Going down to the wire, Mayor Bloomberg waited until the new board of the city Housing Authority was hours shy of its first meeting before he announced its members.
The new, seven-member board, which will have increased tenant representation, was scheduled to meet Wednesday morning to resume its mission of running the nation’s biggest public housing authority.
Bloomberg had vowed to seat a new board in time for the meeting, but refused for months to discuss his efforts to make the appointments, and did not release a list of the appointees until late Tuesday.
The old board was disbanded in July under reform legislation passed in response to a Daily News series about NYCHA mismanagement. The new board includes NYCHA Chairman John Rhea and six volunteers — a major change from the old four-member board, which included two full-time members who were paid $187,000 a year and had their own chauffeurs.
The new members are set to serve terms of one, two or three years, though it appears Bloomberg’s successor at City Hall can replace his appointments at will come January.
The new, driverless board includes one of the full-timers from the previous body, Emily Youssouf, who will now perform the same task for a modest monthly stipend. Bloomberg also kept on Victor Gonzalez, the only tenant rep on the old board. He’ll continue getting a modest stipend.
The mayor added two more tenant reps: Beatrice Byrd, former tenant president of the Red Hook West Houses in Brooklyn, and Willie Mae Lewis, tenant president of the St. Nicholas Houses in Harlem.
New faces include Kyle Kimball, a former vice president at Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan who is now the $179,000-a-year president of the city Economic Development Corp. And the mayor appointed Dihann Billings-Burford, whom he appointed in 2009 to lead his innovative NYC Service effort to encourage volunteerism in the city. She makes $148,000 a year for her work at NYC Service.
The other full-timer from the old board, Margarita Lopez, didn’t make the cut — but was not left out in the cold. NYCHA hired her back in August as vice president for community programs and development. Her salary remains what it once was $187,000.
