Apr 3, 2019 By Mike Tony mtony@heraldstandard.Com 4 min read

NORTH UNION TWP. – At its regular monthly meeting, the Fayette County Housing Authority received and accepted a favorable audit report and also held an executive session to consider its executive director’s contract, which was extended earlier this year without several board members having seen it.

The executive session prompted by a Perry Township resident who attended the meeting distributing paperwork that she obtained through a Right-to-Know request showing that authority Executive Director Mark Yauger’s current annual salary is $138,000. That marked a 15% increase from his previous salary of $119,381 per the terms of a five-year employment agreement effective Jan. 1, 2019 signed by Yauger and board Chairman Harry Fike.

The contract stipulations include a monthly car allowance of $650 for Yauger to be adjusted annually at the board’s discretion, and six weeks of vacation annually.

In December 2017, the board in a 4-0 vote approved retaining Yauger for another five-year period at the end of his first employment agreement.

Board member Beverly Beal said in December 2017 that the board wanted to look at the current contract as well as the new proposed contract prior to approving it, according to the minutes from that month’s meeting.

But Beal and fellow board member Joyce Nuccetelli said they did not see the new contract, which Perry Township resident Pam Newmeyer questioned the legality of since it did not come before the board for a vote.

Yauger said he negotiated the terms of the contract with Fike at the board’s direction, noting after the meeting that the matter was a misunderstanding that he wanted to see resolved to eliminate any questions about the agreement.

The board took no action on the matter following the executive session and did not discuss it further during the meeting.

Board members Ernest DeBlasio and Kerri Baker were absent from the meeting, and Newmeyer noted Baker’s chronic absences from board meetings. Baker was sworn in as the board’s tenant representative in 2016, and the board expressed concern about her infrequent meeting attendance last year.

Yauger said there were no attendance requirements for board members, and Solicitor Jeremy Davis said the county commissioners oversee the authority’s board appointments.

In other business, Clayton E. Gregg IV, a certified public accountant with McClure & Wolf, guided board members through an audit of the housing authority for the year ending June 30, 2018, complimenting the authority’s leadership for the organization’s financial stability despite continued cuts in funding and support from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Gregg applauded the authority’s use of low-income housing tax credits in covering nearly the entire cost of a roughly $13 million total reconstruction of White Swan Apartments in Uniontown, and for establishing legally separate limited liability companies for which the board is financially accountable such as FAMI Property Maintenance (established by the authority in April 2015 to foster resident employment) and FAMI Development (established by the authority in January 2016 to foster low-income housing).

“You have done what was necessary at this authority to ensure that even if the government keeps dropping this funding, you have the ability to continue providing these services to the folks in this community that need it,” Gregg said. “And that’s really what they were shooting for, why they’re asking you to kind of think outside the box a little bit, to create these LLCs, to have FAMI (Fayette Asset & Management, Inc.) as an instrumentality to allow you to go get private sector dollars to leverage against the little bit that the government’s giving you.”

FAMI is a 501(c)(3) corporation established by the authority in 2009 to acquire, develop and manage low-income housing properties by entering into mixed financing arrangements with other local organizations.

The authority’s assets totaled $32,719,162, and its liabilities totaled $5,416,074, per the audit report.

“As far as financially speaking and the overall condition, I would say it was a very positive year for the housing authority,” Gregg said.