Flanagan says he'll forgive YMCA loan,
but project still in limbo.
The Y's colorful entrance welcomes all.
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By Michael Holtzman
Herald News Staff Reporter
Posted Jul 24, 2010 @ 09:03 PM
Last update Jul 24, 2010 @ 09:48 PM
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FALL RIVER — While he admits reversing a significant city commitment with long-range ramifications for the historic downtown YMCA, Mayor Will Flanagan last week hinted he could be open to some compromises, while offering the agency’s miffed officials some financial consolation.
“What they’re asking me to do is so against what I believe in, so against my principles,” Flanagan said of the $10 million rehabilitation project made possible by affordable housing funds, a quarter of the 42 single rooms bolstered by Section 8 public assistance.
He said last week for the first time he’d be willing to forgive repayment of a $262,000 Community Development Agency loan that was part of a $1.5 million commitment of HOME funds made two years ago under the prior administration.
“I don’t care if the YMCA pays the money back. If it foregoes the loan to keep the doors open, so be it,” Flanagan said, a departure from comments he made in March and May.
Asked whether he’d also refund a $30,562 building permit fee the YMCA paid the city on Feb. 18, Flanagan said, “Sure.”
Flanagan’s decision to remove $1.5 million in local HOME funds on March 1, two months after taking office, thwarted five years of planning and two years of spending and work at the North Main Street downtown building, YMCA SouthCoast officials told The Herald News last week.
The rest of the complex spending plan has fallen flat as a pancake.
It would have included $5.5 million in state funds and affordable housing tax credits, including stimulus funds, and $3 million in private donations through a capital campaign.
In the housing piece, those with incomes of $20,000 to $30,000 would have occupied most of the rooms with adjacent common areas on the top two floors of the four-story building, with Y programs and services remaining below in the fully renovated building.
“The thwarting of this project is perplexing,” said Margaret Xifaras, vice chairwoman of the SouthCoast Y’s board of directors. “This was a conscious and purposeful decision to pull the funds.”
The climax to this break-up came in late June, when the CDA, at Flanagan’s direction, demanded repayment of $262,000 in pre-construction start-up loans by July 12. That date has come and gone.
The challenge for the 150-year-old agency — with claims as one of the oldest Y’s in the country — to keep operating within an urban circa 1918 building that’s not been updated in 40 years, triggered top officials to seek a meeting Monday with The Herald News’ editorial board to formally plead their case.
The Herald News has produced no fewer than eight stories and two editorial pieces on the YMCA project during the past year. But, Flanagan’s dramatic and politically unpopular reversal has magnified the headlines.
Xifaras and SouthCoast President/CEO Gary Schuyler, with other Y officials, said their board met a week ago over the CDA’s repayment directive and decided to “reserve” any action while lawyers talked.
What that means on the loan, said Xifaras, a lawyer in the firm that includes New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang, is “we’re not saying ‘yes,’ we’re not saying ‘no way.’”
She talked about their project investment of roughly $550,000 and “who’s really pushing for this $250,000 (plus interest)” to be repaid.
She questioned whether the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development providing the CDA’s HOME funds requires the demand as the Flanagan administration has said. “The representation that the devil is making me do it,” she said, “is a very interesting area of inquiry.”
While Xifaras reiterated their lawyer’s claim to the city that pulling the funds to help poor people may be discriminatory, she also said, “We don’t want litigation, that’s for sure.”
Neither does the city, Flanagan said.
Flanagan was interviewed, along with lead staff, the day following the Y meeting at The Herald News, and the mayor modified his stance on repayment.
Further contradicting what CDA Executive Director Michael Dion had told the City Council was a distinct possibility, Flanagan said, “I’m not looking to bring the YMCA to court to foreclose on their property.” Dion and Corporation Counsel Steven Torres sat next to Flanagan throughout last week’s meeting.
While city records show the property valued at $1.8 million, Xifaras said in its condition it’s likely worth about $350,000. Part of the building dates to 1893 with the original coal furnaces.
A spokeswoman for HUD’s regional program director, Robert Paquin, said the federal agency was not involved in seeking the loan repayment.
Each community decides where the funding dollars can best be utilized, said HUD spokeswoman Rhonda Siciliano. Dion said the CDA would not have the $250,000 to loan for other HOME programs for affordable housing and rehabilitation projects if the loan was forgiven. HUD likely would reduce the program by that amount, he said.
The remainder of the $1.5 million has been available for other uses since Flanagan rejected the YMCA project. About half of those funds have been reallocated, Dion said. The HOME funds are not available for CDA block grants that pay for nonprofit programs like the Boys & Girls Club and even street police for income-eligible certain areas.
