The Metropolitan Housing Alliance Board of Commissioners voted Wednesday to close the alliance office every other Friday and eliminate six positions in an effort to handle a shortfall of more than $1 million in federal funding.
The commissioners approved the cuts made necessary by federal sequestration - a 5 percent across-the board cut for discretionary spending that included the budget for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The Metropolitan Housing Alliance cuts include layoffs of four maintenance workers and two assistant managers from the alliance’s 50-person staff. The alliance’s office at Markham and Arch streets will now close every other Friday for the rest of the year starting June 21.
“We met with staff to discuss all of the realities of what this means for being able to absorb the furlough and still keep up with work flow,” said Rodney Forte, executive director of the alliance.
“We’ve tried to take the least difficult route. My thought is this will not have a great impact on service to our residents, but my concern is the possible financial and workload burden it places on our staff. It’s going to be two to three days a month that we close the office. We’re going to continue to offer the best possible service on all of the days that we are open.”
The commissioners approved a separate measure to adjust contributions to employee retirement accounts. The agency’s contribution was reduced from 8.5 percent to 5 percent of a worker’s salary, and the employee contribution was reduced from 5 percent to 3 percent of a worker’s salary.
“That measure was taken with the intention of putting more cash from payroll in the hands of our employees,” Commissioner Brad Walker said.
Walker asked whether splitting the furloughs so that half the staff was off every Friday would make more sense. Forte said the fullest savings could be realized only if the energy, utility and operational cost savings of closing the building were part of the approved plan.
The alliance manages more than $37 million in property and provides housing to about 8,000 Little Rock residents through various programs, including through the use of more than 2,000 Section 8 federal low-income housing vouchers.
The cuts are targeted at two different programs: public housing and Section 8 housing.
Under sequestration, the Metropolitan Housing Alliance funding for its public-housing program will decrease more than $354,000. The Section 8 administration funds will be reduced by more than $59,000, and Section 8 voucher funding will be reduced by almost $625,000.
The public-housing program involves high-rise buildings, maintenance staff and mixed-income housing developments that the alliance works with. The Section 8 voucher program provides rental assistance to low-income residents to give them more of a choice about where to live.
The commissioners voted to cut the administrative portion of the voucher program by suspending a consultant’s contract, suspending advertising and marketing activities, and eliminating a 3 percent salary increase. The cuts to the voucher program will be absorbed by using more than $575,000 from reserve accounts, denying transfers of several vouchers and not giving out vouchers for new applicants when residents leave the program.
The public-housing cuts will be absorbed through eliminating a salary increase for employees, suspending all travel and advertising, cutting security at Parris Towers by about $33,000, cutting the six positions worth about $90,000 for the remainder of the year and eliminating a part-time weekend maintenance position. The plan also redirects about $72,000 from the 2013 budget to pay for shortfalls and uses about $60,000 in funds intended for building projects, as well as about $13,500 from reserves to make ends meet.
The furloughs, which are expected to save about $41,858 for the remainder of the year, will also contribute to the savings in the public-housing part of the budget.
HUD also issued a series of furloughs earlier this month to handle sequestration. Every regional and local office will close for a day every few weeks.
The Little Rock office, as well as all the other offices in the department’s Southwest Region, closed on May 24 and will close on June 14, July 5, July 22, Aug. 2, Aug. 16 and Aug. 30. Those closure dates are in effect at the field offices in Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Arkansas.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 05/30/2013