Eagle Pass Housing Authority Board advised of lower public housing assessment score and changes
By: Jose G. Landa, Copyright 2014, Eagle Pass Business Journal, Inc.
The Eagle Pass Housing Authority (EPHA) Board of Commissioners held their monthly meeting on Thursday, May 22, 2014 at the Centenario Building in Eagle Pass, tackling several changes including a lower public housing assessment score for fiscal year 2012.
Among the agenda items discussed and approved was the EPHA Pubic Housing Assessment score for the fiscal year ending on June 12, 2012, reflecting a decrease in the public housing assessment score for various known and unknown reasons. EPHA Executive Director Mary Velasquez stated that the reason this item was presented on the agenda was because it had not been presented to the Board of Commissioners before.
“I want to make sure that you are informed of this report. This is a Public Housing Assessment Report for the fiscal year ending June 2012. This report covers all the fiscal year 2012 and this is where we were designated, our designation went down from a high performance Housing Authority score of 92 to a standard performer score of 86. My understanding is that the major reason why we went down in status is because of the vacancies and the capital funds obligations that were the cost of the low score on the report. Due to the loss on vacancies, we lost over $40,000,” added Velasquez.
Velasquez also pointed out to the Board of Commissioners that when a public housing authority is designated a high performer, HUD allocates an additional five percent bonus in funding for the high score designation. These five percent bonus funds were lost, according to Velasquez.
The EPHA had previously had a high performance scores for the years 2009, 2010, and 2011 under a previous administration. Affecting the lower public housing assessment score in 2012 were the total number of vacancies at EPHA, including 14 housing units at Los Angeles Heights that became uninhabitable due to foundation cracks and damages. HUD takes into consideration every vacancy including the 14 uninhabitable housing units at Los Angeles Heights designated for demolition due to the loss of revenues.
Board Chairperson Ana M. Gonzalez intervened and stated that she wanted to read a prepared written statement regarding this issue because the previous Board of Commissioners had emphasized that they needed to see faster housing vacancy unit turnarounds.
“ First of all, I want to commend what you people are doing at this point in putting up many safeguards that this has to stop. I’m going to read what I wrote. We the board are here to establish policies and help administration carry out the proper policies to avoid losses due to the slow turnaround that was affected by vacancies that amounted to approximately $40,000 to $50,000. Housing Administration needs to understand and take a firm action of employees that fail to perform to the level that their job demands and that there will be consequences as a result of the loss of federal monies. I want you to understand that these are federal monies for the people that live in the colonias,” said Chairperson Gonzalez.
“If HUD was to come down here, how can we respond to that? Oh, we just didn’t do our job. We were pretty slow on doing this, or whatever, whatever your verbalization will be as a consequence to this. We can’t do that, because we need to get the maximum amount of monies that we can incur. We expect the highest quality of work performance and already this has been discussed with administration and I understand that they have been working on these issues that will result in safeguards so this will never happen again. As a Board, we will not tolerate this,” added Chairperson Gonzalez.
“ We will not tolerate this loss of money. People left on their own, very few people were fired. We should utilize all our effort to make sure that we proceed to the best highest quality,” added Gonzalez. Gonzalez then emphasized that employees should work efficiently and that it was expected of them to do so.
“ The only one we can write up is the administrator and it is up to her to make sure that we are at an understanding and that she will convey this information and will place all the safeguards so that we will never lose this amount of money,” said Gonzalez.
“ As far as we are concerned we have taken a hard look at this, nobody wants to lose money, nobody,” said Gonzalez.
Velasquez then stated that going down a standard level in the public housing assessment score adds more work to the EPHA as well. “It produces more HUD inspections and oversight,” said Velasquez.
Gonzalez then intervened and stated that instead of having inspections every three years, it will now be every two years due to the downgrade.
Gonzalez then discussed certain numbers from the actual failed report stating that problems arose on certain areas such as management that included, housing unit turnaround, out of a 25 point score the report showed that the EPHA had gotten an 18 point score.” That is not acceptable. Capital funds also showed a decrease from 10 points to a 7 point score.
Gonzalez emphasized that there were other areas on the report including time limits on fund applications that also weren’t good either. “Hopefully administration will take some steps so this will not occur,” said Gonzalez.
“I’m looking at the overtime hours. There is no excuse to not have done this job. There are over 2,000 hours of overtime. So I don’t know what happened. And again I want to emphasize this did not happen with this present administration. This happened with the past administration. So now we are placing certain hurdles for her (Velasquez) to correct and to help you out and that you all follow up on all of this,” concluded Gonzalez.
Another issue discussed was the EPHA erroneous payment of tenants’ electricity services.
During the discussion, Velasquez stated that there had been an error discovered on the EPHA financial statements in regards to the CPL electricity bills in payment for tenant energy/electricity services.
Velasquez stated that there had been an investigation conducted and that it was discovered that the EPHA had been making erroneous payments on certain tenants’ electricity bills for almost two years.
“ We have not finished the investigation but I wanted you to be aware that this is going on. We ended up cutting the tenants service contracts. We informed the tenants that there were in violation and that they needed to obtain their own service contract. This came about because the EPHA has what’s called a Leave on Agreement , when a family vacates their unit they take their electricity contract with them. So when a new tenant comes in they must open up a contract,” said Velasquez.
Velasquez explained that many new tenants were not opening up a new electricity contract so it would correspond to them once they moved into a public housing unit, and that those are one of the requirements that the EPHA asks for from tenants, causing the EPHA to take action.
Velasquez explained to the Board of Commissioners that situation amounted to bills close to $17,000 for the EPHA and that they (EPHA) would be taking the appropriate actions to pursue collections on those losses. Velasquez further explained that some of those families no longer live within the EPHA and that it was going to be difficult to collect from them but that all avenues were to be explored to collect.
Gonzalez then stated that the public housing managers had not acted responsibly in informing the tenants of what was needed to be done about the electricity situation and contracts. “Somebody dropped the ball. The responsibility of this firsthand is on the managers. They should have done what needed to be done because prior to that it was being done. Who dropped the ball, we will get to that. We are telling you this was in the past administration and now we have to go back and correct all of this because they would not call CPL to disconnect and the new tenants, elated because they were getting free light,” added Gonzalez. “I’m not a very happy camper because of this. Nobody wants to lose money,” said Gonzalez. Gonzalez failed to mention that the past administration has been gone since August 2013 and this problem continued under the new administration until now.
Velasquez stated to the Board of Commissioners that they would continue auditing the expenses and also continue the inquiry to collect the lost amount due to the electricity bill mishap. “We have to find out and identify who didn’t pay. I told Mary, if those who left and they refuse to pay I want you to file charges on them. If they don’t want to pay I want you to file charges,” added Gonzalez. “Who do we blame? We need to have the safeguards. We need to make the managers accountable for this,” added Gonzalez.
The EPHA is undergoing many changes due to a change of administrations. Some former public housing managers or department heads have been demoted or have resigned while loyal employees to the coup de etat have been rewarded with bonuses and promotions, including significant pay raises. The new administration failed to get the Board of Commissioners to timely approve the EPHA’s 2013 audited financial statements and file them before the March 31, 2014 HUD deadline. The late filing may cause the EPHA to possibly be sanctioned by HUD in the immediate future.