According to HUD, the broad range of eligible activities for these funds includes housing rehabilitation financial assistance and tenant-based rental contract assistance of limited duration.
To obtain what YMCA officials called “a totally renovated building,” they embarked on a plan Xifaras called “aggressive … out of the box … complex but with precedent.”
She, Schuyler and city YMCA Director Frank Duffy said 16 Y’s in Massachusetts provide housing. They used another 150-year-old YMCA, in Haverhill, as a project model with single-room occupancy and low-income housing programs.
This city’s YMCA housing, which dates to the agency’s origins, has most recently been used for seven families and 43 homeless people, they said.
“The housing piece brings in the $7 million. That’s the way government encourages affordable housing,” Schuyler said of the $10 million project.
Flanagan said he found contrasting research. YMCAs from Worcester to Wareham had capital fundraising campaigns without a housing component, he said. One YMCA program they turned up in Boston on Huntington Avenue, however, closely mirrored the single-room occupancy project planned in Fall River.
Since reversing the decision on the $1.5 million committed in 2008 by former Mayor Robert Correia, Flanagan has voiced support for needed upgrades to its recreational facilities. But he won’t curtail his mission to “decrease low-income housing” stock downtown, he said.
Pushed for specific objections, Flanagan said the 11 units of Section 8
low-income housing — granted to tenants with incomes in the $15,000 range — “is a deal killer for me.”
Both the YMCA and Flanagan said there have been no negotiations on the feasibility of a compromise to remove the 11 rooms and pursue funding options.
“I put the ball back in their court,” Flanagan said.
On whether he’s OK with the other 31 units of housing for people making up to $30,000, Flanagan said, “I’d have to give that some thought.” Several times he lumped all 42 units into “low-income housing.”
Flanagan compared his action to his rejection of the Durfee Tech affordable housing project initiated by Correia. He said he met “very little criticism” when he pulled that Redevelopment Authority contract with Peabody Properties.
With the YMCA’s renovation and housing project ready to start this fall, Flanagan said he’s met “some criticism” and the decision was more difficult because of the agency’s valued mission.
He’s received many calls and letters, and said “the political establishment” firmly backs the YMCA project.
He believes that in a poll of citizens, however, “the majority would side with me.”
“My mission is to transform the downtown, transform the waterfront,” Flanagan said. “I cannot support them doing it.”
He maintained Correia’s role in the initial decision did not influence his.
On a Friday almost five months ago when YMCA SouthCoast officials learned its CDA funding would likely be withdrawn and the project would likely collapse, they set up a meeting with Flanagan the following Monday, they said.
The March 1 meeting didn’t go well.
A week later, Xifaras wrote to Flanagan. “You are certainly entitled to assert your view in what you reportedly see as your mandate relative to future proposals for affordable housing. This project, however, is already on the books and ready to go forward,” she wrote.
She concluded that stopping the project “represents a step back to good-faith efforts to work with local and state officials to enhance downtown Fall River.”
Xifaras, Schuyler and Duffy said they’re back to square one on how to maintain good programs with a bad building.
Flanagan was asked last week what message he may be sending to nonprofit agencies that there’s a new mayor in town, elected every two years, and what they can count on in the long run if they stick their necks out.
“It’s a tough question,” Flanagan said. “I don’t really have a solid answer.”
He’d decide each case individually, he said.
Flanagan said he approaches decisions like a chess match, thinking “five, seven moves ahead … “Everything I do is calculated,” he said.
He recalled noticing the Section 8 piece when Dion gave him the Y funding documents in February. “The easiest thing for me to do was to sign them and commit the funds, and it would have been done. But that was against my values and principles and vision for the downtown.”
E-mail Michael Holtzman at mholtzman@heraldnews.com.
Mayor Tumbleweed Flanagan spoke at great length during his campaign about bringing back transparency to government in Fall River. He has done just that. But it's not the kind of transparency you and I thought he meant!
You see, ol' Tumbleweed is entirely transparent, and grows more with each unsettling decision he makes. He has shown an absolute casual ruthlessness when it comes to his willingness to destroy long standing agreements and institutions to win votes here or there. Any votes from anyone, he doesn't care who they are or how easily they are manipulated. His administration is one based solely on winning the next election. That's really all this putz is about. He is completely transparent and it's a sorry thing to see. It's all the more sad because he claimed to be the complete opposite when he was running for the office a year ago at this time.
My oh my, how the slimy worm does turn!
Now comes the next victim, the "Y". Talk about pushing around an old woman like a crack addled gang member. This venerable institution has served Fall River for generations, and has never wavered from it's original purpose. It has helped more people improve their lives than this glad handing, stuttering fool of a Mayor could in ten terms in office. Keeping people happy, healthy and leading more productive lives is what the Y is all about. But not here in Fall River. Not any more, at least, if Tumbleweed Flanagan gets his scurvy way.
