Meadville Housing Authority approves waiver request, other moves

Yahoo

06-05-2025

In a special meeting last week, Meadville Housing Authority addressed several sources of concern that have repeatedly been the focus of extended board discussion over the past six months.
Board members voted Thursday to request a conflict of interest waiver for its chair, to establish a social media presence and to approve temporary positions for two former employees as the authority works to fill several jobs on a long-term basis.
'I'm glad we're moving forward with this stuff,' authority Chair Joe Tompkins said in a phone interview Monday.
The votes came at a specially called meeting that was announced in a legal ad in last Monday's edition of The Meadville Tribune.
Board members voted 2-1 to approve a waiver request from U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which funds the authority, for a conflict of interest involving Tompkins. Board members Cena Kneubehl and Jane Osborne voted in favor of the request while Marcia Yohe opposed it. Tompkins abstained from the vote and Richard Zinn did not attend the meeting.
A similar waiver request was defeated last month when Zinn joined Yohe in opposing the move, resulting in a tie vote.
The conflict of interest arose because Tompkins' wife, Julie Wilson, is executive director of the local housing nonprofit Common Roots, an agency that contracts with the Housing Authority for housing choice vouchers in the program commonly referred to as Section 8 housing.
Board members also approved a social media policy that directs the authority's executive director to have YouTube and Facebook pages created for the authority and to have meetings recorded and posted to the pages. Meeting agendas and minutes will also be posted to the Facebook page.
Like the conflict of interest, the notion of creating a social media presence for the authority has also consistently been raised in board meetings since November.
'Can we start recording board meetings and putting them on the Housing Authority website?' Kneubehl first asked during the Nov. 13 meeting. 'That way people who can't come and be here to hear what's going on can watch it later and go, 'Oh, OK, that's what's going on.' Because then if they have concerns about what happened in the board meeting they can come to the next meeting.'
Tompkins' irony was evident Monday as he joked about the long road from concept to policy approval.
'It only took five months,' he said with a laugh.
A similar proposal was defeated last month when the board split with Tompkins and Kneubehl in favor and Yohe and Zinn opposed after Osborne had left approximately two hours into a meeting that lasted nearly three hours.
The board also voted to hire the authority's former Section 8 coordinator and an administrative assistant on a per diem basis. Neither position has been filled since the former staff members left their positions last year.
The board also voted to allow interim Executive Director Jon Ketcham to hire a new Section 8 coordinator who will be trained for the position by the former coordinator now working on a per diem basis.
Movement was also evident on several other fronts. The board approved minutes from its Jan. 29 and March 12 meetings with changes proposed by Tompkins.
Kneubehl and Osoborne will form a committee to revise the board's bylaws, a topic that Kneubehl has raised several times in recent months, only to have Executive Director Vanessa Rockovich counter that the board by-laws were not a high-priority concern. The board voted to place Rockovich on temporary paid leave last month. Citing the advice of their attorney, board members declined to explain the motivation behind their move.
Board members will meet May 14 in the Holland Towers community room, 1120 Market St., for their next regular meeting.