11.13.2023 Housing Authority

good afternoon everyone it is Monday November 13 2023 and it is 4:40 p.m. this is the regular meeting of the four of a Housing Authority um attorney Souza the open meeting law please thank you madam chairwoman the language for the open meeting law is as follows person went to the open meeting law any person may make an audio or video recording of this public meeting or may transmit the meeting through any

medium attendees are therefore advised that such recordings or transmit trans commissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible thank you Matha roll call chair Sahari here Vice chairman Underhill here commissioner Burns here commissioner Bentley president commissioner madus here thank you um the first item on our agenda is Citizens

input do we have any citizens here this evening seeing none the second item is residents input please thank you Mary want me to be quick uh all my resident leaders went to the m conference in North that's a senior woman on Halloween day Halloween night they learned a few things they all come back they're happy we're planning on having elections in a lot of our buildings right now we have Nell is be

this coming Thursday we're doing here O'Brien on the 30th up at the Flyers all the doors this afternoon we're doing the 14th we're doing dueling in January we're planning on doing catel and hopefully home that's great conference for uh the spring should be very interesting for everybody good and the conference was good yeah excellent it was well it was well r excellent well David's chairman

so David do you have anything to add uh no no I was just named chairman because the chairperson stepped down I was vice chair so I assume the position until the election spring thank you congrats and will be nominating David gotcha I'll have to agree okay item two on the agenda is the minutes of the postponed regular meeting which was held on October 16th 2023 do I have a motion to accept the minutes or

does anyone have any changes to the minutes make a motion to accept second any concerns with regard to them hearing none all in favor I item three is bills and Communications you have the packet of vouchers in your um packet today do I have a motion to accept the vouchers as presented motion to accept vouchers as presented second any questions with regard to them all in favor I I item three of the

management reports um you have the application report the occupancy report um the third report is the tenants accounts receivable report you have the work order report five is the monthly Section 8 voucher activ ity report six is the monthly Personnel count report seven is the director of modernization monthly report and eight is the Bank investment and bond debt balance report do I have a motion to accept

these reports as presented I'll make a motion to accept the reports as presented second thank you any questions with regard to any of these reports this these are the September reports hearing none all in favor I item five are the financial reports again these are for the sixth month ended June I mean September 30th 2023 you have the Consolidated reports reports as well as the individual reports these are the monthly

reports any questions motion to uh accept the monthly financial statements for September second thank you any questions with regard to any of them hearing none all in favor hi hi Item B under Financial reports is the state quarterly modernization report it two is for the period ended September 30th 2023 the recommended action here is to approve these reports take a motion to approve the reports

second any questions with regard to the quarterly modernization reports hearing none all in favor I I and item C is the state quarterly operating report this is also for the month ended September 30 2023 this report you have the balance sheet as well as the quarterly operating reports for um the Housing Authority programs make a motion to accept the um reports as presented second any questions with regard to um these

reports hearing none all in favor I item D is permission to allow Bost Bank to ensure all four of a Housing Authority funds with FDIC insurance accounts versus collateralized accounts through their inofy cash service ICS Network do we have I don't we have a gentleman here tonight to answer any questions on behalf of bay coast thank you can you come to the table please sir

thank you my name is Ron Madison I'm from bos bank I work in the cash management in municipality department and I'm here to answer any questions about I or um if you could at least give us a little bit of um description as to what it is and how it compares to FDIC and then the diff insurance as well well sure well it is FDIC Insurance uh what it is

is with big uh organizations like the PO Housing Authority um and other authorities around uh municipalities in the area they're taking uh their large balance accounts and they're allowing us to move uh anything over 240,000 into uh what is the uh the IC program and uh I believe I provided handouts for everybody but what this does is it takes away the need for us to bond the money

but it also gives you dollar for dooll FDIC insurance so you don't have to worry about uh the 250 because how this works is there is a multitude of uh Banks across the country that are in this uh in this system and they send us money while we send them money uh for our clients and and spread it out to as many banks as you need so in your case case where we're looking at 15 million

plus we would need a lot of banks spot uh to cover you 240 at each spot so what this company does is it takes the money that's over 240,000 in the account spreads it out between other FDIC Insurance Banks and uh at the end of the day you are covered dollar I could just add and we still only received one statement from bos we wouldn't get multiple statements correct a statement from Bast but you'd also get

a statement from IC uh and that's used for reconciliation so you know where your money is at any time you can log in to their website and it will show you what bank your money is at and and how much so you guys manage all of that is there like a point person one point person on your side that Michael lry is the point person on our side um but

