HURA Hold Elections, Changes to Come

HUNTINGTON- Four officers have been elected for the Huntington Urban Renewal Authority board, including a new president but that is not the only change to come.


Months after elections were initially scheduled to be held, HURA finally had enough members in attendance to hold the election at Monday’s meeting at Huntington City Hall at 1:30 p.m.


“It’s been a long time to get to this point,” Nate Randolph, board member and architect for Edward Tucker's Architects Inc., said about the elections held June 15.


Randolph was elected president of HURA, replacing Dr. Phil W. Carter Jr. Carter, a professor in the department of social work at Marshall University, appeared to be caught off guard by the decision and politely declined nominations for every other office on the board.


After each office had been voted on and approved, Carter quietly stepped down to allow Randolph to finish the meeting. As Carter took his seat with the rest of the members, Diane Mufson, a psychologist with roughly two to three years on the board, said Carter had done “a masterful job (as president).”


The other chosen officers were Brandi Jacobs-Jones for vice president, Mufson for secretary and Herb Stanley for treasurer.


Once the talk about offices was over, the board began its discussion about the Federal Reserve Account, local savings account and land bank authority, which took up the rest of the meeting that ran about an hour.


The board received a statement from a bank it previously had an account with, stating that the account had $500,000 in it. The board members knew they had removed all the money but Jacobs-Jones contacted the Federal Reserve to clarify the validity of the statement. As the members suspected, they did not really have $500,000 in an account. The statement was explaining that the board was insured for that much at the bank.


Mufson later mentioned to the other board members that Chase Bank, where HURA currently banks, charges a fee for little or no activity in their account and requested they create an account with a local bank. After discussion on how to go about choosing a bank, the members agreed that they would change banks. Jacobs-Jones said she would work with the purchasing department to create a Request for Proposal for local banks to bid on.


The biggest discussion of the meeting involved the Land Bank Authority. HURA and the Huntington Municipal Development Authority are both being considered for the Land Bank. Jacobs-Jones removed herself from the majority of the discussion, because of a potential conflict of interest since she is also involved with HMDA.


The Land Bank Authority takes control of houses that are considered abandoned by owners that do not pay their tax liens within 18 months. This also allows homeowners who have the intention of paying the lien, to not lose their house, Randolph said.


The idea of having the Land Bank Authority, a five-year program, is that it would allow the opportunity to create more projects similar to that on Artisan Avenue, where several houses have been torn down and new ones rebuilt to make the area look more presentable, Randolph said. He also said HURA would be the better candidate for the Land Bank because it has been more successful than HMDA.


“HURA has been residentially driven,” Randolph said. “HMDA has traditionally ventured more into the real estate agency.” He also referred to the Kinetic Park project that the HMDA has not completed.


The other members also agreed with Randolph, that HURA would do a better job. “My belief is that HURA is the entity to take leadership,” Carter said.


If HURA is chosen for the Land Bank, the board will have to hire staff or contract people to help keep up with the properties included in the authority, Jacobs-Jones said. Although the question about how much came up, it was unknown at the time. Stanley said that the Land Bank would be a challenge but he thinks it would be interesting to see how it develops.


“It’s going to be a monitoring process the first couple years,” Randolph said. There are less than 200 houses in the area that are designated as dilapidated housing, he said. However, there may be more houses than this.


Carter mentioned an idea to conduct a conference or workshop in Huntington on Land Banks. This would allow other areas that have Land Banks to give advice to people in Huntington, as well as vice versa. Jacobs-Jones questioned the idea because of potential expenses if the board chose to hold such a conference, such as travel accommodations.


Currently, the courthouse deals with abandoned houses and tax liens. Once the Land Bank is started in the area, the houses will no longer go through courthouse, which allows other companies to purchase the houses and gain interest off them. Some of these businesses allow the housing to remain in its current state of dilapidation.


The City Council will make the final decision on which board will take the Land Bank Authority.