Stark Metropolitan Housing Authority halts director search again

Tim Botos, The Repository
·3 min read

CANTON ‒ After a pair of false starts, it appears the Stark Metropolitan Housing Authority board of commissioners will ask a professional to help find the agency's next executive director.

SMHA has been without a permanent leader since Herman Hill left at the end of April to head Akron's housing authority. Stark Housing Authority Finance Director Jeff Patterson has doubled as interim executive director since that time.

Hill to resign:Lands Akron post

Starting over:SMHA board begins search again

Stark board members Dan McMasters and Jeff McDaniels have headed the search for Hill's replacement. However, a first effort had stalled by mid-June as McMasters said they could not identify an ideal candidate among 40 initial applicants.

So, they started over.

Now, two months later, they got the same result.

"As a board, we can't agree on somebody," McMasters said recently.

The board, McMasters said, will hire an executive search firm to do the legwork this time around. First, the agency will have to establish written parameters for its solicitation of a firm, which likely would require public bids or proposals.

"This whole process could take a while," he said.

McMasters noted Akron took more than a year before that agency finally hired Hill.

It's unclear at this point how much the services of a search firm will cost. Akron actually solicited help from two sources, Human Capital Initiatives of Washington, D.C., and HC Smith Limited of Warrensville Heights.

SMHA
SMHA

What is the Stark Metropolitan Housing Authority?

The Stark Housing Authority has about 130 employees and an annual budget of $34 million, the bulk of it subsidies from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Its duties include overseeing 2,435 family, high rise, and scattered site public housing units, and running the Housing Choice Voucher program for 1,779 others, predominantly through the program known as Section 8..

When Hill resigned, his salary was $154,295 a year. Online postings for the vacant position have included a range with a ceiling of $129,000 for his replacement.

In SMHA's second search go-around, McDaniels and McMasters had narrowed the field to three finalists. Ironically, one of them was Joshua Crites, a deputy housing authority director in Oregon, who lost out to Hill for the job in Akron.

McMasters said he and McDaniels probably logged about 150 hours apiece in the past few months during the five-member volunteer SMHA board's director search.

"At the end of the day ... maybe we were being too picky," he said. "Maybe there is no perfect candidate. In hindsight, it's probably best left to the professionals."

The Board held its regular monthly meeting Thursday, but the director search was not discussed.

However, Board member Roger Mann, who attends the meetings via phone, did ask Patterson to provide him a list of agency expenses related to the search so far, including airfare for candidates, as well as dining bills.

Reach Tim at 330-580-8333 or tim.botos@cantonrep.com.On Twitter: @tbotosREP

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Stark Housing Authority looks for help to land new executive director