I'm sorry what was the second part of your question just who is there like one point person that someone from Housing Authority would be able to work with just to yeah yeah so I'll leave my cards here you can call me directly with any questions if you have um but yeah Michael lar is the head of the Min and now there's still multiple accounts so I'm just I just opened

quickly one of the reports that we just voted on and we have multiple accounts um is this going to be all combined and Consolidated into one account making it more difficult to reconcile or are these going to remain as individual accounts exactly so they remain as individual accounts each account has an account associated with it uh through iny so that it's linked just to that account so when you reconcile with ICS

um it will only link to that account it's not one big pot of money okay the account numbers you have your online banking that you use everything still stays the same you still make deposits the same the only thing that's changed is how we ensure you okay perfect thank you um is this something new or is it new to Bay Co or has it been in existence I'll give you some history uh

basically how this came about was uh we're growing rapidly and we have offer our customers s insurance and when you get up to 300 uh sorry when you get up to three uh $3 billion they send out a letter saying that you have one year uh left in different insurance and then you're removed so we're getting out in front of this uh so we wanted to move money before we got to that limit so

we've been able to to move $60 million off the books and we've been doing it for three months now so our plan is to uh is to contact municipalities uh or housing authorities uh see if they find interest in need in this and in a lot of cases they do um so so basically uh at the end of the uh once you sign on to the process uh you you'll give a log on you'll you'll

be able to see every single dollar nothing changes as far as as how your banking um so I have one other question in in terms so you mentioned earlier that this money is spread out of 240,000 to a number of different uh Banks um if you need a large amount in a short amount of time is that a challenge or it's not uh and the other the way how it works your money is still liquid yeah

okay um there is a cut off time of 230 for deposits and then they settle out through the day so as long as you're making your deposits before 230 then there's there's really no change at all to your your day-to-day the money is completely at your fingertips whenever you want so when you log in it might say 240,000 in your Bist account the actual balance could be 10 million because the rest is spread out but you

have complete access to I don't know if everyone knows what diff insurance is but you might want to explain that over and above the FDIC yeah uh diff insurance is something that we've offered our customers uh for a long long time and what it does is that it ensures you past the 250,000 for FDIC so a lot of our small businesses take advantage of this money um utilizing it to to secure their funds when they when

they grow past 2,000 so uh that's what diff insurance is so when diff insurance goes away um get the letter and then you have to you have to figure out how how to give your customers exactly what they're they're looking for and this is one way to do it is to get out in front of this and move money into the IDF program so that it frees up cap space on our diff insurance for our

small business business customers and our uh regular day-to- dat customers is there a fee involved there isn't no there is a fee to us um but we're also getting a benefit out of this so we aren't charging our customers um some institutions have gone to charging per account um we're not doing that we're just going to offer it as a free service to our municip thank you and in situations where they are being charged

do you know what those charges uh I've seen as high as $40 in account oh okay is there any minimum that you have to well we only do it for accounts that um are or over 250,000 so in the case of the fall over Housing Authority uh there's uh four or five counts that fit that criteria so uh I think one of your questions was what about all the other accounts those are still covered by dip

okay um so that would still be covered dollar for dollar uh this money would be for the bigger uh heavier accounts that have large balances that would be be doing this so it only affect four or five accounts on

there any other questions do we have um a motion to approve moving the accounts from the FDIC to the IC Network I'll make a motion for approval second any no other questions all in favor I thank you sir thank you very much and I'll leave some business cards perfect perfect thank you very the next item on our agenda is an update from our executive director thank you madam chairwoman good evening just a few

