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Turner joins YMHA board
YOUNGSTOWN
The chairman of the board of commissioners of the Youngstown Metropolitan Housing Authority confirmed that the board is in negotiations with its executive director, Clifford Scott, who remains on paid administrative leave.
Nathaniel Pinkard, board chairman, however, declined to be any more specific about Scott, whom the board placed on leave March 3.
“The board is working very diligently in trying to get things resolved as soon as possible,” he said, adding that the board is “being thorough.”
Pinkard spoke briefly to a reporter after the board emerged from a two-hour executive session Thursday without taking any action on Scott.
The board put Scott on leave from his $93,840-a-year post because he granted what the board said were unauthorized employee pay increases. Also on March 3, the board placed Carmelita Douglas in charge as the authority’s interim deputy director.
Scott’s initial contract as executive director was to run from May 1, 2008, through April 30 this year. The board then replaced the third year of that contract with a renewal agreement running from May 1, 2010, through April 30, 2014, with no pay increase during that time.
In August 2009, Scott sent the commissioners a memo informing them of his intention to grant a 1.5 percent cost-of-living pay raise to all authority employees except himself, 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.
The executive session followed a one-hour regular public meeting of the five-member board, at which David H. Turner was sworn in as a new board member.
Turner, who is Ohio Edison area manager, was appointed to a two-year board term by the Mahoning County commissioners to replace Harry Johnson, whose term expired.