Because I asked miss Tunstall, who is the music teacher, which also taught me to be that. We sang this song about sniffing the snake Oh, Jesus. In elementary school, and I was like, what obnoxious. I You were like had to be, like, eight. Like, it was I don't see the benefit to this particular exercise. I just walked down the street and apologize. Incredible. Didn't go in for a while. Yeah. Well Yeah. You know, curious minds want to know. Yeah. What does snake and snake have to do with my thing?
And I clearly, it stood out. I'm learning. Yeah. True. Oh, I got back from vacation. I was like, oh my gosh. I have so many things to do and I was like, emailing people. I was like, hey. So just can you have a meeting on the nineteenth? And she was like, no July. Neither can you. Like, it's a holiday. I was like, oh, great. Yeah. Well, but it looks so compelling until I would have locked it in a holiday on my calendar because it's like It's wide open. Yeah. There's a ticket here. Mhmm. Yeah. Two over balance. Oh, is that? Do we? 3? I I guess it'd be 4.
Yeah. 4, 6, and 3. Hi, Delphine. We're just waiting for others to arrive. 02:00 never went back to No. Feel like you're gonna say. Hello? Hi. Can you hear me? Mhmm. Yes. I can hear you. Okay. Good. Good. Thank you. Oh, look at your psychedelic charger. I know. I've been staring at it. Your razzle dazzle charger. Yeah. I got this from the, dollars Incredible. Dollar Tree. Love it. Where where all the best treasures are found. Yeah. Because I've seen it, I was like, And then you'll never lose it.
You know? It doesn't flash at you. Although the fifth straight one is a disaster. Yes. Like, I I watched all these things to do crafts with Dollar Tree stuff, and then I, like, went to get it. And the line was through, like, the whole store. And I was like, I can't. I don't wanna do a craft anymore. Yeah. I can't. Because they weren't doing any and they don't have a self checkout. There's always, like, one poor person. Yeah. Who's who's handling all of the people. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I don't know if that's not it. The arms are uneven. Oh. Bothering me.
It's fine. Well, I don't know what to do because we don't have a quorum. Yeah. I mean, it's six zero two. So maybe give people, like, three or four more minutes. Yeah. Welcome. Alright. That gives us a quorum. Mhmm. Okay. He's yeah. He's well, he had said he was, but okay. I will call our meeting to order. Can I get a roll call, please? Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Here. Help? Commissioner Reynolds. Okay. We have a moment of silence, please.
Okeydokey. So we are going to, move to a brief closed session. Be it resolved that the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority will convene in a closed meeting pursuant to the Virginia Freedom of Information Act as amended, to discuss the following matters which are specifically exempted from public disclosure by the code section reference two below. Personal matters in personnel matters involving the assignment appointment, promotion, demotion, performance, salaries, or resignation
of employees of the authority as authorized by section two dot three dash three seven one one a one of the act. Can I get a motion, please? Motion. Second? Second. Alright. I Yes. All opposed. Alright. We will be right back. It's freezing in here. I'm sorry. I wasn't ignoring you guys. I just didn't see any of the things. Put our put put our phones down. Yeah. Michael and Javier are gonna have just made calls.
Oh, okay. It's not just me then. I checked mine too. Yeah. Alrighty. So whereas the authority has convened a closed meeting, on the state pursuant to an affirmative recorded vote and in accordance with the provisions of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act. And whereas section two dot two dash three seven one two d of the 1950 code of Virginia as amended requires a certification by this authority that such close meeting was conducted in conformity with Virginia law. Now therefore upon motion duly made and seconded be it resolved that the authority hereby
certifies that to the best of each commissioner's knowledge, one, only public business matters lawfully exempted from open meeting requirements by Virginia law were heard, discussed, or considered in the closed meeting. And two, only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard, discussed, or considered opposed? Okay. Miss Carnes, are you there? I am.
Alright. We are ready for you to train us. Okay. I'm gonna see if I can share my screen. Does everyone have a copy of the PowerPoint presentation, or do you have it on the screen in the room? Yes. We have copies of it. There's yeah. Oh, okay. Great. Okay. Can you still share your screen now? So, no? Yes. I'm gonna try to do that. Let me see. Can you see my screen? It's already There it is. Yeah. Yes, ma'am. Great. Great. Well, good evening to everyone, and thank you for having me.
