Housing Authority Approves FY 2025 Plan

Above, Housing Authority Commission Chair George Danello listens as Executive Director Lisa Audette summarizes the FY `25 plan.
Franklin Housing Authority commissioners met at Central Park Terrace Monday afternoon. Their first order of business was a hearing for the Annual Plan for FY 2025. Executive Director Lisa Audette provided a brief overview of the plan
for the commissioners and the public and fielded a few questions from the former.

The plan includes a waterline project, fire pump system, a roof replacement project (currently in process), and circulator pumps among other things.

Audette said the Franklin Housing Authority survey results show that the agency is most often performing better than other smaller agencies in Massachusetts, always the same or better than the state average in most categories. She noted that questionnaires were sent out to residents and more than half responded, a rate that is higher than most agencies.

Maxwell Morrongiello, a resident, asked why steps were not taken to set up a LTO (local tenant organization), allowed and encouraged under state law. Audette said she and her staff had encouraged awareness of that and had gotten a number of people interested – until they learned that formally association as an LTO meant rules, recordkeeping and all the other formalities associated with a government body. That dissipated interest quickly, she said.

The commissioners than voted to close the hearing and followed that with a vote to approve the plan as submitted.

Audette presented recent expenses, which commissioners reviewed and approved.

She reported that the waiting list currently consists of 15,391 applicants of whom 410 are local residents.

Commissioner Peter Brunelli, who constituted an insurance subcommittee of one, reported on investigations into cyber insurance. He said the state’s insurance coverage does not include that, which he found surprising. Working with a local agency, Keefe Insurance, Brunelli was able to get a quote for a policy with a $10,000 deductible and annual policy cost of $2,678. He noted that the insurance even covers incidents going back as far as 20 years, even if not now known.

After a brief discussion, the Commissioners approved purchase of this policy.

One of the final items was approval of a change order involving a contractor, the upshot of which was a savings of [CORRECTED} $4375 to the agency. This the commissioners approved unanimously.