leave, as it is an ongoing personnel issue. The president’s report, however, reveals some of the aggressive cost-cutting measures she took over her first year, including firing and absorbing the duties of the chief operating officer without an increase in pay, implementing layoffs to “accurately match patient ratios” starting in November of 2023, reducing the amount of bankable PTO hours and eliminating “unnecessary and frivolous expenditures,” including the monthly free snack program for ACC employees to save $15,000-$20,000. CSACC proponents characterized these cuts as necessary.

“Now, everybody loves the mission. Everybody wants to care for seniors, but ultimately, the bottom line is, are there things in place to make sure that it is financially successful enough to continue to operate all of it? It’s a very important aspect,” Wong said at the Aviator’s meeting.

Beyond the management fee, the CSACC also criticized the potential conflict of interest with the composition of boards at ACC and MoW. Meals on Wheels’ board, as a subsidiary organization, reports to ACC’s CEO, who in turn reports to the ACC board of directors. But, several members, including ACC board chair Shiomoto also sit on MoW’s board. The ACC statement explained, since ACC took over the meals nonprofit from the county in 2010, the Meals on Wheels’ bylaws “require that ACC appoint the MoW board members and at least 50% of the board must be past or current ACC board members.”

Criticisms of Board  Composition and Powers
Beyond the intermingling board members, Wong and others expressed their concerns over ACC’s board practices dictated by its bylaws and its composition. Kobayashi noted during the Aviator’s meeting that the 11-person board included five people affiliated with the Department of Motor Vehicles, which Shiomoto led until her resignation in 2018.

Wong added that ACC’s bylaws enabled Shiomoto, as chairwoman, to sit on and lead every committee in the organization.

“All the power is centralized with the chair of the board, … and it just creates this kind of undemocratic system where our bigger complaint is that the executive committee is really the ones who are making the decisions with regard to the direction and the actions of the board and the board,” Wong said. “And this was a frustration being made because, we would get stuff that was basically already been decided and our expectations was that we would just go to rubber stamp it.”

Masuoka countered that the executive committee seldom makes unilateral decisions and that board members are selected based on their professional expertise rather than their previous employer. She noted, that while a previous employer is not considered a qualifying factor, she said many board members in the past have come from various public entities as well as the state legislature since the organization is based in the state’s capital.

Still, Wong told the Nichi Bei News he had pressed for changes after he joined the board in January of this year.

“I had proposed a number of bylaw amendments. The initial response that I had gotten was that my suggestions were not necessary or not appropriate for the bylaws, which is yet another reason why I was not particularly happy being on the board,” Wong said.

Shiomoto countered that Wong’s suggestions were not rebuffed.

“So Betty (Masuoka, treasurer,) and Joyce (Iseri, vice chair) and Rick Uno were part of a sub workgroup of the board development committee to look at bylaw changes. So we do that every year,” Shiomoto said. “And his were put into a document and researched. So Betty and Joyce provided that document and then made comments on it. So it’s being worked on right now. So they were never rebuffed.”

Following Wong and Uno’s resignations from the board, Shiomoto formed a governance workgroup comprised of two ACC board members and two MoW board members during the August ACC board meeting. The initiative had started before the CSACC sent their first letter asking for an internal audit and contacting BoardSource for guidance.

During the Sept. 29 ACC board meeting, board member Tim Corcoran and Wesley Goo presented their preliminary findings after examining BoardSource’s programs. The board agreed to move forward with a survey administered by BoardSource to evaluate potential improvements the organization could make and planned to use the findings to help inform the work of a future consultant to improve both ACC and MoW’s organizational leadership.

Shiomoto said she hopes to implement changes as needed once a consultant reviews the findings from BoardSource and their own investigation into both ACC and MoW’s leadership.

Hearing the board was taking these steps, Wong remained cautious.

“The devil’s in the details. I think that their reply is just sort of an acknowledgement of the need to at least have some internal reflection on the organization and how it operates, but we don’t know how soon, in some cases, and their response said it could be weeks,” he said. “We don’t really know if weeks is fast enough in order to address some of the material weaknesses that we feel currently jeopardize ACC.”

One of Wong’s suggestions included eliminating a one-year requirement for all prospective board members to serve in a workgroup or committee at ACC. Wong, who was exempt from the requirement through a board decision, and Uno, who had technically met the requirement by serving on the board years ago, said that requirement was unusual. However, not everyone agrees.

Donna Yee, ACC’s former CEO who retired in 2018 and joined the board of directors this year with Uno and Wong, said most people need a year to learn about a new organization.

“A lot of times people who are new to an organization or a setting, like new to the board, they might not understand all of the information and data, and they may not be connecting. They might jump to conclusions and not really connect all the dots,” she said to the Nichi Bei News.

Yee remained engaged with the organization after retiring, serving in a volunteer capacity with ACC’s workgroups and special committees. She said she was not privy to the detailed financial state of the organization in the years between her retirement and joining the board, but said she observed the difficult situation the organization had to navigate through the COVID years.

“I think many of us who were involved with ACC were aware that the finances were totally different from late 2019 when COVID first started impacting our operations, to especially 2020 when the government had many restrictions and had many rules on how we had to operate,” she said.

“ACC is really a very open community organization, and people talk a lot, but the board is very professional and very clear about its oversight, and is very clear about when issues are ready to be made public and when they have to be confidential because of personnel or business or other kinds of reasons,” Yee said. “Sometimes you don’t want to talk about half-baked things, because by the time you finish negotiating, or you finish working on an issue that’s come up, it could be an entirely different story.”

While both sides have expressed hope to support ACC, they have failed to set up any mutually agreeable meeting times. After the CSACC initially learned about the ad hoc governance workgroup’s efforts in the board’s Sept. 30 reply to their initial letter, the group sought to meet with the workgroup in private, according to Wong. When no meeting times materialized within a couple of weeks, the CSACC announced their town hall in Oct. 22. The CSACC then asked to meet again after the meeting, but was told they would be unable to meet until mid-November.

Meanwhile, Masuoka told the Nichi Bei News ACC will hold its own town hall and provide an update on Nov. 19 from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in their community room at the ACC Senior Center, located at 7334 Park City Drive, Sacramento, Calif.