New Haven Independent

The announcement was made at Tuesday’s Housing Authority of New Haven (HANH) commissioners meeting by Chairman Bob Solomon. It elicited standing ovations from a room full of some 40 staff members.

DuBois-Walton (at left in photo), the authority’s current chief operating officer, replaces Jimmy Miller (at right in photo), who came to HANH two and a half years ago. Miller is credited with getting the perpetually “troubled” federally funded agency on track and moving ahead projects that had languished, due in part to rapid turnover of executive directors in the past. He had said from the outset of his tenure that his saw his stay in New Haven as temporary.

He is staying on, though, as deputy director of HANH for special projects.

“What I love most,” Miller said, “is doing development. Putting together projects like Eastview and Rockview. That’s helping shape the city. That’s what I’ll be doing in the new role, primarily.”

Click here for previous coverage about the travails and successes of HANH.

Miller said he’ll be free to spend more time with his family in his new role. He’ll be liberated from the day to day administrative responsibilities, the dealing with hundreds of staffers and thousands of residents, many needy, for whom HANH is the call of first and last resort.

Those responsibilities pass to DuBois-Walton. “He taught me an incredible amount,” DuBois-Walton said of Miller, “more than I thought I could possibly learn.”

Commissioners passed a slew of resolutions Tuesday before going into executive session to name the new director.

These measures included HANH commissioners voting to spend $40,000 more on office supplies, renewing their contract for $340,000 of termite and pest control, authorizing due diligence for the purpose of purchasing several properties for scattered site housing; and reviewing a pending contract of some $2 million for new kitchen and bathroom fixtures system wide. They also authorized the hiring of New Haven off-duty police officers at about $47,000 , to beef up security at Farnam Court, Westview Manor and other sites where violence historically has flared up in the summer months.

Yul Watley (pictured with Miller), until recently the president of Westview’s tenants residents council, said that in recent months the “street corner pharmacists” (aka drug dealers) had returned.

Negotiations Remain

The vote, technically, made DuBois-Walton and Miller “acting” executive director and deputy director for a month, during which they both will be negotiating their employment agreements with HANH. Their salaries have not yet been set. At July’s commissioners’ meeting, the agreements and appointments will be voted on. If all goes according to plan, on Aug. 1 or so, both will be officially in their permanent new positions.

Miller’s new position will be a staff job, not a consultancy. Miller did not say where he’s going to live in the new job.

HANH’s chief legal counselor, Rolan Joni Young, in effect called Miller indispensable. “As these various development projects moved forward, I for one,” she said, after the announcement, “have been asking, ‘And what do we do in December?’” December was to be Miller’s last month on the job.

Was she, among others, part of a crew who wooed Miller to stay? “Let me put it this way,” the lawyer said. “He’s absolutely integral to what we’ve done. These are highly complex, sophisticated real estate deals and the people we deal with are sophisticated. Jimmy Miller just knows all this so well.”

The commissioners’ chair, Bob Solomon (pictured in Hawaiian shirt), asked Miller and DuBois-Walton if they had some words to mark the red-letter moment. She said, “I thank you for the great vote of confidence.” Miller said to the commissioners, “I thank you for some of the most exhilarating years of my life. I love to do development, to shape communities and to be paid for what you love to do is pretty wonderful.”