So for some of you, this may be, duplicative of the training you received from me, a few years ago. So I guess for some of you, it will be a refresher. It is an updated version of the training. And then for some of the new work commissioners who were not on the board when I last providing the provided the training a couple years ago, then, this will be perhaps new information or perhaps something that you already knew, but maybe not in the context of a housing authority. So today, we're going to cover, basically, the information about what is CRHA, what is
the role of of public housing agencies and how they work, because they're a little bit of a different animal, so to speak. Then we will go through the powers that CRHA has. And then and most importantly, we will go through your role as a commissioner, your responsibilities, and we will talk about two of the main, bodies of rules that are the most relevant to commissioners. One is the Freedom of Information Act, and the other is issues involving conflicts of
interests. So first, what is the Charlotte Building Development and Housing Authority? Well, it's a public housing authority, which is defined on this slide. The important piece to remember is that public housing authorities are creatures of statutes, meaning unlike corporations or LLCs, they are governed by the statutes that create public housing authorities and they only have the powers that the statutes give them. They are governmental agencies and instrumentalities of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
In Virginia, you can be both a redevelopment and a housing authority, which is why your name is CRHA. That's not true everywhere around the country. In some states, you can only be a housing authority, which is important because in those states, that means housing authorities cannot engage in any redevelopment activity. So at the federal level, housing authorities were created back in 1937 by the Federal Housing Act. That only authorized housing authorities at the federal level, meaning that then it was up
to the states to decide whether or not they wanted housing authorities to exist. So that happened the very next year for the Commonwealth of Virginia, and title 36 of the Virginia code was created specifically to govern housing authorities. But, again, at that point, they were only created, so to speak, or made available at the state level. It was then up to each locality to decide whether or not to have a housing authority. For Charlottesville, that occurred in 1954 and, CRHA was activated.
And we used the term activated because, again, housing authorities are creatures of statute. You do not register with the Virginia State Corporation Commission. You have to be created, by statute and then activated at a local level by the municipality. On that point, it's important to note that not every city or county in the Commonwealth has a housing authority. Some cities have chosen to not have a housing authority, for example, Virginia Beach, and then a lot of other cities do have housing authorities.
But it's interesting as you look at the entire Commonwealth of Virginia to see which areas have housing authorities and which do not. So what can CRHA do? Unlike corporations or LLCs, where you can create a corporation and an LLC, and it's allowed to do everything unless it's prohibited, With regard to housing authorities, it's the opposite. You cannot do anything unless the statute says that you can. So for us, we look at title 36 of the Virginia code and it enumerates
the powers of housing authorities in the Commonwealth Of Virginia. And then federal statutes have some limitations with regard to how these powers can be exercised. For historical purposes, you'll see on this slide, it lists the levels of authority and activity that were authorized by Congress. And it's interesting because you can see that housing authorities were basically created to handle housing matters. And that was in 1938. And then, interestingly, after World War II, redevelopment projects were added as an additional layer
of authorized activity for housing authorities. And then conservation projects came last in 1964. So what is a housing project? That's a term of art, which is why I put it in italics. You will hear sometimes people refer to housing project. It's important to be specific when we use those terms because those terms come from statutes and we have to really abide by the terms of the statutes in order for a housing authority to be allowed to participate.
So on this slide, you have the definition of a housing project. And some of you may be familiar with the phrase, decent, safe, and sanitary housing. That comes from the statute that initially created this layer of activity as an authorized part of the work of housing authorities. So it's at the core of a lot of the missions of housing authorities. If you look around the country, a lot of housing authorities still have in their mission statement the terms to provide decent, safe, and sanitary housing.
Redevelopment projects were the next, layer of authorized activity. And on this slide, you'll see a definition of redevelopment project. Of course, CRHA has been involved in a lot of, redevelopment and rehabilitation projects, so your board is very familiar with the process for those. Conservation projects, think of it basically as redevelopment light, meaning it's the action of trying to intervene in a neighborhood or community before it deteriorates to the point where it
becomes blighted. Conservation is something that housing authorities are allowed to do. There is just very little funding for it. If this presentation was twenty five years ago, I would have told you we do a lot of conservation work. We don't do as much anymore because there's almost no federal funding for it. Okay. Not sure what happened. Alright. Let me go back. Okay. M and N domains. So on the next few slides, you'll see some of the, information about M and N domain. And it's really mostly for, historical purposes to give you an idea of what housing
authorities used to be able to do. So eminent domain obviously is the acquisition of properties by condemnation. And the purpose when eminent domain was first enacted was the elimination of slums and blight when it comes to the housing authorities powers to use eminent domain. And it was used quite a bit around the Commonwealth of Virginia, mostly for large projects that required the acquisition of several parcels of land from different landowners. Many of you will recall that in 2005, there was a decision called Kelo versus
City of New London. It arose out of a situation in Connecticut that would not have been something allowed in the Commonwealth of Virginia. But in that case, it was decided that private redevelopment of an area was a permissible public use of the power of eminent domain. And that created an outcry across the country, and people really did not react well to the notion of their privately owned property property being potentially taken by a municipality
for the purpose of simply conveying it to a private developer for private use. And so there was a huge reaction to this decision across the country, and it led to statutory amendments in Virginia in 2007, stating that housing authorities can no longer acquire non blighted properties pursuant to a redevelopment plan, and they redefined blight.
