Saratoga Springs Housing Authority put under microscope at City Council, resident meetings

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Orkin representatives Kenneth Watkins and David Parkhurst talk with the City Council and members of the Saratoga Springs Housing Authority Tuesday evening. (ERIC JENKS, photos@saratogian.com)

Commissioner John Franck talks with Mayor Scott Johnson during the City Council's legislative hearing on Saratoga Springs Housing Authority Tuesday evening. (ERIC JENKS, photos@saratogian.com)

Mayor Scott Johnson visits with Stonequist Apartments residents at the public housing building to discuss resident’s concerns Tuesday afternoon. He is shaking hands with Ollie Westcott, who has lived in the building for eight years. (ED BURKE, eburke@saratogian.com)

Stonequist resident David Wright claims has not slept at his apartment in two months although he stops to check email regularly. Behind him is a jar containing bed bugs he said he has collected from his apartment. (ED BURKE, eburke@saratogian.com)

Stonequist Apartments resident Emily Cammisa holds up bed bugs she collected in her apartment in September, as well as emailed reponses from Authority Director Ed Spychalski during a public hearing Tuesday afternoon. (ED BURKE, eburke@saratogian.com)

By LUCIAN McCARTY
lmccarty@saratogian.com

Saratoga Springs Accounts Commissioner John Franck talks Tuesday evening during the City Council’s legislative hearing on the Housing Authority. (ERIC JENKS, photos@saratogian.com)

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Two special meetings were held Tuesday regarding bed bugs and other issues at Saratoga Springs Housing Authority.

One meeting, held at Stonequist Apartments, was designed for residents to voice their concerns about bed bugs in public housing to the mayor.

The other was a public workshop held in City Hall for the City Council to get answers from the Housing Authority board about allegations of nepotism, financial irregularities and the mishandling of bed bug complaints.

Both meetings drew more than 50 people each.

The Housing Authority has been scrutinized over the past two months after residents approached the City Council about a lack of response to a bed bug infestation they said was gripping Stonequist.

Housing Authority representatives, including Director Ed Spychalski and Board of Directors Chair Dennis Brunelle, said reports of “infestation” were overblown and isolated cases were being handled.

A number of residents say their rooms were infested with bed bugs even while Brunelle, Spychalski and other officials denied the expanse of the infestation.

In addition, the director and board have been criticized for Spychalski’s $152,000 salary and approving perks, like Spychalski’s use of a public vehicle and spending for non-required travel. The director has also been criticized for the hiring of authority employee relatives, including his own children, as full-time employees.

On Monday, Mayor Scott Johnson called on the state comptroller to audit Saratoga Springs Housing Authority for “potential financial irregularities and spending practices such as salary, compensation, travel and business expenses and claims of nepotism in hiring.”

Spychalski was not in attendance at either meeting. Johnson said his absence allowed residents to feel they could voice their opinions, even if they were critical of Spychalski. Continued...

Mayor meets with residents

Johnson heard from about 30 Saratoga Springs Housing Authority residents about their issues with bed bugs, or lack thereof, at a public meeting he arranged at the Stonequist Apartments public housing building Tuesday afternoon.

“I’m here to hear the truth from you,” Johnson said to residents, some of whom poured out their experiences with infestations while others said the issue has been overblown.

That was Michelle Deyette’s comment when she introduced Johnson.

Deyette, who is running for a resident’s seat on the Housing Authority Board of Directors, said she believes the voices of the residents have gone unheard in the discussion over bed bugs.

“Stonequist is not and has never been infested with bed bugs,” she said, reading from the letter she wrote to Johnson inviting him to the building to hear residents’ concerns.

Immediately, several people in the back of the room shouted, “Wrong! You are wrong!”

The room seemed to be evenly divided between those who thought the issue was being addressed adequately and those who thought not enough was being done.

The director was accused both Tuesday and before of ignoring the issue and sweeping it under the carpet.

Holding up a jar of dead bed bugs he collected in his Stonequist apartment over the last two months, David Wright railed against what he sees as the mishandling of the complex’s infestation. Continued...

“I haven’t been in my apartment in two months,” Wright said. “I don’t stay here … I haven’t been bit in two months. They’re biting someone else.”

Wright said he believes the issue was mishandled by Stonequist’s management.

