The Chicago Housing Authority Board, faced with a Sunday deadline for submitting a tentative 1988 budget to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, approved a spending plan Friday that board members and the CHA`s new managing director said was apparently ill-conceived.
The board voted 4-2 to forward the proposed $146 million budget to HUD, but board members voting in favor of adopting the spending document stressed that they were doing so only to meet the HUD-imposed deadline for submitting it.
A majority of the board members and Jerome Van Gorkom, the CHA`s managing director, agreed that significant adjustments would have to be made in the budget to bring about an acceptable spending plan for next year.
”I don`t see this budget as the last word,” said Van Gorkom, adding that he had little to do with its preparation, since he has been with the authority only a month. ”As far as I`m concerned, this document is just a starting point.”
Van Gorkom urged the board to adopt it, adding that failure to do so could jeopardize the CHA`s chances of obtaining its projected $104.7 million subsidy from HUD on time.
”We have to keep this show running while we are in the process of reforming it,” he said.
”We will find ourselves in a serious predicament if we don`t have an approved budget that we promised to deliver to HUD by Nov. 1,” said Rev. B. Herbert Martin, CHA chairman, in urging the board to adopt the tentative budget despite its deficiencies.
”One of the things that we`ve been criticized by HUD for is our failure to meet federal deadlines,” he said, alluding to a management review of the authority issued by HUD in May that was very critical of CHA operations.
The review led to HUD threats to take over the authority, but this was averted after the CHA and HUD reached a compromise last month that involved the appointment of Van Gorkom, a former businessman and a fiscal hard-liner, as CHA managing director.
Board members complained that the spending plan-which was mostly put together, they said, by Anthony Drake, former CHA interim deputy executive director for finance-was full of questionable proposals for expenditures and personnel shifts, the worst of which would reduce significantly the CHA`s maintenance staff for the coming year.
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The budget calls for trimming the CHA`s already thin maintenance force by 72 people, including 54 fewer craft workers. Meanwhile, it proposes no cuts in administrative personnel, an area in which the HUD study said the housing authority had too many employees.
”Our former interim executive director, Brenda Gaines, had a study made earlier this year that recommended cutting out 72 administrative positions, and here we have a budget that calls for cutting our maintenance staff by 72,” said Board Member Irving Gerick. ”I`m deeply distrubed by that.
”I move that we adopt the budget to meet HUD`s sumbission deadline but ask our new managing director to go over every line item to see if we can add more craftsmen and janitors in the field instead of reducing their numbers.” Other items causing concern among board members include a tentative allotment of $50,000 for medical examinations for new employes, $362,000 for employee travel expenses and reimbursment when employes use their own cars on the job and $59,000 for membership dues in housing and legal organizations.
On the other hand, board members questioned whether the $7 million in proposed expenditures for security at the CHA`s public-housing developments was sufficient in light of the fact that the authority projects spending more than $9 million for security this year, 30 to 40 percent over what it budgeted.
Board Member Odell Hicks Jr. took issue with the $50,000 for new employee medical examinations, pointing out that at $25 per examination this amount
”is enough to cover 2,000 examinations.”
”We only have some 2,000 people employed at the CHA,” he said. ”Does that mean we`re expecting to replace all 2,000 employes next year?”
As a result of such questionable allotment of funds, Hicks said, he could not approve the tentative budget despite the deadline. He was joined by Artensa Randolph.
”I don`t have enough information to vote for it,” Hicks said. ”A budget is a policy statment, and once it`s adopted, I don`t feel that the board should become involved in making adjustments or involved in day-to-day spending activities.”