And it's now very difficult to demonstrate that a property constitutional amendment in 2012. Which makes it even harder to, use eminent domain for housing purposes because it states specifically that it is not an allowable public use, therefore, not eligible for combination if
the primary purpose of the redevelopment activity is for private benefit, the private enterprise, increasing tax revenue, or creating economy development. And you can only get past that if you can demonstrate that the property creates a public nuisance. Again, a harder threshold to meet. Which means that basically, as of today, I can tell you there is no eminent domain happening, for housing authorities. And really the only cases of condemnations that we see nowadays are condemnation cases initiated
by power companies or vDOT, when they're building a road or installing new utilities. Then those cases can lead to successful acquisition using eminent domain, but housing authorities are no longer using eminent domain. And if they tried, I don't think it would be successful if they were challenged in court. So on oh, I'm sorry. I'll pause for a second to see if there are any questions at this point. Okay. So on this slide, you see the list of unique powers that housing authorities have
in Virginia, which cities do not have. And I I list them on this slide because it's interesting to think of some of these powers, and it's not necessarily intuitive to think that, for example, a city does not have the power to make loans or grants, to private owners for construction or rehab. It's very difficult for a municipality to make a loan or a grant to an
individual or to a private entity. They can make loans or grants to other agencies and to housing authorities, obviously, but it's, difficult for cities to exercise the powers that are listed here. So it's interesting for you to keep in mind as you move forward with some of the activities that you have. For example, housing authorities have the right to issue private activity bonds to assist private developers of conduit issuer of bonds, and it can really be beneficial conduit issuer of
bonds, and it can really be beneficial to the community. The last bullet says that you can exercise powers in other municipalities. I don't think it has happened, at least not recently for, Charlottesville, but, it does happen on occasion where a municipality, does not have a housing authority. For example, Henrico County doesn't have a housing authority. And sometimes they call upon other housing authorities to assist them with some of their
projects. And they've done it several times using the Suffolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority. So it's interesting how it can lead to some cooperation between municipalities to accomplish, housing projects. Your relationship to city council, of course, as you know, you're appointed by city council. City council also has the right to approve or not your housing redevelopment and conservation plans after they've been adopted by your board. And your city council has the the power to provide funding to you, which does
occur on occasion, but that's really not a fixed process. It occurs on a year by year basis, as made available in the city's budget. So it is not an automatic funding. It is discretionary on the part of city council. Your relationship to HUD is the most important relationship that the housing authority has. It is the entity that provides most of your funding, the vast majority of it, because HUD funds both public housing or section nine and vouchers or section eight.
And because they provide funding for those programs, they have some strings attached with regard to how the funds are to be used, and they include reporting obligations. For the public housing program, those reporting obligations come through the form of FAS, which is a system for HUD to evaluate how you're doing in spending funds in the public housing program. And for the housing choice voucher program, that evaluation is done through CMAP.
Both of these scoring mechanisms, so to speak, are really important because this is the vehicle that HUD uses to determine whether or not you're fulfilling your obligations with regard to the use of these funds. And it includes both an audit of files as well as physical inspections of your units. And because those, audits and scoring processes are very involved, there are audits going on basically at all times.
So it's likely that there's a HUD audit going on right now. It's not a bad thing. It's just a part of the process. If you score well, then your agency can be a high performer. If you don't score well, there are some penalties associated with that, all the way down to being a troubled agency and potentially eventually being put in receivership by HUD. So there are some pretty dire consequences if you do not score well in FAS and CMAP. If you do score well, it does open up some, funding opportunities.
For example, high performers have access to certain HUD grants that are not made available to other housing authorities. So it's a really important process, and it takes a lot of time for your staff to make sure that basically the files are in order, both from a financial standpoint and from the standpoint of making sure the tenants that you place in the public housing program and in the housing choice voucher program are meeting all of the requirements for eligibility.
So it's a pretty honorous process to go through to make sure you're doing everything you're supposed to do basically. Oh my goodness. It keeps doing that. I'm sorry. It keeps making me refresh my session and I don't understand why. Let me see if I can reopen it. My apologies. I'm trying to go back and refresh so I can share my screen again. Okay. Can you see my screen? Yes. Yes. Okay. So, the next slide is your role as a commissioner. So, you have seven voting members.