“Ed is lying to us and he needs to go,” he said, drawing applause. “I don’t want to live here anymore. Something needs to be done.”

Wright was not the only one to show up to the meeting toting dead insects. Emily Camissa, a Stonequist resident, said she found bed bugs in her apartment in the last week.

“Ed is not dealing with it,” she said. “Now I have to deal with bed bugs on top of poverty and having nothing.”

On the other hand, Bob Ebinger drew applause when he said Spychalski has been “vilified” by the press.

“This guy has a lot of good things going, too,” he said.

“I have lived here 17 years and I think people forget the good things Ed does,” another woman said.

Others, too, said Spychalski was ushered into the directorship of Stonequist by those, including residents, who were impressed with the job he did as facilities manager.

“We wanted Ed in that chair,” said one resident. “We fought long and hard to get him in that seat. You have no idea what it was like here before he got in that seat. This place was a dump.” Continued...

One message that came through from several residents was, overblown or not, the public discussion over bed bugs at Stonequist has attached a negative stigma to all its residents.

“I want my privacy,” one resident said.

After hearing from residents for about an hour and a half, Johnson said, “This investigation is still ongoing.”

Council questions Authority board

The City Council grilled four members of the Saratoga Springs Housing Authority Board of Directors Tuesday night at a well-attended workshop meant to address allegations of nepotism, financial mismanagement and a failure to adequately address the problem of bed bugs in Stonequist Apartments.

After presenting videos of the City Council meeting where a Stonequist resident first brought the issue of bed bugs to the council’s attention, Accounts Commissioner John Franck also had Orkin representatives, who inspected the building, present their solution.

Spychalski previously told the council he hired an entomologist — an expert on insects — to come up with a solution for the bed bug outbreak in Stonequist because he thought exterminators lacked the adequate knowledge to do so.

He and his staff provided steamers to residents to clean their furniture and apartments, and the Housing Authority staff started training to administer pesticides in the building.

David Parkhurst and Kenny Watkins, both regional Orkin representatives, said while entomologists know more about insects, Orkin has more knowledge on how to deal with them.

They also said they have specific programs to deal with infestations of buildings the size of Stonequist.

“This program is designed by our entomologists. It is the corporate program,” Watkins said. “This isn’t something Dave and I just put together.”

Parkhurst said the use of steamers to treat bed bugs typically does not work. “It just drives them somewhere else,” he said.

They estimated the cost of treating the entire building for one year would be about $25,000.

Board Chair Dennis Brunelle answered a number of questions from the board while being teleconferenced into the meeting from Florida.

He said while cost was not prohibitive to treating bed bugs, “we just wanted to treat them in the most economical way.”

“Everyone was figuring out the best options to treat them,” he said.

Brunelle said while the plan was to develop the staff to be able to treat the problem, it has become too burdensome on the Housing Authority’s resources and they plan on consulting with exterminators.

Franck, though, pointed out that the Housing Authority has millions of dollars in its “slush fund” and recently hired a public relations firm for an undisclosed amount of money to deal with the public fallout from the surrounding issues, but had not spent the money to address the bed bugs.

“It makes absolutely no sense to me why you haven’t hired an outside firm to clean this mess up,” he said.

Franck also addressed the issue of Spychalski hiring his own relatives and others to the authority.

Brunelle said there was justification for all of Spychalski’s hiring decisions.

The board chairman also reiterated his defense of Spychalski’s $152,000 salary in 2012, stating, “He has done a great job as executive director.” He added that Spychalski has improved the Housing Authority’s national rating since he took his position and is doing the work of three positions.

“He’s not working 120 hours a week,” Franck said.

“He’s working a lot more than 40,” Brunelle retorted.

“So is everyone in this room,” Franck said.

Franck questioned the approximately $56,000 spent on trips to conferences Brunelle and Spychalski have taken between 2010 and 2011 to Las Vegas, Phoenix, Florida and Washington, D.C.

Brunelle vehemently defended the conferences as much of the reason Spychalski has been able to improve the authority.

“We’re not the one who located them in the most desirable places,” Brunelle said. “We go where the conferences are held because we really want to learn something.”

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Saratoga Springs Housing Authority put under microscope at City Council, resident meetings