You see, the Y, as part of it's mission, has a long standing policy of providing housing opportunities to those who need a helping hand in the short term. What is so wrong about obtaining financing to fix the place up and helping a unique population have a safe place to stay, to improve and rebuild themselves and their lives until they can go out on their own?
I guess we can now see the problem with voting for someone so young and inexperienced in life is that he cannot allow himself to see that every person eventually has feet of clay at one time or another in their lives . Not every man or woman walks a straight line to success and happiness. Human being err, they make terrible mistakes in judgement at times. Neither the world nor individuals treat themselves well at every turn. Everyone must be allowed to obtain some sense of personal redemption when such circumstances arise. It's what makes us closer to our own God, to our true selves. Flanagan lacks the essential ability to recognize this fact of life because he has lived so precious little of it.
The act of dismantling the previous mayor's plan and agreement with the Y was, and is, both personally and politically motivated. Personally, Tumbleweed hates Correia with a passion that many shared, but which still burns unabated within him. It is his political plans and motivations where the real Flanagan inner demons show themselves and lead Tumbleweed to become the calm assassin of other's needs and dreams.
As Mayor, Will Flanagan has morphed into a complete political sociopath. His motivation against the Y , I believe, may have other tangential reasons behind it, but the primary factor is votes, and making a policy decision that will materially impact this community so he will be more popular with the more feral contingent of Fall River's voters, in other words, pick up votes to oppose more "low-income " housing.
He claims it is important to him and that the decision to cancel the loan was due to his "principles".
HA! This mutt has no principles! He is willing to do whatever LOOKS good to the largest number of people , or the most solid block of voters, as long as he can count the votes in his column when all is said and done. You don't have to be a public policy wiz, you just need to be a used car salesman. And that's all this guy Flanagan is, a used car salesman willing to say anything or do anything to make the sale. We are the collective buyers.
Just like every time you've ever purchased a used car from some slimy, sport coat wearing, cigar chompin' used car salesman, you end up getting screwed. The really awful thing is, the whole time you're negotiating, you can see right through what he's trying to do, and you get that feeling in the pit of your guts that something is wrong, but you buy the car anyway. That's what we have going on right now ladies and gentlemen. This guy with the silly grin and maddeningly halting syntax is now so transparent he's becoming the invisible man.
Nothing is what you see, because there is nothing to his policies or his principles. He doesn't have the first clue of how to administer Fall River on a day to day basis, let alone put together the kinds of long term and solid financial and administrative systems to make it possible and save the City from disaster. His terrible appointments show this to be true. He's merely a pretender, a puppet on the string of FROED and members of the Chamber of Commerce who have the money and willpower to manipulate this City through Tumbleweed's administration. It's all about riding Will Flanagan like the DONKEY he is to higher office, so they can obtain more influence, power and $$$$$$$.
Always follow the money....always follow the money!
Flanagan SAYS he's against more low-income housing near the Central Business District (CBD). Well, if you've looked lately the Y is no where near the CBD. Yes, he stopped one project in that area right after taking office, but again, it was a Correia project and not in compliance with the City's original objective of developing artist's loft space to expand the Arts District. Yet "
Mr. Anti low-income housing" allows the development of the Wampanoag Mill property which will be rife with the kind of low-income housing he claims to detest. Maybe it's because the developer of THAT property is powerfully connected at the State House and Washington and has a reputation for heavy political contributions and, in some cases, alleged under the table payoffs. Those stories aren't mine, they exist in the press.
NO, the action against the Y was primarily to garner votes in a City where many residents like to blame their City's deteriorating public service and fiscal condition on "THEM", low-income housing residents, although "THEY" account for 70% of every dollar of revenue being delivered to the City , thereby keeping Fall River afloat. How utterly ironic. And how utterly easily manipulated to advantage by the right used car salesman. Ironic and so transparent.
Even Flanagan's recent attempt to throw water of the firestorm he's created by stating he'll excuse the loan already made is because of the popular push back by Fall Riverites upset at his cruelty and stupidity, and probable economic development skulduggery, in cancelling the City's long standing commitment to this project. I could not help but think to myself "HMMMM, I wonder which friend of a friend of a FROED board member or Chamber of Commerce member wants that property to develop themselves at a vastly reduced cost." I don't think I'm nearly alone in thinking that way either, and I think Flanagan knows that.
Sorry, but I don't believe in the power of invisible men. I wish to be lead by people of substance, men and women who have walked the walk throughout lives of hard experience and accomplishment, not kids who only talk the talk of a used car salesman. They always leave me with a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.
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