The law requires that you have at least one resident of assisted housing on your board, but your bylaws require two. But by statute, you have to have one at least. All of you are fiduciaries of public funds because as I mentioned on the prior slide, you receive funding from HUD, which is federal funding and therefore the board of Commissioners as the governing board of the Housing Authority serves as a fiduciary of those federal funds.
You operate within the bylaws, which govern the officers, the elections, elections, of course, how your meetings are conducted, how often, and the quorums for your meeting. And, again, you have some flexibility with regard to your bylaws, and you can amend them As long as you meet the minimum requirements that are imposed by statute, you can go above that and do more than absolutely required. What you cannot do is do less, obviously. Each of you as a commissioner is indemnified by the housing authority for reasonable business
acts. And we'll get back to that later in the presentation. But what this means is that as long as you act within the scope of your role as a commissioner, CRHA will indemnify you in the event you are sued or otherwise found liable for decisions you made in your capacity as a commissioner. But again, this assumes that you acted within the scope of your duties and not beyond that. And your liability is limited to the amount of annual compensation that you receive for
serving on the board. So receipt of a stipend is basically the only compensation that you're allowed to receive in the Commonwealth of Virginia for your services. And that stipend amount would be the maximum amount of your liability. So we're going to talk about the Freedom of Information Act next. And that's most likely the most important statute that you come in contact with because you come in contact with it every single time you discuss housing authority matters, whether
it's at your regular board meetings or otherwise. And And we're going to talk about both facets of FOIA. The first, facet of FOIA is the notion of public meetings. What's a public meeting and what isn't. And the next part is public records. So we're gonna start with public meetings. Because CRHA is a public housing agency and a governmental entity, all items, items, involving the discussion of the business of CRHA must be decided in public at a duly
noticed public meeting, which means that members of the public have to be able to come to the meeting, make comments at a designated time on your agenda, and hear the conversation and discussions of the commissioners as well as the votes. Keep in mind that a meeting is a public meeting if we have at least three commissioners discussing CRHA business. Sorry. That is probably the most important part of the public meeting aspect of FOIA, and
here's why. It doesn't matter if you're not technically present at a duly called meeting of the board. If you have three commissioners together discussing any CRHA business, whether it's at a cocktail party, a wedding, at someone's house, or through an email that involves three commissioners or through a text message, that's a public meeting. And it's illegal unless you provided public notice and an opportunity for the public to
attend, which most likely you didn't if you just happen to find yourselves at a cocktail party together. So my recommendation is if you find yourself at a social event and you see that there are three commissioners in the room, it's fine as long as you do not discuss CRHA business. If you start discussing CRHA business, then that's an illegal meeting. Generally, the code does not allow for meetings to be conducted by phone or electronically,
but there are exceptions. Two of them are the most important and have applied to you. One is emergency situations, and the other is a remote participation policy. So emergency, obviously, we all went through COVID. Any type of state of emergency declared by the governor creates a situation where you are allowed to have meetings electronically. And if you do, and you will remember during the COVID time frame, when you
meet electronically, you have to include in your minutes an explanation of why you're meeting electronically. You have to give notice of the meeting in advance, and you have to make arrangements for people to participate via Zoom, phone calls, or otherwise. And similarly to a meeting in person, you have to give people the opportunity to make public comments. The second exception to meetings being, required to occur in person is a remote attendance
policy, and you have one for your agency. So the code allows two different types of remote attendance policies, and they're both listed on this slide. The important piece being that you have to have adopted a policy before you try to, start meeting electronically. Again, this is in the absence of a state of emergency. So you have that policy in place for the Charlottesville Housing Authority, which means you have the right to conduct some of your meetings, electronic.
Closed meetings. So you went in closed session earlier in this meeting, so you understand how this works. There is a strict process to go into closed session and to come out of closed session, which is why, chair O'Rourke read the resolutions which reference the statute. The important thing to note here is that you can't just choose to go into closed session for any reason. It has to be for the discussion of one of the topics that FOIA specifically allows you to go into closed session for.
And so on this slide, you'll see that, they're listed here. Most of the time for housing authorities, it will be personnel matters, real estate acquisition or disposition, and legal matters. Those would be the three most frequent, topics that are used by housing authorities to, convene a closed session. As All of you know, you cannot vote in closed session. That, should go without saying since all votes have to be taken publicly.
