Fall River Housing Authority 6 22 22

it is wednesday june 22nd at 4 pm this is a special meeting of the floor of a housing authority to interview an applicant for the executive director's position here vice chairman underhill here commissioner burns is absent commissioner bentley here commissioner medeiros here um attorney souza the opening thank you madam chairman um 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 transmissions are being made whether perceived or unperceived by those present and are deemed acknowledged and permissible are you ready to go okay we're ready i'm in 11 minutes who's that weatherman he's going to call her

zoom meetings are like all on the speaker on the tv these days so we have a lot of buttons and things this is probably a very old-fashioned at this point we don't have very many with a spider hello all right i think i'm in hi mr starling how are you all right this is attorney souza i'm going to be with you in one second we just wanted to we just called the

meeting to order and we're just trying to fix all the bugs here so we can get you up on the screen

here he is hello good afternoon okay how's everybody doing okay we are good thank you and thank you for taking the time today to um interview with us um you'll have before you this evening the commissioners of the housing authority i don't know if you have spoken to attorney mike souza in the past but he will be asking the questions and we will be certainly listening taking notes and interjecting whenever

we have a question ourselves okay that sounds good uh mr stoneman did you have the opportunity at all to review any of the board of commissioners meetings like the last meeting in june to show what the process or procedure was by any chance i think i had your information from the last time so i was able where to uh know how to call the order and all it was going to hand out and go into the

session if y'all have to okay so that would be a yes right okay okay but let me let me just reiterate it's just still that we know because we get a lot of we had a lot of buttons and and uh things to to take care of but i just wanted to make sure we have approximately 12 questions to ask you i'd ask that you manage your time accordingly um and that uh you can direct your

answers to the board members that are present here today before you we have one absent but for the board members are here should we just lose lost we just lost we might be here are you still there i can still hear you i just lost you on the goon yeah we want to make sure that you get that but hold on one second

just be patient one second that way we can there he is okay oh no is that live or is it he's on the touch ball and we just lost him again there we go okay you're back up there he is but we're using the audio through here okay can you hear us mr starling yeah secondly you fought okay so we can begin with the first question uh please describe for the board your administrative experience what

administrative administrative strengths management skills public housing knowledge and public housing philosophy will you bring to the position of executive director of this large housing authority well i have 25 plus years experience working in management and i'm also a former resident of public housing i've been executive director for 10 years uh different agencies taking up some

trouble for high performer so my acronym with 24 cfr is very very you know ingrained worked very well with others i worked for the philadelphia housing authority which as you know was a really large agency as their general manager of development i bring a very fair and firm you know attitude toward work with mutual accountability to make sure that everybody can like everything it all begins and ends with

me so i take the blame for everything and i give my team all the praise i think one of my biggest strengths are some of my biggest weaknesses i treat everybody the same and i work very hard for the agency and just sure that we not only provide safe decent and sanitary housing but also the number one thing which is quality and i think by providing quality give everybody a

chance to have that hope to start that bridge of self-sufficiency so we can end what it's called generational public housing and section 8.

okay thank you sir number two would be more specifically could you please tell us about your experience as a manager of a complex organization including how many individuals you currently supervise on a daily basis please include some of the issues that you as an administrator would address in order to more effectively manage a complex organization such as the fall river housing authority

well i mean currently right now i have five individuals reporting to me but in my career i've had a team as large as 121 individuals under that team i have project managers department heads division heads and things of that nature i think one of the biggest things of running any type of complex organization is to make sure you be consistent that you definitely make sure that you're the

same for everything that goes on with being fair and firm and everyone knows that when they come to you they're going to be judged on the issue and on relationships and that's how i've always been throughout my career making sure we tackle those things and be able to guide people along the way to ensure that we're compliant following the rules and regulations i think by doing that and

making sure you stay consistent you'll be able to run an agency that's free of any type of bias and be able to be compliant with the hud rules and regulations as well as with the state of massachusetts rules as well thank you the fall river housing authority has has to interact effectively with federal state and municipal organizations and other funding sources what experience have you had in dealing

effectively with all levels of governmental organizations specifically what knowledge do you possess of government regulations especially those issued by the department of housing and community development and the us department of housing and urban development yeah so like i said earlier i have a 25 plus years experience i've been working with with federal and local and state dollars throughout my career i currently

work with federal dollars right now with the hud program i'm very astute when it comes to 24 cfr as well as the department of housing and community affairs of type of regulation when it comes to housing i work with the boards and the council of affordable housing so i think i've been part of individuals on that tier to help move the needle forward to ensure that everyone gets a fair chance to be able

