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YMHA executive director placed on paid leave
Photo
Clifford Scott
YOUNGSTOWN
The Youngstown Metropolitan Housing Authority Board of Commissioners has placed the agency’s executive director on paid administrative leave for granting what the board says were unauthorized employee pay increases.
The action against executive director Clifford Scott occurred at a March 3 special meeting of the YMHA board. At the same meeting, the board approved convening an investigation into “the ramifications of the 1.5 percent pay increase that was given in October 2009,” said chairman L. Nathaniel Pinkard.
A quorum was present, and the vote was unanimous, he said.
Carmelita Douglas has been appointed interim deputy director.
Pinkard said Scott sent a memo to the board in 2009 about his intention to give 1.5 percent cost-of-living adjustments to all employees.
Pinkard said, however, “We [the board] never voted on it.”
Pinkard said the COLA increase was discovered by commissioners this year when they began preparing for negotiating new contracts with its bargaining units.
“The problem is that we were operating under collective-bargaining agreements that did not call for COLAs. They call for zero increases the third year of the agreements,” he said.
A telephone call to Scott was not returned.
However, among documents obtained by The Vindicator is an Aug. 10, 2009, memo from Scott to YMHA’s Board of Commissioners in which he informed the board of his intention to award all agency employees except himself a 1.5 percent COLA, effective Oct. 2, 2009.
In the memo, Scott noted that under the labor agreements then in effect, employees were to receive no increase in compensation in the third year of the contract.
He said his decision to act without board approval, however, was based on practices of the last two directors and an interim director during whose tenure he said no board of commissioner’s action was taken to authorize COLA or merit increases in salary.
In a Jan. 21, 2011, memo to the board, Scott noted that some “vigorous questions” arose regarding the YMHA staff receiving a COLA increase in 2009.
“At the time, given the amount of positive output in our Public Housing, Section 8 and YouthBuild Departments, as well as the Central Office, it was my professional judgement the COLA was warranted,” Scott wrote.
However, he concluded his Jan. 21 memo by saying it is “probably a prudent idea” to discuss in the near future executive director/board of commissioners roles and responsibilities.
Before his appointment as executive director of YMHA, Scott was director of Section 8 for the Housing Authority of Kansas City, Mo.; and was before that director of New York State’s Section 8 program.
YMHA, with headquarters at 131 West Boardman St., is a agency that provides affordable housing to residents thoughout Mahoning County. It manages more than 1,500 apartments and works with local public, private and nonprofit agencies to provide its residents’ support services such as job training, economic development, computer training and many programs for our youth and senior residents, according to its website.
Besides Pinkard, YMHA commissioners include Vice Chairman Harry Johnson III, Gary Singer, Mary June Tartan and LaVerne Scott. Scott was not present at the March 3 meeting.