So we've talked about public meetings. Now we're going to to talk about public records, but I'd like to pause and see if there are any questions before we move into the second aspect of FOIA. Okay. Alright. So public records. So we just talked about public meetings, which is one aspect of FOIA. What you need to keep in mind is that even if you're not in a public meeting, you may very well be creating a public record. Record. So for example, if one commissioner sends an email to another commissioner, and it's just two commissioners, not three, on that email, we don't have any legal public meeting because
it's two commissioners, not three. But we have a public record, meaning that email in and of itself is not illegal, but it is a record that is open to inspection by the public at any time. So if we receive a FOIA request, we would have to provide a copy of that email. FOIA requests do not have to specify the reason for the request. It's irrelevant. Anyone can send the housing authority a request to see public records. And if you do receive that request, by law, you have five business days to
respond. Now the response doesn't necessarily mean you provide all the records that have been asked for. What the response can do is ask for more time to respond. And by law, you have the right to request and receive automatically an extension for seven additional business days, but you do have to make the request for the extension within the initial five business days. Many records are exempt from disclosure, including personnel information and obviously, attorney client privilege.
What is important to note here is that if a record includes some information that's exempt from disclosure, then the housing authority has the obligation to redact the record and provide the portions of the record any correspondence that has to do with CRHA business
is not exempt from disclosure. Again, unless it falls within one of the exemption categories. For example, if I, as legal counsel to CRHA, send one of you or the entire board an email regarding legal matters, then that correspondence would not be subject to FOIA because it's attorney client privilege. But generally speaking, keep in mind that all communications are public records. And that's true regardless of whether it's your private email account that is being used
or even a text message on your private cell phone. As long as it pertains to housing authority business, it becomes a public record. That includes also all signed contracts and employment contracts. And, it can be burdensome to respond to FOIA requests. And by law, you have the right to charge the person requesting the record, the records for the actual costs of searching for the records and making copies. And sometimes you don't make copies, you just send them electronically, which is usually more
cost effective. But you can still charge for the amount of time that CRHA staff spends on producing the records. Any questions on FOIA before we move on to conflicts of interest? Okay. So moving on to conflicts of interest. Most of you know about this intuitively. So this is just a refresher for you to be aware, to the extent you don't think about it often, but just to be aware of the rules regarding conflicts of interest. It's important to keep those in mind because sometimes, and, you know, even though Charlottesville
is a pretty large community, it's still, at the end of the day, a small world and there are some connections between people and companies or family relationships that create, conflicts of interest that you may not have contemplated. And it's often, a a situation that's benign. It's not necessarily nefarious. People think of conflicts of interest and they think someone is doing something absolutely wrong. And certainly those cases exist, but by and large, conflicts of interest or the appearance
of conflicts of interest can occur inadvertently. And that's why it's important to be aware of the rules so that you can sort of keep in mind the fact that as a commissioner, you're not supposed to have a contract or a financial relationship with the housing authority on whose board you sit, and that extends to your family, basically. So this is what this slide talks about. And it talks about what's considered a personal interest in the, in a transaction. A personal interest in the in a transaction. So this is the definition in, in the statute that governs conflicts of interest for
local government agencies. And you'll see that it has to do with basically realizing some kind of direct or indirect benefit as a result of your position statute resides the rules, those rules
are really only at play, so to speak, if we look at the details of each individual situation, because personal interests in transactions are rarely straightforward, meaning it's rarely a situation where a commissioner himself or herself tries to enter into a direct contract with the housing authority. Most often, it will be a commissioner's family member, maybe himself or herself, a shareholder
in a corporation that is a subcontractor of someone building housing, for example, for the housing authority. So it can be several steps removed, which is why it's important to keep in mind that it all depends on the specific facts of the situation. The statute includes a list of conduct that is absolutely prohibited no matter what. And, they are on the next couple slides. Again, most of them are very, intuitive. Obviously, never accept money in exchange for your vote.
That should go without saying. Don't use to your own economic benefit confidential information that you're acquiring because you're on the board of commissioners, for example. Don't accept any gifts or favors if you know that the gift or favor is meant to influence your decision as a decision as a member of the board of commissioners of CRHA, do not receive any kind of compensation. And that can include a dinner. For example. If someone tries to buy you dinner because they know that you're on the board
of CRHA and they're hoping that if they buy you dinner, then you will vote favorably when they're looking to, have a contract with the housing authority. Again, it's obvious, but you'd don't accept a business opportunity. Don't accept a business opportunity when you know that you're being offered that opportunity to influence you in your role as a commissioner. Gifts from sources that are trying to, raise the appearance of you using your position
in office for some kind of private gain, and also, using your position to retaliate or threaten someone or a company. Again, that is something that's prohibited and is fairly intuitive. In addition, in Virginia specifically, you're not allowed to solicit, accept, or receive a gift with a value of a $100 or more in any given year from anyone.