to move the needle forward to become self-sufficient i've written policy i've introduced policy i've had to follow policy to make sure we're compliant and i think i've been very very ingrained in ensuring that public housing has been a step up and not a handout thank you could you please tell the board what academic degrees you hold in either business management or business finance dhcd believes meaning department of

housing and community development believes an applicant should possess a minimum of two years of experience in housing community development and public administration or a closely related field what education and experience do you believe makes you qualify for the position of executive director well first i have my undergraduate degree in computer science and business administration from arcadia university

along with that i have numerous uh years of experience i'm also at my phm which is a public housing manager which is issued from narrow and i'm also i have my uh cpm with certified public manager which is issued from rutgers university and with having those different acronyms behind my name and having all the studies that i've done not to mention just having the grassroots working with community

development as well as public housing and uh section 8 housing i think i've worked with all generational who you're talking to but i worked with the non-profit community i work with the municipalities and i work with public housing authorities which kind of makes you that three-headed monster that have worked with all generals of what it's provided in your agency which you're going to tackle but make sure the

clientele we service are definitely whole by the time they leave us and if any of the board members want to jump in and supplement any questions feel free to just um so number five would be budget preparation and sound fiscal management are important parts of the executive director's responsibilities please describe in detail your experience in the preparation and monitoring of an annual budget what was

the total size of that budget the largest budget i've had that to work with has been a 125 million dollars and the executive director of my largest budget is 11.2 million but my financial acronym is very very sharp one of individuals that mentored me and i worked up under when i was at the city of trenton was a person that was a financial analyst for the state of uh new jersey so working under her tutelage

i was pretty much learned how to work with a budget how to make sure we have a accurate budget how to ensure what has worked and what has failed what we add what we subtract to ensure as we move forward we know what percentages are we're using and where we're at on the course of a year to ensure that we operate under budget and not operate on the deficit so i've been very very

beneficial to have that knowledge and every place i've been we've provided a little a profit at the end of every fiscal year might not have been a great profit but we never operated on a deficit mark currently you're at the city of atlantic city the department of planning and development what is the size of their budget specifically and do you actually prepare that budget i prepared a budget for the cdbg and

home investment program which is annually 1.8 million dollars and that's my budget to prepare to ensure that we work with the public services public parks and facilities and also administer our citywide rehab programs and our first time homebuyers program and yes i do prepare that budget and currently i have from the cares act in two years of budget preparation we have currently close to five million dollars

to do an array of different public programs that is needed throughout the community to prevent for time with the prepare prevent and respond to covert 19 as well as our normal duties with our home investment and our cdbg dollars thank you could you please describe any experience you may have had with taking the lead role in union negotiations and the collective bargaining process

well throughout my career and currently right now i'm the vice president of the supervisors union here at the city of atlantic city but prior to that when i worked for the city of trenton i was also a shop steward so i worked very very hand with preparing the different you know proposals for our agreements that was going to be executed into contracts i worked hand in hand and i went if i had stayed in

trenton i would eventually became the president of the supervisors union there because i did all the training as opposed to going out to arizona to get my final uh and doctor to become president so i'm very very well astute on working with union okay thank you so the floor of a housing authority experiences a large number of unit turnovers on a yearly basis which creates tenant vacancy issues with

funding agencies resulting in reduced revenue to the follower of our housing authority could you please describe what efforts you would consider to effectively deal with these types of issues well one of the first important things you should always do by having your property managers know what's going on in your sites and you should always have your units ready to go the units should

not be in a disarray but they cannot be turned around within the hud mandated 11 days i mean that's what i look at that says 21 days i say 11 days because you want to move individuals in on the first and the 15th of every month and since this is a real strong need of affordable housing we should always be ahead of the ahead of what we should be doing not

behind meaning we know units will be coming vacant we should have three eligible families looking to move into that unit and we pick the best family based upon the waiting list who's going to move in we should never be squandering around and wasting time and what i tend to do with my team is to always find out what is going to be the man hours to turn the unit around per se

if it's ten man hours to turn the unit around if i put two individuals in that unit that has to be done in 5.5 hours and that's how you look at tackling to preventive maintenance what's going on and making sure you make ready time because you know now 98 percent is your target goal but before what's 95 but based upon what we have in america today was to cope and all that we should

have every unit always filled and if we have a unit that is that bad it should be taken offline and put to modernization for longer term to be off shelf do you support the concept of the delivery of social services under the auspices of the large public housing authority if so what types of services do you feel are the most beneficial to families the elderly and the disabled population of our public housing agency

