It marks a stunning end for an agency that started on a shoestring 10 years ago and watched its funding balloon to a proposed $75 million under the patronage of Mayor John F. Street. Since Street left office, however, it has come under increased criticism and scrutiny from both the Nutter administration and the state Department of Public Welfare.

The nonprofit will cease to exist after June 30, ending its role as the city's key provider for anti-truancy and teen violence-prevention programs. As a fiscal intermediary, it passed taxpayer dollars on to 200 or so social-services providers.

Safe and Sound's board of directors made the decision at an emergency meeting Monday night, and informed Nutter of its action in a letter Tuesday.

"While it was an extremely painful decision to make, given the current environment, the board felt it was the only real option available to the organization," board chairman Ernest E. Jones wrote the mayor.

In an interview yesterday, Jones elaborated.

"Given the negativity that has arisen around the name Safe and Sound, given the fact we have lost a lot of staff already, and with absolutely no commitment for any funding beyond June 30, the board concluded it was time to say thank you for the good 10 years, and move on."

Safe and Sound has been dogged for months by concerns about the adequacy of its financial and managerial oversight. Those concerns were highlighted in a 46-page report released last week by the state Department of Public Welfare.

Even so, city and state officials yesterday said the board's action was unexpected.

"We knew the board was having an emergency meeting," said Deputy Mayor Don Schwarz, who manages the city's Health and Human Services Departments. "But if you had asked me 10 things that would come out of it, I would not have said this."

Pennsylvania Public Welfare Secretary Estelle B. Richman, who oversees the state dollars used by the city to fund Safe and Sound, said: "I do believe a lot of things weren't breaking their way. . . . [But] I was surprised they wanted to go away completely."

Safe and Sound was founded in 1998 by then-Mayor Rendell to curb drug abuse and violence. Rendell named Street's wife, Naomi Post, as the agency's director. Street was City Council president at the time. Post stepped down in 2002, after Street was mayor.

Safe and Sound's initial funding was provided through a 10-year, $10 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The nonprofit's importance continued to grow under Street - as did its spending, which rose from $3 million in 2002 to nearly $60 million this year, as Street sought to make Safe and Sound the home for the city's 11 curfew centers and more.

Street tried to boost Safe and Sound's budget to $75 million before he left office by shifting funds earmarked for other city operations. He instructed the nonprofit to begin spending the money, even before he had City Council's final approval. At the urging of Mayor-elect Nutter, however, Council refused to authorize the funding.

Once in office, Nutter told Safe and Sound it would not get the extra money. As a result, confusion reigned as service providers that had already begun expanding as the result of the promised funds discovered they had to retrench.

Nutter also asked the state to scrutinize Safe and Sound's operations and spending. The resulting report, released last week, concluded that Safe and Sound had weak financial controls and that its spending on salaries and benefits grew at a faster clip than its spending on prevention programs.

The report also raised questions about the effectiveness of those programs, finding there was a "significant risk" that the programs were not "serving the populations most at risk of delinquency or dependency."

That same day, Nutter met with Schwarz, Jones, and Michael Pearson, a Nutter fund-raiser appointed to the Safe and Sound board a few months ago.

In that meeting, Nutter told Jones he intended to go through with his plan to issue a request for proposals to find a nonprofit to provide some of Safe and Sound's fiscal intermediary services.

Under the Street administration, Safe and Sound was awarded no-bid yearly contracts for that work. Its current contract expires June 30.

With interested bidders required to respond to the request for proposals by May 19, Schwarz said of Safe and Sound: "We fully expected they would bid."

Instead, Jones called for Safe and Sound's emergency meeting. "We even kicked around changing our name," Jones said. But believing the battle was all uphill, the board instead focused on closing Safe and Sound's doors.

Given the tight time frame to forge a new deal with a different nonprofit, it is now unclear whether Safe and Sound will be around long enough to ensure its databases and other record-keeping tools are passed on to its successor.

"My concern is what happens to the programs, and who administers them, and will the process of getting a new provider be in time to carry the program forward," said Councilwoman Marian B. Tasco, who held hearings on Safe and Sound's finances two months ago.

For the last month, Schwarz has met weekly with various organizations that run anti-truancy and after-school programs to assure them that dollars would still flow, but possibly from another source.

Also, Schwarz said, some programs will be curtailed, with more emphasis on helping children in high-crime areas. "We've committed to continuing summer programs because we did not feel we had time to dramatically change them."