things first uh I've been in communication with uh Communications or discussions with um Jim pimental he's an organizer from the uh Brick Layers and ADI Craftsman's Union Mason uh represents Masons uh it's a unique trade to us as we do have an on call uh contractor vendor for this work um we don't have a staff Mason um we did have two on calls but uh one has gotten busy and kind of dropped

off so what Jim was telling me what the union has done with um the City of Quincy and uh uh the Lyn Housing Authority they have these direct hire agreements where they if the the town City Housing Authority would need uh masonry work they can contact the union and get uh a member directly and they get paid uh the hourly the benefits um and part of it the goal is is you're you know you're supporting the

local unions and you're hiring people um in the area directly um so I just wanted to put it out there uh for discussion only if it's something that you're um you feel comfortable with I can um get into more details with Jim and maybe get a a sample uh contract and um if you're okay with it we can uh sign the agreement with them um or not but um it is something that um

we've talked about a while and he's asked me to bring up and so I'm doing that and currently I'm also if you're in agreement thinking about reaching out to the uh closest plumbers Union as well because we do have an advertisement out for three plumbers uh we haven't had a positive response um we're still reaching out um Ed has been giving our uh job descriptions and ads to the different plumbing supply houses

um we do have on call vendors which is good we do have um Ed and another director as master plumbers but the hope is that um we can hire full-time plumbers but in the meantime maybe explore that as well and again we're we're supporting the unions and hopefully getting local uh trades people uh it's just it's just another tool in the toolbx in these crazy times where um it's certain trades it's is a little

difficulty in so I don't know if you have any feedback that you wanted to add uh for or against just just a a question I'm just thinking about if you were hiring your own person I'm I'm I'm thinking about wage rates that's all so if you had your own person there's salary or right so they're on your payroll if you going out for bid you'd ask them for the Davis bacon wage rates

and they'd have to bid so how does that work with the local union if you're hiring is as as just as if you're hiring a company are they required to make sure they're doing the speaking weed trats yeah they have a schedule um of what the rate is and all the fringes and all the benefits that they receive that the the union members receive and we would treat it just like we would treat an on call

Vendor that submits there hourly for that work and if we needed plumbing services or masonry services and we were to utilize a vendor we would be paying x amount of dollars per hour to that vendor if we had a a Direct Tire agreement we would be paying that hourly rate uh to the union um for on behalf of that that um trades person and the union would take care of everything else all

the benefits and insurance yeah whatever the total hourly package is so no different really than a vendor it's no different it would be treated the same way as a vendor a vendor we have a a contract with the union we would have a contract with in essence the union would be the vendor correct yeah okay thank you so just just another option that I'm trying to explore and and work out again in these funky times

where you know um there's a lot of work going on out there and uh reputable vendors And Trades people are working um so um I think I'm optimistic about filling our internal Plumbing positions it's going to take a little bit of time I think the challenge is uh most people when they're looking for a job the first thing they look at is the hourly rate whereas with the Housing Authority you know we offer a

lot more than that with all of our paid holidays our annual time our sick time our personal time our working hours um it's trying to get that communicated communicated to this to the individuals that may be interested and then they might say Hey you know this really is a a good deal it beats traveling 45 minutes to an hour every day you may be getting a higher hourly rate but they're not working they're not

getting paid they probably have very limited paid holidays if any um so we kind of anticipated this but um in our internal discussions we just want trades people that are reliable that are knowledgeable that understand this environment and that are willing to work and not Buck us on every on every uh turn so to speak so um so I'm that that's I can you know I'll keep the communications going um if

you'd like I can uh have a sample agreement uh next meeting maybe I'll put it on the agenda and I'll put it under an approval or that's what I was going to say it doesn't really call for approval but I would be uh in favor of you you know doing what you have to do to bring back a proposal and just see it sounds like something that works for both sides so yeah exploring and you

bring it in front of us and get it approved and like like with anything that's different I always like to bring it to you for your input and so you're fully uh in the loop on on what's going on and in favor of it um so I'll do that um next thing I have once again we're collaborating with the boys and girls club um Joey D Silva ran a few um membership drives at Sunset Hill Benny

