YMHA director’s status remains in limbo


Clifford Scott
Staff report
YOUNGSTOWN
Clifford Scott, executive director of the Youngstown Metropolitan Housing Authority, remains in limbo after a nearly three-hour executive session of the authority’s board of commissioners.
The board conducted a special meeting Wednesday after having put Scott on paid administrative leave from his $93,840-a-year post March 3. Scott remains on leave because he granted what the board said were unauthorized employee pay increases.
At that same early March meeting, the board voted to investigate the ramifications of the 1.5 percent pay increase granted in October 2009 and to put Carmelita Douglas in charge as the authority’s interim deputy director.
“We’re trying to move as quickly as we can to get this re- solved, but I can’t put a date on it,” Nathaniel Pinkard, board chairman, said of a board decision concerning Scott’s fate.
In August 2009, Scott sent a memo to the commissioners, informing them of his intention to grant all agency employees except himself a 1.5 percent cost-of-living increase, effective Oct. 2 of that year.
Scott said his decision to act without board approval was based on practices of the last two directors and an interim director.