LITTLE ROCK — An attorney for the Metropolitan Housing Alliance confirmed Tuesday that a contract for the agency’s new executive director has been signed.
The Metropolitan Housing Alliance Board approved its portion of the contract, which has a starting date of Saturday, at a special meeting Tuesday morning after a brief executive session in Little Rock. The board had voted last week to offer the position to and begin negotiating details with finalist Rodney Forte.
Forte, 48, who works for a private investment company in Texas, is an Arkansas native and former Little Rock city employee.
“I’m just excited and humbled for the opportunity to serve back in Arkansas,” he said. “I’ve got a lot to learn about what’s going on, but I’m sure my honeymoon will be short. And again, I’m really excited about the opportunity.”
The contract approved and signed Tuesday includes a base salary of $133,000 — about $11,000 more than the previous director earned annually. The two-year contract ends Nov. 30, 2014, and includes benefits.
The contract also includes up to $10,000 in moving-expense reimbursements and the payment of up to 30 days or $3,000 for temporary housing and travel reimbursement to “expedite the relocation process.”
The executive-director position was left open when the alliance board fired Shelly Ehenger in early August after a three-month investigation into a personnel complaint of nepotism and unfair hiring practices.
The agency manages more than $37 million in property assets and provides housing to about 8,000 Little Rock residents through various programs, including 2,000 federal Section 8 vouchers for low-income tenants.
The board tried to move quickly to find a replacement because of several looming deadlines for federal grants, including the Choice Neighborhood Planning grant, awarded to the agency by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The grant requires the agency to name a lead developer to qualify for implementation funding of up to $30 million. The implementation grant would enable the agency to address education, health, employment, transportation, housing and infrastructure needs in a targeted area of the city.
The board had offered the executive-director position Nov. 7 to another finalist, Dwayne Alexander, deputy executive director for the Southern Nevada Regional Housing Authority.
Alexander, who had expressed interest in the job, e-mailed a consultant for the housing agency to say he had reconsidered because of several phone calls from the media to his current employer that had made things difficult for him.
Forte said last week that he grew up in Pine Bluff, where a lot of his family still lives and where he was a firefighter for several years. He is a former Razorback football team member, who played in the 1980s.
He also worked for a year as Little Rock’s economic development administrator for minority-group businesses before moving on to work at several public-housing agencies, including those in Richmond, Va., Dallas and Fort Worth. He is currently working for T.R. Forte Investments in North Richland Hills, Texas, a family venture focusing on development and acquisitions, according to his resume.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 11/28/2012