If you know, or you have a reason to know that the person making the gift to you is trying to be a party to a contract with CRHA. So bottom line, be careful who buys you dinner. Now in addition to the state statutes, you also have a provision in the annual contributions contract, which is the contract the housing authority enters into with HUD in order to receive funding. Authority enters into with HUD in order to receive funding. And in section 19 of that contract, it states that you cannot as a housing
authority, you cannot enter into a contract with any present or former commissioner during their tenure. And importantly, and that's the difference with the statute, it extends to one year after your term. Meaning you can't resign from being a commissioner on the board of CRHA and then a month later enter into a contract with CRHA. You have to wait one year. And that's true for yourself and for your immediate family. So, again, I include this slide because that's the difference with the state statute, which
really only cares about what you do during your term of office. HUD cares about what you do during your term of office and for one year after that. Any questions on this? Okay. So under HUD rules, there is a process to obtain a waiver or an exception from a conflict of interest if it arises, and it's a process that's evaluated on a case by case basis. So, basically, what that means is that if you know that you have a situation where there is a conflict of interest, but the housing authority, as a whole through
its board is of the opinion that the conflict of interest should be waived so that the housing authority can continue with the transaction despite the conflict of interest, then you can submit a request to HUD for HUD to give you a waiver. But that is only given on a case by case basis. And it has to be accompanied by an opinion of counsel stating that if the exception is granted, there will be no violation of state law or local law.
Law. And it's pretty rare to be honest, to receive those waivers. It does occur from time to time, but it's pretty rare. And you have to basically submit your request and, and your case file, with the justification of why you think that waiver should be granted. And it goes to your Huddl field office. Other statutes, just to mention that they exist. The first one is the government data collection and dissemination practices act.
That's important, just for you to be aware because that means the data that the housing authority collects obviously includes personal information. We're mostly talking about resident information like names, addresses, social security numbers, income, sometimes disability status, age, information about the children or the composition of the household. That information is protected. And this statute listed here, governs how the data is to be collected, how long
it is saved, who can access it, who can review it, who can copy it, how long you keep it, and how you have to dispose of it. And this is important because it's one of the reasons why commissioners are not supposed to get copies of tenant files ever because there are strict rules as to how those files are to be handled, basically. Public procurement acts, everyone on this board is aware of how this works.
But the reason I'm listing it here is that CRHA is subject to both state and federal public procurement laws, which govern how you enter into contracts. And you have to abide by both sets of rules, which means that in the event one of the two is stricter than the other, then the stricter rule applies. So it's, a process, obviously, and it's very regulated. But this is a reminder that this applies to any contract that the housing authority
enters into. So now we're gonna talk about, some of the details of your role as a commissioner. And really what's important to remember here, if you remember one thing about this presentation, is that as a commissioner, you have three rules and they're on this slide. And those are the only rules. They're extremely important rules, but this is it. Number one, you set the broad CRHA policy. The board of commissioners is a policy board, not a working board in terms of
handling the day to day operations of the agency. So keep in mind, you set the policy. You do not administer the day to day operations of the agency. Number two, you administer the finances and the budget. You are fiduciaries of public funds, which is why you approve the budget and you should review the budget and the line items in the budget because you are fiduciaries of public funds. So any funds that come to you from HUD or from the city on occasion, you have to make sure that they're being spent properly.
Last but not least, the board hires and evaluates the executive director. Keep in mind, the executive director is the only employee that the board hires, evaluates, and can terminate. No other employee. That's extremely important. You cannot get involved with personnel decisions beyond the executive director's position. Sorry. Any questions on this slide? Okay. The executive director is responsible for everything else.
And what that means is that the executive director, once you, as the board, have selected to hire an executive director, the executive director becomes responsible to implement all of the board approved policies. If there's a violation of a board policy, then that's a personnel issue you need to deal with with the executive director, not with staff, obviously. And if policies need to be amended, then those policies need to come to you as a board to review and revise because the executive director has to implement whichever
board policies have been approved and amended. The executive director also makes all financial decisions after you've approved the budget. So once you approve the budget, the executive director has to implement it as approved. The executive director cannot unilaterally change line items, for example, in the budget that you've approved unless you give him that discretion. The executive director also makes all CRHA personnel decisions. He can inform you of those decisions, but the board itself is not the body
that hires, evaluates, or fires other employees of the agency. The executive director does that. If the executive director has to create new staff positions that require funding, then the executive director would come to you if that funding is not already in the board approved budget. But if it is in the board approved budget, then no additional approval is needed. And then, of course, as you know, the executive director is in charge of all day to day operations, which means implementation of the board approved policies, but also handling
everything for all operations. The executive director has the right to delegate some of those responsibilities to staff that reports to the executive director. But at the end of the day, obviously, the buck stops with the executive director, and he or she is responsible for what happens. The next couple of slides have to do with best practices. And those are listed because they are sort of, real life examples of what will happen in the course of your term as a commissioner and and what you should
do when those situations arise. So the first one is, what should I do as a commissioner if a resident approaches me and has an issue or concern? For example, you receive a call from a resident at Crescent Hall, just as an example, and the resident says, well, I have an issue. I'm not happy with my unit or I have a maintenance issue and it's not being addressed. Please refer the issue to the property manager or to the executive director.
