Monday, June 30, 2003 | 11:23 a.m.
The new Las Vegas Housing Authority board members hadn't even warmed their seats on the dais when it became apparent that the honeymoon with low-income tenants was over before it could begin.
Longtime housing activist Patricia Brown at the start of Friday's meeting told the new commissioners that the Housing Authority has for many years been plagued by a string of mayoral appointees who don't care about the residents' needs.
New Commissioner Don Davidson, a commercial developer, was especially irked by the comment. He attended the meeting via telephone hookup from Ohio, just hours before attending his mother's funeral.
"I'm highly insulted. I'm here 10 minutes and I'm falsely accused of not caring," Davidson told Brown. "You should treat us with the same respect you want us to treat you."
New Commissioner Robert "Bobby G" Gronauer, the Las Vegas township constable who was appointed to replace former city councilman and Chairman Michael McDonald, told Brown: "You've got to give us a chance."
Gronauer was acting chairman for the meeting that had just a two-page agenda yet lasted more than three hours. Gronauer allowed angry residents to stray at times from the issues at hand to give them a chance to vent their long-simmering frustrations.
The meeting also was attended by new Commissioner Bill Gonzalez, a deputy public defender who was appointed and sworn in less than 24 hours earlier, and Vice Chairwoman Beatrice Turner, a longtime housing activist and the only board member from the previous month's meeting.
New Commissioner Franny Forsman was absent. Gronauer said that as federal public defender, Forsman was out of town representing clients before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
It was not an easy first meeting for the freshman commissioners as they explored a number of tough issues that struck at the soul of public housing and at longstanding tension within the local agency.
The board, each member of which is paid $80 per meeting, started considering a proposal to spend $160,000 to install outdoor grills and repair recreational equipment at senior housing complexes.
When residents of Marble Manor, a West Las Vegas low-income family complex, protested, telling the board their children don't even have playground equipment, Gronauer immediately made a motion for the item to be held until Aug. 8 so the issue could be further scrutinized.
The Housing Authority has long felt the wrath of low-income families, predominantly black, who live in units that seemingly are in constant need of repair, complaining that senior residents, also poor but mostly white, live in newer and seemingly nicer complexes.
At Friday's meeting, Brown, who spoke on every agenda item, took offense to an elderly, bearded white man in the audience who suggested she sit down. She called the man a redneck and told him "we (blacks) were freed a long time ago." The board ignored the diverse pair as that scenario fizzled.
Such divisiveness runs long and deep. In the late 1980s the Department of Housing and Urban Development conducted a full audit that found the Housing Authority had unfairly charged low-income families additional rent on stoves and refrigerators in their units.
HUD ordered the agency to reimburse the tenants $400,000. That lingering controversy led to the resignation of the authority's longtime executive director and resulted in the mayor at that time removing two longtime board members.
The agency now is facing its first full HUD audit since the one that exposed that controversy. Mayor Oscar Goodman put his board in place this month in the wake of a report by HUD that found irregularities with five authority contracts worth $158,000 that were issued between 1999 and 2002.
The board on Friday also avoided dealing with proposed new bylaws, one of which Turner alleges was added by outgoing board members specifically to deny her the chairmanship.
The proposed bylaw change calls for boards to elect chairmen and vice chairmen instead of rotating the post each year among the five members -- a practice at the 56-year-old authority that goes back longer than anyone can remember.
"The whole board should go through the bylaws and see what we can change," Turner said. "The whole board did not participate in putting these bylaws together."
Gronauer told the audience the only reason he was serving as chairman at his first meeting was because he replaced the previous chairman. He also reminded the audience that when Turner was appointed in November she inherited the vice chair post from her predecessor.
Gronauer said the way the authority has always done things is not necessarily the way things will be done in the future. An agenda item to elect a new chairman and vice chairman subsequently was put on hold until Aug. 8.
In other key issues Friday, the board:
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