 Hello everyone and welcome to today's debate for housing authority race and you'll notice that we've got an unusual configuration for the debate. Candidate Joanne Preston is with us. The other candidate Joseph Daley has declined our invitation so we are going to move forward with this debate under usual circumstances and format and but with just Joanne. Joanne we appreciate your being here. Thank you. I will just let you know that the structure of the debate will be very very simple. Joanne will have one minute to give an opening statement and then we will move into the question section. We will pose four questions to Joanne. She will have two minutes to respond to each of those and then we will conclude with a one-minute closing statement from Joanne. So if you're ready to go please take one minute to give us your opening statement. Thank you. Hello everyone I'm Joanne Preston candidate for the board of the Arlington Housing Authority. I bring to this position a wealth of experience in advocating for tenants especially senior citizens as a former chair of a tenants organization. I also bring considerable knowledge of recent developments in social gerontology through my career as a researcher and as a Brandeis professor of courses on aging and society. I have also worked as a social worker to a program on medical aid to the agent. I bring my desire to assist Arlington Housing Authority residents by my volunteer work with the Council on Aging and my more recent activities in organizing and delivering face masks to the families in a monotony manner. And I bring considerable experience in grant writing. In sum I have the experience and expertise to increase the quality of life for Arlington Housing Authority residents. Okay thank you very much. We're going to move right into the questions and the first question and I'll just remind you have two minutes to answer each of these. First question is what do you see is the primary mission of the Housing Authority and tell us one thing that you think they are doing well and one thing that you think needs to be improved and please be specific. Okay I think historically the mission of the Housing Authority board is that the question the board yes yes sorry make sure that the tenants have safe and comfortable residents to fix things as they need fixing and to make sure that they have proper access. I see I learned that from I'm a town meeting member for Precinct 9 which encompasses three of the five housing complexes so I hear a lot from tenants. I would and members of the board have expertise in banking and in business which helps them look at contracts. I bring something more to the board. My background is in social science and in tenant advocacy. So I think they've done a good job in keeping safe buildings that are comfortable for the residents. I think what they could do much more for is expanding social programming integrating the residents with a greater Arlington community. Every time I tell people I'm running for the Housing Authority they say what's that. I think that's symbolic of how they are set apart from the community. So and I have some ideas about that. One is a friendly visitor program, high school students, junior high school students, to community service. When I bring my daughter there to give Thanksgiving dinners they're mostly interested in her as their faces just light up. I think it'd be a wonderful program. I also have to cut you off there. Sorry move on to the next question and that is, excuse me, what are the biggest challenges that you see facing the housing Authority and if you are elected what area or issue would you particularly like to take a leadership role in tackling? Well like all public institutions I see funding as a big issue and I have a lot of experience in writing grants and I know when I went to the community grant program meeting I go to a lot of the local meetings to keep track of things that there were no proposals from the Housing Authority yet they had a surplus $700,000 and I think that I could be very helpful in that area and I've written grants actually for the Thompson School but also in my professional life and a second concern of mine is the relationship between the boards and the residents. I would like to improve communication and I think one way to do that is to revise the handbook they give all the tenants to explain to tenants basically what their rights are. They can come to the meetings that there's a whole procedure that they can take part in decision-making and that became a real problem because by law by state and federal law they should be involved in any building projects. Well they just went ahead and put new windows in Winslow Towers but the windows are a different size than the old windows and the residents air conditioners didn't fit and these are low income people for them to go out and buy new air conditioners was a problem and it was a problem that could easily have been prevented if there had been better communication. I also think that needs to be integrated in the greater community. They used to have precinct meetings in the common rooms in Chestnut Manor and Winslow Towers and I think they should now. Len Diggins was trying to arrange that but it couldn't be done. Okay thank you very much. Third question and you anticipated this a little bit in what you've just answered but what role do you see the tenants should have in setting and changing policies procedures and rules? I see the tenants of the housing authority in the board as