That is the person the resident should contact. And I understand the resident will tell you I'm not getting any responses from staff. Nobody's addressing my issue. In that case, please don't try to resolve it yourself. Present the issue to the executive director and let him or her handle the issue. If he doesn't handle the issue, then you can have that discussion with the executive director, but please do not try to resolve the issue yourself. Similarly, if an employee approaches you and complains about their employment situation or wants a
raise or is not happy with their supervisor, please try not to intervene. You have to refer those issues to the executive director who will then involve HR or other people, perhaps legal counsel as well, depending on the circumstance. But please do not try to take a side or handle a personnel matter. There are policies in place for CRHA employees. There are grievance policies as well because CRHA is a public entity. Please do not try to handle the issue yourself, and also be very mindful of
any comments that you may make to the employee because you may make a comment that will end up being used against the agency down the road potentially in mitigation. And if you do, keep in mind, because you're not at that point within the scope of your role as a commissioner, you're also at risk of personal liability. So the bottom line is don't get involved. You cannot prevent people from reaching out to you. But if they do, don't try to take a side. Don't try to suggest the outcome or the resolution of the concern.
Instead, refer it to the executive director. If you have a question or if you need additional information, it depends on whether it occurs in a board meeting or separately. If you're in a board meeting, feel free to ask the question during the board meeting as appropriate depending on the agenda. If not, outside of board meetings, please direct your questions to the executive director. Try to not bypass, so to speak, the executive director to go to CRHA staff.
That's disruptive of the functioning of the agency if you try to overlook the role of the executive director. And it's also inappropriate for commissioners to give work or homework, so to speak, to CRHA staff. You cannot direct them to take certain actions. You can only direct the executive director to take certain actions. So try to keep that in mind, when you have questions or if you require, additional information or a report about something.
Please direct those questions to the executive director directly as opposed to staff. If there is something that you think would be of interest to the rest of the board and you'd like to share it, the best practice is really to give that information or document or article to the executive director, and then he can include it in the board packet or otherwise make it available to all commissioners. But, basically, try to not email each other about articles or items of interest because,
again, if you do that, you're creating a public record. If there's discussion back and forth on an email, you potentially have violated FOIA rules with regard to public meetings. So try not to do that. It seems sometimes that it's harmless and you're just sharing an article or you saw something in the newspaper and you feel it would be good to share it with everyone on the board because it has a housing component or something like that.
And so you don't mean any harm by it. But the issue is that inadvertently, you may well start a value violation of FOIA because you send the article, then someone will reply to all and see how that would apply to one of your developments, for example. And here we go. You have a discussion of CRHA business, and it's in an email. And it involves multiple commissioners, and therefore, it's an illegal public meeting. Sorry. The next one is about legal questions. Obviously, if you have legal questions, please refer them to the executive director, and then
he can decide to get in touch with legal counsel. You can, contact me directly. You wouldn't it's but it's technically better if you go through the executive director first, unless your concern is about the executive director, in which case you can contact me directly. But, otherwise, if you have any kind of legal issues that come up in, the the context of your role as a commissioner, please go to your executive director, and
then he will take steps to address your question. If you have concerns about a potential conflict of interest, please discuss it with the executive director or with me. Don't bring it up in a public meeting. And I say that because most of the time, it's not really a conflict of interest. And so it's best to first discuss the different components of the situation. As I mentioned earlier, conflicts of interest are really fact specific. So we have to look at the entire issue and determine whether or not there
is a conflict. And then if there is a potential conflict of interest, there are rules as to how we address it. Some of them require a disclosure of the conflict at a board meeting, And some of them involve a disqualification, meaning the commissioner involved in the conflict of interest would not be able to participate in the discussion or the vote with regard to the matter that is the subject of the conflict of interest. But there are some steps we need to follow, basically, if there is a conflict
of interest. So if you think there is a potential situation like that, please discuss it with John, and then he can talk to me and we can work through it. Again, on this slide, a reminder that a communication among three commissioners or more, whether it's in person, by text, by phone, by email, is a public meeting if you're talking about CRHA business.
