By Arthur E. Foulkes
TERRE HAUTE — The Terre Haute Housing Authority board of directors voted Tuesday evening to hire a new executive director for the low-income housing agency.
In a meeting lasting about two minutes, board members voted unanimously to hire Jeff Stewart, an officer with Terre Haute Savings Bank, as the new head of the agency.
“He’s a leader,” said Tom Hunt, president of the Housing Authority Board, speaking of Stewart. Hunt, speaking after Tuesday evening’s special meeting, said he is confident Stewart can run the agency well.
Some Housing Authority employees have expressed concern that Stewart comes to the job without experience in the public housing field. Hunt, however, said he does not share that worry. “I’m not concerned in the least,” he said.
“I’m sure Mr. Stewart is a very smart guy and I’m sure he is a very good banker,” said Jack Pluff, chief building inspector for the Terre Haute Housing Authority. “I’m just concerned about his lack of experience.”
Another Housing Authority employee, who asked not to be named, echoed Pluff’s concern.
A message was left on Stewart’s home telephone Tuesday evening after the board meeting. He did not return the call within two hours.
Hunt would not say how much the new executive director would be paid. Leo Dauwer, a consultant asked by the Housing Authority board to help find a new director several months ago, said the salary likely would be around $100,000.
Operation of the Terre Haute Housing Authority is funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Dauwer’s services were not used to hire Stewart, Hunt said. “We were very disappointed in him,” Hunt said, adding that he did not want to elaborate specifically on why the board was disappointed in Dauwer.
Dauwer, who operates a consulting business in Massachusetts, said he was preparing to send a list of possible candidates to the Terre Haute Housing Authority when he learned the board had decided not to use his services.
“I received 20 relatively qualified people, some were more qualified than others … and some were experienced executive directors. We certainly had very highly qualified people applying for that position.”
Dauwer said the Housing Authority Board was unhappy with him because “I was telling them reality and they were not pleased with that.”
Dauwer said he told the board that, because of difficulties the Terre Haute Housing Authority was having with HUD, “it would be difficult to find somebody. But I didn’t say it was impossible to find anybody or that we wouldn’t find anybody. I just said that there would be difficulties.”
The difficulties, Dauwer said, are available on the HUD Web site and would be seen by people in the Housing Authority business interested in the Terre Haute position. “There were difficulties, that was obvious,” he said.
Dauwer did not send a bill for his services to the Terre Haute Housing Authority, he said.
The Housing Authority Board decided last year not to renew the contract of former executive director Patrick Barder. Barder ran the Terre Haute Housing Authority, which serves around 2,000 local families, for 25 years.
Board members present at Tuesday night’s meeting were Hunt, John Wolf, Bryan Kaufman, Patricia Parker-Zaikovsky and Marshall Rector. Absent members were Carol Smith and Mayor Duke Bennett’s lone board appointee, Ron Simpson.
Members of the Housing Authority Board are appointed by the mayor and serve four-year terms. They are paid $40 per meeting, an official with the Housing Authority said.
Late last month, several employees of the Terre Haute Housing Authority filed a complaint with Indiana’s Office of the Public Access Counselor charging that the board conducted an inappropriate meeting April 28 in which they voted to hire Stewart. The Public Access Counselor’s office has not issued a ruling yet; however, after Tuesday night’s brief meeting, board president Hunt apologized for not following public access rules.
“I apologize for that. Ignorance is no excuse” for breaking the public access rules, he said.
Pluff said he and other employees are concerned there have been a number of closed meetings in recent months. “I don’t know what they [have been] discussing that is so secretive,” he said. Pluff was among the employees who filed a complaint with the Indiana Public Access Counselor late last month.
Arthur Foulkes can be reached at (812) 231-4232 or arthur.foulkes@tribstar.com.
