Morris Brown: School will close if water isn’t restored

Morris Brown College has asked a Fulton County judge to force Atlanta to restore its water service or the 127-year-old historically black institution will have to close.

Judge Henry Newkirk is scheduled to hear the colleges’s request for a temporary restraining order Friday morning.

The fight with Morris Brown is the latest facing the city’s Department of Watershed Management as the agency tries to collect about $37 million it says it is owed by about 25 large customers.

Morris Brown is one of those customers, owing Atlanta about $380,000. Some of the debt is five years old.

Watershed Management spokeswoman Janet Ward declined to comment Wednesday on the Morris Brown suit because the matter is pending in court.

College spokeswoman Bunnie Jackson Ransom also declined to comment Wednesday evening.

Atlanta City Council member Ceasar Mitchell, who serves on the Morris Brown Board of Directors, said he was surprised by the filing of the lawsuit Wednesday.

“This is news to me,” Mitchell said, adding he has tried to “facilitate a conversation between city of Atlanta officials and Morris Brown officials.”

“I hope that can still happen,” Mitchell said.

On Dec. 12, the last day of the fall semester, the city told the school to pay the $380,000 debt in full immediately or its water service would be terminated. The water was turned off three days later.

Now, the college is taking an approach to restoring its water that’s similar to that of another big customer, the Task Force for the Homeless.

The city turned off water to the huge downtown shelter Dec. 2 because the facility owed $160,000. But several hours later, Fulton County Judge T. Jackson Bedford ordered water service restored as long as the shelter made scheduled payments.

The shelter paid $8,035 by a court-imposed deadline of Dec. 22 and is to make another payment, for $7,675.58, on Monday.

Morris Brown, in court papers filed Wednesday, said the loss of water service has crippled its efforts to recover financially.

“The interruption of water service has caused MBC to be unable to go forward with its fund-raising efforts to repair the school’s financial situation,” the school said in the document.

Morris Brown said it “will have to close its doors for business” if the courts don’t intercede. “Without the court’s intervention, and with the passing of time, it will be impossible for MBC to recover even with an influx of cash.”

Last weekend, at a fund-raiser to rescue the school, the school collected about $70,000.

But college officials have said the school won’t open for the spring semester unless it finds money to pay $1.5 million in critical bills, including the debt for water.

The school said in court papers it had proposed a payment plan that included covering current bills as they came due each month and also chipping away at its huge debt.

Acting school president Stanley Pritchett, in a Dec. 13 letter to Watershed Management Commissioner Robert Hunter, vowed to keep his promise to make the payments even though “I recognize that historically, Morris Brown has had several payment plans and agreements with the city of Atlanta that were not fulfilled.”

The court papers say the school paid more than $20,000 by mid-December and still the city cut off its water.

The water problem is just the latest in Morris Brown’s longstanding financial troubles.

The college, which once had nearly 3,000 students before losing its accreditation in 2002 and now has only 240, said in court papers that its financial troubles originated with former President Dolores Cross and former financial aid director Parvesh Singh.

They were indicted in 2004 for financial wrongdoing and pleaded guilty two years later to federal fraud charges, admitting they acquired millions of dollars in federal loans and grants in the names of students who did not exist.

“Because of the activities of Cross and Singh, MBC began experiencing severe financial difficulties,” the school said in the court filing.

Other problems in making payments resulted in several liens against the school.

A real estate broker hired to arrange commercial development on campus filed a $230,000 lien against the school. And a plumbing company that had already filed a $116,000 lien escalated the case by suing the school Dec. 17.

A lien by the city over the unpaid water bill, meanwhile, has prevented Morris Brown from selling property.

— Staff writer Marcus Garner contributed to this article.