Audio recording clip of interview with Julie A. Payne by Claytee D. White, February 11, 2004 and March 7, 2004

I did the Weed and Seed thing with Parole and Probation. Now, explain the Weed and Seed. Well, this program was designed for those reentering the community from prison. The whole idea was to provide them with support services-education, treatment, mental health, job training, housing, the whole thing-funded through the Department of Justice. I was only doing that part-time because they were only looking at about 150 people. Under those kinds of programs, you can't guarantee the number of people that will be released each month. So from the very beginning, probably five or six months, nobody was eligible for that program. So it didn't require a full-time person. But I did have case managers. I had a case manager on the outside, meaning in a facility on Owens, ABS. Then there was a case manager that was housed in the prison so that they were able to interact with those, get them ID, all that kind of thing. But when I decided to go with Nevada Treatment Center, I knew that it was time for me to back off of the reentry program. So I talked to Amy Wright, who was the administrator over Parole and Probation, and I said, “Look, you're going to need to be thinking about getting somebody else because I need to get out of there and focus all my energies over here at Nevada Treatment Center.” And she and I have been friends for a long time, so she understood and we worked that out. Ultimately, they closed the program anyway. And the reason being is that they had two others that they were cultivating, one was through the city. That's the Evolve program and then the other was the Going Home Prepared, which is a new program under the Department of Corrections. Both programs are doing relatively well. Lisa Morris is the one that runs the Evolve program for the city. I called her up and I said, “I heard you're getting a lot of heat.” And I said, “But I tell you what, I will be more than happy to give you every single thing I've got from the reentry project so you don't have to reinvent the wheel; all you've got to do is cut and paste and figure out what you want to do.” And they got a pretty decent program. And it's wonderful that you would help someone else. Oh, yes. It's always been my philosophy that somebody helped me and I don't have a problem. Why do I need to hold on to it? I mean if it benefits somebody else, take it, take it and run. So tell me about Nevada Treatment Center. How big of a place are we talking about? Is it a single location? It's a single location. Now, when did you take this position? I took this August of 2000, took that program over. Actually, Nevada Treatment Center has been operating since 1973. It actually started on Eighth and Ogden because then it became both the methadone clinic and the outpatient program and they changed their name from SNDAC to Nevada Treatment Center. NTC is a very well-respected program. And I must give credit where it's due. My predecessor worked for that agency about 17 years. She started in as a secretary to Charlie Getz. Charlie was my boss when I worked for the program. And when he passed away, the board at that time asked her to take over. She did a lot of work. She did a lot of good things with the program, had a lot of good people, serviced a lot of folks in the community. But anyway, where we are today, we want to do so much more. I really want to see this program get to a point that we can deal with women's issues; that's my goal. One of the things-I wanted to back up a little bit. If you are a methadone program in this country now, you have to be accredited either through JCAHO [Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations] or CARF [Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation]. JCAHO? JCAHO is the Joint Commission on Rehabilitation.