part as a partnership and I think that's a good way to approach it that that the board has expertise in contracts and banking and so forth and also in what which need how often the elevators have to be fixed but the tenants also live there and I think they have a lot of knowledge and should be part of the process. Other ways that tenants can be involved is through the tenants association and there's been some slippage and elections and so forth and I think that that should be strengthened the tenants association and I understand that from people I know there that people on the board don't attend them they send a staff person. I think if the tenants want that a board member should go to the monthly meetings because that's the best way to increase communication and to know what the issues are for tenants. I was a tenant for 28 years myself so I know that when your your sink doesn't work it's a real problem and you want to be able to tell someone about it and have them act on it. Other ways that tenants can be involved is by attending the meetings themselves of the board and one issue I have is the only place the tenants that meetings are announced that I know of is on the on the bulletin board in town hall. I think it would be a very good idea to have the announcement on the meetings on the community calendar so that relatives can come people who might want to live there can come and have a better idea of the working to the board. Thank you. Sorry two minutes flies by and it does. Fourth and final question. I have a lot to say. Fourth and final question is do you believe that the policies and rules for tenants are being applied fairly and consistently and if not how would you improve the situation? Well of course from what I hear from tenants they are not and I think that goes back to my earlier statement we need much better communication between the boards and the tenants and the tenants should realize that the state has a whole series of rights they have as tenants as public authority tenants and I remember I told one of my friends that who lives in one of them she said we have rights I didn't know that and so I think making these rights known and it gives you a step a process of for instance getting things fixed you called in someone and it's not fixed then you could and it doesn't seem like it would be fixed you go to the next step and I think that would make everything run much more smoothly and there is a concern I heard from someone who did some studying out that some people get treated differently than others and I think if there's a regularized process that would take care of that concern. Back to the handbook the handbook really needs to be rewritten it tells the tenants all the things they have to do but it doesn't really tell them the things they can do and I just think that's a really important thing and I see advocacy as not doing things for people but setting the conditions in which they can get them done themselves. So we will now move into closing statement we had a technical problem that reduced the amount of time Joanne had for the final question in the last section so we are going to be making a one minute and 10 second closing statement available to Joanne. So Joanne thanks for your patience and please your closing statement 70 seconds. Thank you I'm glad to participate in ACMI's coverage of candidates as you know it's very difficult to go out and talk to voters and it's just a wonderful opportunity and I hope this interview has helped you know more about me and how I can assist Arlington housing residents to have more satisfying and meaningful lives either in the senior residents or in the family building complex. We live in a changing world. Demographic social and technological changes challenge the board to investigate and furnish senior residents and families with new program services activities and I think that I am well positioned to do that because of my expertise in these fields and my experience. I want to improve the lives of Arlington housing residents and I hope that you will consider voting for me so that I will be able to do this. Thank you for listening. Thank you very much and with that this debate for the Housing Authority Board of Arlington is concluded. We before we do sign off though we will have some thanks. We would like to thank of course first and foremost you Joanne Preston for joining us today. Thank you for participating and for your patience and adaptability as we work with technology and all its glitches. Thanks also to our ACMI crew behind the scenes who work prodigiously to make all this possible under the extraordinary and unusual current circumstances and finally thanks to you for taking the time to tune in and inform yourselves in advance of the election that's scheduled for June 6th. Speaking of the election you can access the current debate and the debates for other offices as well as candidate profiles in any of several ways. They are airing regularly on our government channel and you can also access them at your convenience on our website at acmi.tv slash elections where you'll find all of the content that we have related to election 2020 here in Arlington. Lastly you can also find more useful information about the candidates and the voters guide on the Arlington League of Women Voters website at www.lwva.com. I'm James Malan with one final thanks to candidate Joanne Preston. You've been watching the debate for the Housing Authority Board here in Arlington. Thanks for joining us. Take care.