SCHENECTADY — Two years of turmoil has left Carver Community Center financially troubled and struggling to reinvent itself as a viable presence on Hamilton Hill.

But after the departure of Executive Director A.C. “Budd” Mazurek, the center’s board believes it is now on the right track.

The center’s day care operation, which was regularly cited for health violations during inspections, is getting a $40,000 to $60,000 makeover. The board also hired all new staff, including a new director, and voluntarily canceled the program for the summer to repair the facility.

The evening teen program, which United Way declined to fund this year after several years of poor reports and little proof of progress, is also being reinvigorated, proponents said. The agency obtained a one-year, $80,000 grant to expand the program to involve girls.

A new executive director has also taken over and said he plans to return the center to its original focus — the Hamilton Hill neighborhood.

“We’re going back to what the vision of Carver is — that’s to serve the community here rather than look beyond where we are,” said Guido Iovinella. “When I was a kid, I came here. It truly was a community center. That’s our goal, to bring it back to being the community center.”

Iovinella ran Carver’s substance abuse counseling program for the past 20 years before being tapped for Mazurek’s position this summer.

Center officials did not outright criticize Mazurek for the center’s difficulties but said he agreed in April that it would be best for the agency if he left. The departure has helped the agency turn itself around, they said.

Mazurek is also the chairman of Schenectady’s Civilian Police Review Board and took a new job as executive director of the Saratoga County Rural Preservation Corp. He did not return a call seeking comment.

Under Mazurek’s leadership, the agency lost its $500,000 contract to provide school-day tutoring for Schenectady City School District students. Its day care also dwindled to just a handful of children, losing the center income from the county Department of Social Services day care program.

Then United Way — once a major supporter of the agency — cut all funding.

In 2006, after Mazurek did not file reports showing how he spent $40,000 in United Way money, the agency cut its grants by a third, giving Carver $10,500 for the teen program and $17,270 for the day care.

In 2007, the Daily Gazette reported that Mazurek had inflated the number of participants in the teen program in his requests for various grants. He claimed an average of 80 to 90 children a night. In actuality, daily counts showed the average was closer to 33.

United Way decided that year not to fund the teen program, citing serious questions about Mazurek’s reported results. It continued to fund the day care at $19,000, but this spring it backed away from that program as well. In that last year of funding, the day care had 22 violations of the state Day Care Regulations, including two incidents in which an unqualified supervisor watched children and a citation for disciplining the children by withholding food or sleep.

The facility was cited as well for several fire hazards and for allowing children access into unsafe areas, according to inspections from the state Office of Children and Family Services.

Although each violation was corrected, the agency was later cited again for almost every problem — sometimes more than twice.

Herm Hill of United Way said that after such a year, his agency just couldn’t justify funding the day care over other programs.

“The organization was not compliant with documented results,” he said. “Not a whole lot of money is available. The volunteers have to decide where to make the most of these dollars.”

Carver officials say they are taking the day care situation seriously.

“It’s going to have all new programs,” said Carver’s board President, Susan Austin. “It’s going to be more of a learning center, instead of just a babysitting center.”

Board members visited successful private day cares in search of a model to follow. They want the mostly poor children who come to Carver to have the same experience they would receive at an expensive private facility.

“They need to understand they are very valuable,” Austin said. “They deserve just as much as anyone else.”

Iovinella said the changes required Carver to find a new director.

“The vision just didn’t mesh with the previous director,” he said.

He’s planning to reopen the day care in mid-September. Parents can register now.

The changes may make Carver’s financial problems worse, at least in the short run. The agency doesn’t have the $40,000 to $60,000 that it’s already spending on the improvements. Iovinella and the board are searching for grants and donations.

Austin said it may take more than a year to stem the losses, and Iovinella quipped that he was playing the lottery to get Carver out of the red.

He is already beginning the hard task of convincing wary grant-issuing agencies to trust Carver again. He said he will assure them that Carver won’t repeat its past mistakes.

“I can tell you this, whatever we present to them will be what we will do,” he said. “What I put down on paper is exactly what we will be doing.”