NELSONVILLE, Ohio — Athens County Department of Job and Family Services announced this week that the county will sell the building that houses its resource center in Nelsonville.
The Athens County Community Cares Resource Center is located at 10 W. Washington St in Nelsonville and provides a walk-in option for individuals to access resources from social service providers who work out of the space, including JFS.
“It’s very unfortunate right now that we have to sell any buildings or that we’re in the deficit that we’re in, but we have to do what we have to do in order to balance our budget,” JFS Director Tami Collins told the Independent. Collins took the helm of the agency last Tuesday, May 26.
JFS is contending with a $821,000 short-term deficit and $2.5 million long-term debt, according to Athens County Commissioner Chris Chmiel. Both the short-term deficit and long-term debt stem from the same issues, Chmiel told the Independent, primarily related to agency miscoding for state and federal reimbursement.
The sale of the Nelsonville building will help address the short-term deficit while reducing overhead costs for operating the space, Chmiel said.
Sale of the Nelsonville building
A private company appraised the Nelsonville building at $875,000 in December, according to records shared by Chmiel. He said JFS is asking for $975,000 for the building, but Collins said, “Of course we’re hoping for a bidding war.”
According to records previously provided by Chmiel, the agency purchased the building in February 2022 for just over $450,000 and subsequently spent nearly $718,000 on maintenance and renovations. The building opened as a public resource center in July 2024.
When JFS began to take measures to respond to its fiscal crisis in 2025, it included a potential building sale in its considerations.
In addition to addressing the agency’s short-term deficit, Chmiel said the county may choose to put some funding from the sale towards its long-term debt. He noted that under the terms of the repayment agreement with the state — the final version of which commissioners clerk Alison Pierson said is not yet available — the county can more quickly pay down its debt.
The draft agreement proposed that the county repay the debt over 15 years at $43,098 a quarter.
The county sold the agency’s former building on Union Street to Integrated Services for Behavioral Health for $975,000, according to a March 17 purchase agreement shared by Chmiel. Chmiel said the sale brought in a little over $400,000 to JFS after the bond was paid off. The sale of the building was effective May 6, according to the Athens County Auditor’s website.
The county first solicited sealed bids for the Union Street building in spring 2025, and the building sat empty as the county sought a buyer, the Independent previously reported.
Asked about the possibility that the building does not sell quickly, Collins said, “We are currently working on saving every month.”
“We have been reducing our overhead costs, we have been still on the hiring freeze, we are still looking at ways to save and cut money from our budget this year,” she said.
Chmiel said, “They’re trying to solve the problem, and they’ve made a little bit of progress, but … it’s not, like, the hundreds of thousands that are needed at this point.” Chmiel said he hopes the state might allow JFS leniency if it is unable to find a buyer for the Nelsonville building.
Collins said JFS staff and partners will continue to work out of the building “until the very last day.” After that, JFS will move its staff to the county home building on S.R. 13.
JFS partners will need to move from the space, too.
In March, the New Leaf Marketplace opened to the public out of the Nelsonville resource center location. In November 2025, the county notified the nonprofit behind the coffee shop, the Survivor Advocacy Outreach Program, that it would not renew its lease beyond June 2026. At the time, SAOP was putting the finishing touches on its renovations of the space.
With JFS considering the sale of the Nelsonville building, SAOP and other community organizations convened over the winter to discuss options for the future of the building, SAOP director Madison Trace previously told the Independent. Asked to comment for this story, she said in a text message that she did not yet have any updates on future possibilities to maintain a community-centered space at the location but plans to talk with the county and JFS soon.
Other agency updates
In other agency news, Collins told the Independent that then-interim director Keith Weins “was able to move two positions back” to its Child Support Enforcement Agency.
The agency eliminated five child support enforcement positions earlier this year, changes Weins vocally opposed. These included one social service coordinator, a secretary, two child support enforcement agency case managers, and one purchasing agent. Weins restored the secretary and coordinator positions, Collins said.
Collins said Weins also reestablished child support contracts to receive federal reimbursement dollars for enforcement efforts. Child support is still seeing a shortfall, Collins said, but with Weins returning to his position as program administrator, the agency is “working on creating more of a caseload.”
In a press release on her new position as agency director, Collins said, “My priority is our customers. We need to focus our attention on providing great customer service, restoring public trust, financial and program accountability. Supporting our staff is essential to supporting the community.”
“Ensuring our agency operates with honesty, transparency, and communication is essential to rebuilding trust and moving forward responsibly,” she noted in the press release.
Chmiel described his approach to working with Collins as “trust, but verify.”
“At this point, I gotta keep a really close eye on things,” he said.
Former JFS director Jean Demosky is currently facing criminal charges related to alleged financial mismanagement during her tenure as director. Demosky pleaded not guilty to her charges.
According to her LinkedIn profile, Collins started at the agency in 2000 as an administrative assistant, rising to Director of Family Services in 2016. In late 2021, she was named Director of Advancement with the agency. Collins said she oversaw the agency’s Ohio Means Jobs center on Union Street through the position. She “was not involved with financial decisions or discussions,” she said. She also said she was not connected to the nonprofit at the center of Demosky’s criminal case. Collins retired in summer 2024.
Demosky is currently set for a final pretrial in her criminal case on June 16, with a jury trial scheduled to begin Aug. 17.
The case initially enveloped Athens County Commissioner Charlie Adkins, though the charge against him was dropped by the special prosecutor appointed to the case.
Adkins remains under investigation, a representative of the Athens County Prosecutor’s Office told the Independent May 27, based on the office’s communication from the Ohio Attorney General’s Office.
