ASHEVILLE – In a Nov. 4 email to city’s Housing Authority staff, then-authority President and CEO Monique Pierre wrote that the housing authority board would soon be replaced and that meetings for December and November were cancelled.
The email states that more details will come “as they become available.” The transition to a new board should focus on “serving our residents and maintaining the high standards of service that define our organization,” Pierre wrote.
The single email — addressing what would soon become public record — is what got Pierre fired , according to minutes from the Nov. 7 meeting at which the firing occurred. Her bosses, the HACA Board of Commissioners, are not saying why.
The Nov. 4 email was not included in the original Nov. 7 minutes, but was obtained by the Citizen Times on Nov. 21 after a public records request. The email is now publicly available on HACA’s website.
Meeting minutes from the Nov. 7 emergency meeting, released on Nov. 20, show that the commission met for over two hours to consider the firing. After meeting at 8:30 a.m., the board entered into an open session at approximately 10:50 a.m. At that time Commissioner David “Butch” Robinson made a motion to terminate Pierre for “substantial cause, based on her attached email to staff.”