Costa Maple Gardens and we got about 10 or 11 kids uh to join at a reduced membership which the boys club and Girls Club is offering uh so that's going to be starting next week twice a week uh we'll have transportation where they'll pick up uh the kids at Sunset Benny and Maple and then drop them off a few hours later so uh between us and the boys club will be sharing we're paying for the Monitor

and they're paying for the transportation so and we may be eligible for reimbursement of the transportation um through Community Development there may be a program that that reimburses for transportation costs and the uh last thing which I'm surprised Ed failed to mention um Wednesday we'll be starting a farmers market at father the feral Village for the families um we have the one at

Cardinal Medeiros every Friday Friday through the winter and this one will be every Wednesday through the winter in the Community Hall there so the residents and the Neighbors in that area will have an opportunity to purchase uh some produce at the farmers's market so I beat you to it so used to having it every week now and that's all I have thank you okay next item on the agenda is um

new business item one is monetization a is a certificate of substantial completion for roof roof replacement phase five at Sunset Hill I'll make a motion to accept the certificate of substantial completion roof replacement Sunset Hill second any questions hearing none all in favor I I Item B is the ex executive office of Housing and livable communities Capital Improvement plan CIP um the recommended

action is approval it is actually pending um approval with the executive office of Housing and livable communities as we speak just a little insight on that what do you mean it's what am I missing so every plan uh or document that uh involves the old dhcd which is now the eoh LC uh you did better than I you need board approval prior and then it's always pending their final approval just like when we do

substantial completion on mod projects it's always pending their final approval all right that's make a motion to approve then second any questions hearing none all in favor I item two is um miscellaneous a is the residential Moving and Storage Services the recommended action is to award a three-year contract to Walter monus Mo moving and storage company wnw moving and storage with a two separate

and distinct one-year options for Renewal take a motion for approval second any questions okay hearing none all in favor I hi Item B is the emergency snow and ice remediation and plowing Services we have to do that again this year snow and ice damn um the recommended action is to award the service contract to Paul noons and Suns for Sunset Hill father de farious Village and Pleasant View

make a motion to award the contracts for snow removal for those locations second any questions all in favor I I and item C is the 2024 2025 agency plan kickoff meeting um this is for information only it's going to be held on November 15 2023 next on the agenda is Personnel a is the resignation of an employee um the recommended action is to accept the resignation of Craig sores he was a maintenance mechanic and it was

effective or will be effective uh was effective sorry on October 20th 2023 I'll make a motion to accept the resignation second all in favor I Item B is also a resignation of an employee the this is to accept the resignation of Joshua Fado he was a plumber and that was effective on October 26th 2023 I'll make a motion to accept the resignation of Joshua fatata second all in favor

I item C is determination of an employee and this was this is to ratify the termination motion to uh ratify termination second mtha roll call on this one please commissioner madas yes commissioner Burns yes commissioner Bentley yes commissioner underill yes hi yes item D is a clerk interviewer position for public housing the recommended action is to ratify Michelle starret effective October 23rd 2023

make an appointment to ratify the appointment seconds yesion Underhill yes commissioner Bentley yes commissioner madas yes yes the next position is a painter Class 2 position this is to ratify the appointment of Simon Souza do I have a motion motion uh to ratify the appointment of Simon Souza second thank you commissioner madas yes commissioner Bentley yes commissioner Burns yes commissioner Underhill yes

chah yes and the last um position on the agenda this this evening is a carpenter it's also class two position it's to ratify the appointment of Daniel Pereira I'll make a motion to ratify the appointment second you commissioner Burns yes commission Underhill yes commissioner Bentley yes M yes gent sah yes thank you um we have nothing else um unless someone has a question or concern coming before us

this evening so do we have a motion to adjourn I'll make a motion to adjourn second all in favor I I thank you everyone thank you