well like lily's saying i work with these programs every day so i do believe that social service programs are need and no matter what we're doing as a housing authority we should be one-stop shopping meaning that if we don't do the actual program we should be able to connect our residents to that program i think it's very important that all generals work together to help eradicate

poverty and give people a chance to be self-sufficient so that means our agency is doing everything or partnering with system agencies it is very well needed because you're looking at decades of an unbalanced playing field to try to make sure that it's going to be level moving forward if you're dealing with your seniors you're disabled that you have to definitely make sure that you

have those services well at hand a lot of things i always do with my agencies is i have what's called the life center meaning we try to take out some commercial states on one of our sites and make sure we bring all those services whether it be the doctor the dentist you know everybody comes to one location because our residents can be able to have less trouble with getting to these different services like would

know that's where they might not have transportation to and i think by having those special little things you give people that pride and give that extra little bit of service that helps make their lives better moving forward especially when they get up in age where we're all going to get one day we definitely have to make sure we're there for people in their time of need okay thank you the fall river house the fall

river joint tenants council is the oldest city-wide tenant organization in the city of fall river important to the group first and foremost is meaningful tenant participation by the residents and the policy and decision making making process that is continuously developed by the fall river housing authority what and how will you communicate with the fall of a joint tenants council to

ensure that they have the opportunity to participate and have a voice in the policy making processes of the fall over housing authority well like i've done throughout my career i've always make sure that we have everybody at the table so we can make sound decisions so no one that feels they've been left out one of the biggest things that my pet peeves when i lived in public housing was if you knew

somebody everything went your way if you didn't know somebody that kind of dismissed you so i pretty much have what is called open door policy in a different platform to ensure that everyone gets a chance to speak and even though you might not always agree with the outcome would be we always should give somebody a platform is because having different voices we come to the best conclusion or recommendation for

policy and procedure that's going to benefit the agency way beyond our years so i definitely engage i meet on the regular with my tenants so that we know what's going on and work hand in hand inside because it's not about mark starlin it's not about the board it's about ensuring that we're as a group moving forward because we're only as strong as our biggest our biggest team member and our biggest team member is

going to be our resident okay what systems would you employ in order to in order to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the follow-over housing authority also with regard to that what reporting systems would you develop in order to keep the board of commissioners aware of all of the authority's progress as well as any problematic issues that may arise right i mean as far as what we work with

on that on the normal basis with the different 10 mass systems the different albin software that we use what i happen to have is different reports that i give to the board and gives individuals so we can be pretty much a i guess in layman's terms we work with the situation so that anybody off the streets can get our section a report and get our occupancy report can get our bills report and see

exactly what we spent what we try what we as far as our budget and where we're at and by having those layman's turns reports were able to go to a meeting like i said i might have talked the last time we spoke if you look at any type of uh account they give you a real big book of things every month when they review the different you know your expenditures

well i tend to summarize that to a smaller report to be able to be able to show you what was spent what we had targeted for spending and things like that and we use both documents as attachments so that you have the backup information because you know like human nature no one's going to read a book when they're trying to find one answer to what they're asking about so i have these different reports i've implemented

those different databases to keep a hold on things just like i said with unit turnaround and i always have mandated at 11 days where hud says 21 days always try to be ahead of the eight ball ahead of the curve so that when we're looking at things when something falls in the cycle we're still compliant and i think to get that type of attitude and give those type of reports back to the board

makes the board very effective when they're walking around the tech communities letting them know what's going on so no hotbed issue ever gets past the board okay could you please describe what you feel to be your three most significant administrative accomplishments wow that's that's that's really great because again i've taken four agencies from trouble the high performer and that's really a great stance in

itself i've also got the strawberry mansion redevelopment plan passed through the planning commission i've definitely did some great work in atlantic city to be able to get people connected back to the programs one of my biggest accomplishments throughout every place i've been if i help change the mindset of the clients that we work with and by saying that when i left the city of newburgh and i went to florida i was

going for like 10 11 months before they picked an ed and one of my board members visited me down in florida and said it was like you're still there and what that what he was saying was that that's such a shadow and by showing me what to do they kept on doing it correctly whether i was there or not and no matter what program we put in place if we don't change the mindset of individuals that

we're working with we're never going to be successful and i measure my success by educating and forming and being that constant rock that people are going to need to make them move themselves forward and i'm very very proud for changing the mindset throughout the individual i've met throughout this country as well as been able to take agencies and turn them around and be very good at strategic planning but it's