And as a result, because it's a public meeting, you have to give notice and you have to let the public access that conversation, which means please don't do it, basically, because chances are, obviously, you didn't give notice that you were going to send an email to three commissioners and have a discussion about CRHA. So it's going to be an illegal meeting. Please don't reply all on emails related to CRHA business. As a matter of fact, very often, it's a bad idea to reply all, period.
But if it involves CRHA business and you reply all, again, you're creating potentially a situation where we're gonna have an illegal meeting. Same thing if you find yourself at a wedding or a funeral and you have other commissioners who are in the room, just don't talk about CRHA matters and then everything is fine. Now, one of the examples that comes up, unfortunately, people will say, well, I was at a cocktail party, and there were three commissioners there. And we talked about CRHA business, but we don't think we violated FOIA because the
matter that we talked about would have been the type of matter we talk about in closed session. Therefore, we didn't violate anything. And, hopefully, you've gathered by now that that's not the correct answer. It is a violation of FOIA, and it is an illegal meeting regardless of the topic. And here's why. You can't have a closed session without first having a public meeting during which during which you take a vote to convene a closed meeting. And then you're in closed session.
And then at the end of the closed session, you vote to certify the closed session. So regardless of the topic of discussion, even if it's a legal matter or a personnel matter with regard to which it would be legal to go into closed session, don't do it unless you're first in a public meeting that has been properly advertised and at which the public has the opportunity to make comments, and attend. Hopefully that makes sense. If you have any questions, please ask.
Just generally speaking, avoid texting three commissioners on the same text or email about CRHA matters. And if you find yourselves at a social event, just don't talk about CRHA matters, and then we won't violate FOIA, basically. And that's it. If you have any questions, I'm happy to take them now. But I'm also happy to respond to your questions, at a different date. We don't have to answer all of them right now, and you can, always feel
free to, contact me at any time after, this meeting. I hope this makes sense. Do you have any questions now, or would you like, to explore anything further in the presentation? Or is everything really clear and everybody's satisfied content so far and doesn't have any questions? Yeah. Thank you. I know it's not, the most thrilling topic in the world, but it is very important. It was very clear to me. I'll just follow-up with you over email.
I had a a question about the foyas and when email becomes a public meeting, but, I'll just reach out to you. Sounds good. And, my email address is on the presentation as well as my cell phone. You can always feel free to reach out to me, and, I'll be happy to answer your questions, obviously. Thank you. You're welcome. Anything else that, you had questions about? I know John wanted this training, for today because obviously you've had some, changes in,
commissioners as people get appointed or, their term of the board expires. So we wanted to do this training. I know in the past, perhaps configuration of the board was slightly different, we had other trainings. One of them was on low income housing tax credits because obviously your agency is involved in several projects that involve the use of low income housing tax credits. So that's one potential topic if you would like additional trainings down the road, or
if you'd like simply copies of presentations, feel free to reach out. I don't mind at all, sharing them with you. And, I'm happy to conduct other trainings on other topics that may come to mind. As John knows, you know, I'm I'm happy to do that. If you're curious about additional affordable housing programs, taxes and bonds, for example, and things like that, feel free to go on my firm's website. I have posted on there several, trainings and explanations of financing structures.
So if you'd like to dig a little bit deeper, so to speak, in the types of structure that we use for 6th Street or South 1st Street or, Crescent Halls, things like that. Those projects specifically are not named in the presentations, but you will see how the financing structure work. And, hopefully that will be helpful as you move forward with a lot of these projects. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Delphine. I'm starting to look like none of the commissioners have any further questions.
Okay. If we could, our next agenda item is, far comments, far public comments. Would anybody like to come up and speak? Please come up and, speak. Hello. My name is Terry Tabri. I'm a resident at South First Street. And I just wanted to say, just give an update that CRHA has been making progress and trying to work on finding me a place in regards to my reasonable accommodations. I'm actually gonna go look at one next week, I think on the twentieth.
So I'm very excited about that and I appreciate even though it's taking a while, I appreciate their help. Also, I wanted to speak on the Youth Link program that I've seen, happening today at South 1st Street. I got a flyer for it yesterday that it was going on on Thursdays. And then, my neighbor, a young girl, she actually participated in today. And I just wanna say great job to whoever came up with that idea, because they loved it.
It was three residents, three young residents that participated today at South 1st Street, and that's what I like to see. So thank you. That's all I had to say today. Thank you for your comment. Thank you. Would anybody else like to speak? And it looks like we have nobody online, and we've asked the public. We could close public comment and FAR, I believe, has said no also. Would the board entertain a, motion to adjourn? Motion. Alright. Second. With that, I think all in agreeance? Yes. Yes. Alright. Yes.
Alright. Motion adjourn or meeting adjourned. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Bye. Have a good evening. You too.