While many institutions probably have one too many advisory boards, the general wisdom around the Hoboken Housing Authority is that for too long, the projects have had one too few. Administrators and tenants alike have always said that they would like to have an active tenants’ advisory board, composed exclusively of residents, to comment on the direction that the 1,353-unit federally subsidized housing project should take in the future. But now that a new, recently-formed board has begun to take an active role in managing the HHA, many of the newly-appointed officers say that the agency’s Executive Director, E. Troy Washington, is tampering with their by-laws in an attempt to limit their influence. Just weeks after they took a lead role in fighting the administration’s efforts to enact a new lease agreement with the tenants that they viewed as unfair, and just days after voting to become incorporated, Washington issued a two-paragraph memorandum to the board’s officers shaking things up. In the memo dated May 12, Washington explains that “the Resident Advisory Board is made up of elected presidents and vice presidents of each development.” Washington’s directive runs counter to the way the board was established under his supervision on Aug. 24, 1999, during which it was decided that only the presidents of the developments’ tenant groups would be part of the board. The new memo effectively adds seven new faces to the seven-member volunteer board. Many of the board’s presidents see Washington’s move to add the seven vice presidents as nothing more than a power play. “He’s just trying to take over,” said Joe Dimonde, a president who also serves as the board’s recording secretary. “But this is our board. We don’t want to be pushed around and insulted like we don’t know anything, because we do.” One thing that Dimonde and his colleagues have found is that according to HUD statutes, once they became incorporated, they were entitled to spend $15 per apartment from HHA funds to run the advisory board and provide resident activities like summer trips and an arts program. Earlier this month, they worked with a local lawyer to become incorporated under New Jersey state law. “This is all being done because we just incorporated,” said Lynda Walker, who was elected as the resident advisory board president when the members voted to incorporate. “He wants to disband us and appoint seven more people even though we have put in a lot of work over the last eight months. And he wants to do it just at a time when we are finally ready to start serving the tenants’ needs. That’s our money that he is holding up. We should be able to use it for an office for the board and to run residents’ programs. But now he is saying that everything we did has to be re-done.” Although Washington did not return phone calls to explain his side of the story, he does appear to have at least one ally among the presidents. “The vice presidents should get to vote, because that is the way it is supposed to be,” said Jean Rodriquez who has served on the board since it was formed. But when she was asked if the timing of the shake up was suspect, all she would say is, “No comment.” Was a driving force Tony Pasquale, the chairman of the board of commissioners that oversees all HHA activities, was quick to point out that Washington was a driving force behind the recent re-establishment of the advisory board at the HHA in the first place. “The Executive Director and his staff have been working to revive the tenants’ advisory board,” he explained. “When I was appointed to the board three years ago, it was almost non-existent. To Troy’s credit he has been working with them to try and make this happen.” Others don’t see it that way. “The resident advisory board helps add to a system of checks and balances,” said City Councilman Ruben Ramos Jr., who has been a critic of Washington. “And right now the executive director does not want to submit to it.” At Wednesday night’s meeting, Walker presented the advisory board coordinator, Housing Manager Mary Carol Caiezza, with a memo stating her desire to continue functioning as they have been since August. The memo, although unsigned, appeared to sum up the sentiments of at least Walker, Dimonde and presidents Lillie Dortch and Helen Speranza. “We were elected as volunteers to work on behalf of the residents and firmly believe that the addition of members is to silence certain members of the board,” they wrote. But Caiezza was unmoved. She maintained that in order for the board to meet, at least eight of the board’s 14 members had to show up. Under the way the board had been operating previously, four officers constituted a quorum. “When eight people did not show up, Mary called the meeting,” said Walker. “That’s just the way they want it to be. They want to hold us up. But we are going to fight it.”
Our Digital Archive from 2000 – 2016