changing people and changing the vision of what people have once had to what america can be i think it's priceless okay thank you and finally um in five minutes or less could you please outline why you feel you should be the successful candidate for the position of the florida housing authority executive director i think with all the divisions that you're dealing with i have that unicorn

status where i bring that certain quality that brings people together i'm an ambassador i'm very knowledgeable 24 cfr as well as all the different housing programs are out there and i've been all the different generals i'm battle tested and i think i'm really ready to walk in hit the ground running be the type of leader you're looking for that way the board can sleep very easy at night and

attendance can know that their destiny is going to be changed based upon the hard work i'm going to do to inform them include them and make them successful as well because my success is measured on their success okay does anyone have any follow-up questions that concludes all the that concludes the 12. we we lost your video around question 10 but we keep you kept popping in and out but um anyone has any

follow-up questions okay mr starlight thank you very much uh for participating in tonight's open meeting uh in the interview um somebody i guess we we uh i guess we're going to move forward with the uh the meeting yes exactly so at this particular point um mark we're going to move forward with the remaining portion of our meeting we'll have some discussion about the interviewees yourself and others that we

have interviewed at which time the board will make a decision as to who would be best fit for us as the executive director and we will certainly let you know what the outcome of our discussion is so thank you thank you for joining us this evening thanks for having me i appreciate it have a safe night everybody thank you very much thank you have a good night thank you

so much it's his video it's his video yeah he kept coming in and all right well as long as it wasn't us for once thank you tim tim thank you for coming in so we have in front of us two applicants or two it was drilled down to two um interviewees that we have interviewed one at the last meeting and then of course one tonight um for me to start with this gentleman and

he seemed pretty nice however i don't think his experience it really really needs to be he keeps reporting back to the city of trenton and that was what did i write down that was something 1990 1999 to 2004 so that was quite a long time ago um his experiences his recent experiences it sounds like he is in the end of the planning department or the community development department with very small budgets so

we might be a little concerned that he would not be able to speak quickly enough with the size budgets we have i don't know how anyone else feels he definitely has a lot of experience you know he's he's and he's been around the country it looks like he's been from um florida to west warwick rhode island to new york and now back in pennsylvania working out of new jersey which is a little bit interesting

because philadelphia into atlantic city is quite a distance so i'm just i'm from pennsylvania so i guess i know that but i'm like that's quite a distance i'm not quite sure how he is working i didn't ask anything primarily remotely or not but he's kind of my comments i i agree with that mary because if you look at where he just has various public housing authorities in a ten year span

two three four is it four different locations from louisiana to rhode island to florida to new york that's what it looks like it just seems like a lot of um not very stable in new jersey so i would be concerned that if you were to come to massachusetts it may not be

although i i have to say from being a part of the screening committee um and now uh having a role at this point uh i was pretty impressed with the uh caliber of all of our uh or fi our finalists uh and the skills that they possess what they've achieved professionally you know minus some of these items like their number of uh locations they've worked at um it seems like uh all of our finalists

were worthy uh to be there and to be considered for for this position so him in any way or his expertise yeah yeah no but i mean i know there's going to be nuances that separate our ultimate finalists from the others but um everything you and commissioner bentley did with regard to going through all of those oh sure no no it was a pleasure it was uh an eye-opening experience and it wasn't just us uh

yeah we it was uh part of the team so i wanted to you know make that point known because uh you know whoever isn't selected shouldn't feel um like they're that far uh lacking of what we're looking for but um ultimately we want to pick the best candidate for uh for our authority

no i i think the um you know we we went from 47 down to 17.

17 and then from the 17 we went down to two and uh i i i think the two that we interviewed with it are the best the best of uh and each one has their strengths um

very well spoken this gentleman but i agree with this little concern with you know so many different assignments in so many years and we're looking for stability for sure

i apologize i don't know that's i just want to make sure that we're crossing the trees um so just to make it clear to the public that's watching this from afar item a on the agenda was the interview itself item b was the discussion of the applicants and then item c is a motion to appoint a new executive director if someone has emotions uh sure uh if i could uh make a motion um to appoint uh

mr kevin spardella uh to the position of falvor housing authority uh executive director uh for a three-year period start date to be determined and contingent upon successful contract negotiations between the fall river housing authority and commissioner spardella subject to final approval by dhcd wait a second my second though commissioner medeiros uh yes commissioner bentley yes commissioner underhill yes shalom and

sahari yes is there any other business coming for us this evening hearing none do i have a motion to adjourn okay second thank you very much commissioners thank you