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Public Housing Spotlight
on the New York City
Housing Authority

Issue 101
Published on August 21, 2002

(Click Here for NYCHA "preliminary" Audit
by NYC Comptroller Alan Hevesi)

(Click Here for Directory of Issues)

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NYCHA is
*NSYNC on Corruption!

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We heard this one while standing around a copier at 250 Broadway: In 1999, the Deputy Director of Office Services, J. LaMarca, is in charge of several contracts to supply copy machines to all of the offices within NYCHA. The vendor representative for one of the vendors (Oce), is "let go" from her plum position on the Government Account Team. (We have her name, if any investigators are interested. As she doesn't get her paycheck directly from tax funds, we decided to hold her name for now.)

This person resurfaces a few weeks later working for another vendor, with whom NYCHA didn't have a contract at that time. Because this is a new job, she is eager to show her new bosses that she can land a big account. She is aggressively working to get her machines placed in NYCHA.

Deputy Director LaMarca makes a point of letting her know that his daughter's birthday is coming up and that she is the world's biggest *NSYNC fan.

On a visit to the office a few weeks later, the vendor mentions that her "mother just happens to have four (4) tickets to the *NSYNC concert at Jones Beach", that has been sold out for six months. She offers the tickets to Mr. LaMarca. He accepts them.

Within a few months, the Deputy Director of Office Services, LaMarca, announces that NYCHA is very dissatisfied with the performance of one of the current vendors, Minolta. He scours the globe for any contract that he can get passed through legal to piggyback on and all of a sudden Canon copy machines from the *NSYNC vendor begin being placed throughout the Agency.

Since LaMarca was in charge of copy machines, Spotty finds it hard to believe he missed the memo being passed out about not accepting gifts from vendors!!

Frank New and Kenneth Martin do us all a General Dis-Service, if they think people won't catch on to the abuse and corruption in this department.

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More from LIC !

David Chew had convinced his director that he needed 3 NEW positions in his unit. The job titles were advertised and all applicants were requested to submit resumes.

There were about 25 resumes received. 23 of the people were wasting their time with this farce.

Two of the people selected were related to Dave Chew.

One was Arthur Ziccardi, who just happen to be Mr. Chew's "Brother-in-law" and the other is a cousin. Of course, these 2 just happened to be the most qualified out of 25.

Right???????

Mr. Ziccardi to this day still has no Civil Service status nor does Mr. Chew. Yet every time there is a civil service exam that either of them fail, somehow they change (promote) their title eluding any chance of being bumped/Laid-off.

Nobody in Material's Management can figure out what Mr. Ziccardi's job function is. If you ask him he'll get very defensive and reply "You'll have to speak to Dave Chew." Vendors are sometimes at fault, but the vast majority of back orders are caused by a lack of adequate space at the LIC facility accompanied by management that fears telling the truth to the Execs at 250 Broadway.

(Spotty hears that we had been using a total of 132,000 sq ft before the LIC scam was pulled. Material's Management had requested 180,000 sq ft of warehouse space in LIC. 90,000 Sq Ft was what they ended up with. That's 42,000 sq ft less than they had before Finkel made his friends rich.)

The men hired from the employment agency are taking so much time to train that their presence is almost a wash. (And they work 1PM to 8PM, not Midnight to 8 AM as this inadequate reporter stated in issue 99. ED)

When the warehouse was first opened to NYCHA warehouse personnel, they found that the construction company that did pre-occupancy renovation had been using the Authority's new forklifts. Now, in at least one of the warehouse areas, 25% of the Bendi forklifts are out of commission. Along with the delay in receiving ordered items that are needed to repair tenant's apartments, Managers/Superintendents are complaining about the unavailability of such commonly stocked items as stripping and buffing pads, tools, drills and maintenance tool kits.

Some problems would seem to beg for the simplest of solutions. There are backorders that could be cleared in minutes. For example, it can currently take over 2 months to get items delivered to the warehouse. In some cases, the problem lies with a minimum purchase amount. Let's say that the warehouse orders $100 worth of buffing pads. And, let's say that the Authority operates under a $200 minimum order with the vendor for buffing pads. The vendor might not fill order until another order comes in that brings the total up to over the $200 minimum.

Late breaking news!

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With all the problems being chronicled about the warehouse operations in the LIC building, we were happy yesterday morning to receive a call from friends in Tech Services in that building. They told us that Chair Tino Hernandez was going to tour the facility that day. Our sources assumed Tino was coming to get a first hand account of the truth of all the problems we've reported on that are hurting NYCHA's tenants and field personnel.

We were wrong!

Mr. Hernandez visited each floor in the building, but he somehow avoided one section on EVERY Floor he visited.

That section?

Warehouse Operations!

I guess the Chair had knowledge of the fact that every problem we listed was TRUE! His visit, instead of helping NYCHA deal with problems, has just proved to the warehouse staff that although they've been stuck with too little space to handle such a large operation, they had better realize that NYCHA execs will avoid verifying the awful $100,000,000 deal Finkel made with his friends even at the cost of poor service for the tenants and a lack of supplies for the Development staff!

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© 2002 Public Housing Spotlight and John Ballinger. All rights reserved.
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Links to all Issues are at page bottom

Contact Jack Ballinger at nychaspotlight@netscape.net
for a Real Audio sound clip containing a
conversation wherein DOI Investigator
John Kilpatrick discusses how he learned
that 2 NYCHA execs attended
a Mafia connected contractor's funeral .

Contact Jack Ballinger at nychaspotlight@netscape.net
for a Real Audio sound clip containing
the (3 Meg) confession of Tony DiAlto.
Tony was a member of a group of
corrupt Contract Inspectors working at NYCHA.
Neither Tony nor the person he confessed to
sharing his bribes with (Richard Penesi)
were ever charged, let alone prosecuted, by DOI.


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policy information, visit our friends at the Gotham Gazette

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NYC Housing Authority's
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U.S. Department of
Housing and Urban Development

451 7th Street S.W.,
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Telephone: (202) 708-1112
TTY: (202) 708-1455

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