Hoyt cuts funding for agency in flap
A West Side housing services agency is in hot water following a flap over a board member’s failure to win re-election.
Assemblyman Sam Hoyt, who has arranged for West Side Neighborhood Housing Services to receive $20,000 over several years, said he no longer will provide legislative funding.
The agency, Hoyt said, is becoming political.
“I’ve provided funding to them for years . . . directly from my discretion money,” Hoyt said. “But I will stop providing that money because I’m deeply concerned about the apparent politicization. I’m not going to allow state taxpayers’ money to go to a not-for-profit organization that has turned into a political organization.”
Hoyt’s comments followed last Thursday’s annual meeting in the agency’s Connecticut Street headquarters at which Harvey Garret, a neighborhood activist, failed to win re-election to the board.
Some are crying foul.
“The membership was stacked to remove Garret from the board,” Hoyt said. “He was removed from the board through a process that was a deeply political one.”
“People were voted off [the board] by people who don’t live in the neighborhood and are from [Mayor Byron W. Brown’s] office. . . . That doesn’t sit well,” said Michael Clarke, program director at the Buffalo office of the Local Initiative Support Corp.
About two months ago, about 30 new members signed up on the last date to be eligible to vote for officers at the annual meeting. Many work for the city, and others don’t even live on the West Side, Hoyt and Garret said.
In addition, an unusually large number of absentee ballots were cast this year — 37 instead of the normal one or two, said Garret, who has been on the board for five years.
Garret voiced suspicions about the absentee ballots and the number of new members employed by the city.
“I’m not a conspiracy theorist. No one’s going to know what happened until the actual absentee ballots are released,” he said.
But Linda Chiarenza, the agency’s executive director, called the dispute a case of “sour grapes” on Garrett’s part.
“He thinks the absentee ballots killed him, but even if you threw out the absentee ballots, he still would have lost,” she said, adding that Garret got only four votes from the 17 members eligible to vote at the meeting.
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