After more than 90 minutes of often passionate public comment, Galveston Housing Authority adjourned a meeting Thursday resolved to not demolish and replace a vital community center that long has provided a one-stop shop of social services for low-income residents.

What wasn’t resolved was whether the authority would or should continue efforts to help ease a severe shortage of workforce housing in a city where more than 5,400 households — including people waiting tables and bus dispatchers working for the school district — make less than $50,000 a year and are burdened by rent and utilities.

During a special-called meeting, commissioners voted 4-1 to table development of workforce housing on 9 acres it owns at 4700 Broadway, where the Walter Norris Jr. Island Community Center operates.

Three items were on the meeting agenda. The first was to discuss and consider whether to develop workforce housing at 4700 Broadway.

‘WHERE WILL THEY GO?’

Had the authority board approved that item, it would have then had to decide which path to take: Keep the community center and build a residential rental community of about 218 units along the Broadway and 46th Street frontage, or demolish the community center and replace it with a two-story facility, along with about 300 workforce units.

More than 40 people attended the meeting and nearly all opposed demolition of the community center on which low-income residents rely on such services as nutritional and health programs for low-income women, infants and children, early childhood education programs such as Head Start, a food pantry and more.

One after another, members of the public questioned the wisdom of demolishing the building and warned of concentrating too much subsidized housing north of Broadway. Others argued replacing the community center would only disrupt services, burden service providers and force people with limited transportation options to seek help on the mainland.

“Where will they go?” University of Texas Medical Branch student Bianca Obinyan asked housing authority board members. “Where will the services go? They don’t need to go — they need to stay right here.”

‘CAN’T SAY IT ISN’T HURTFUL’

Others contended that building workforce housing on the site would cause parking and traffic problems, creating a safety hazard. Others accused commissioners of attempting to push through a plan that wasn’t vetted with the community it was meant to serve, while others accused the commissioners of presuming it knows better what the community wanted and needed.

“I’m saddened that people in power want to give us what they think we need, not what we need,” said David Miller, former head of the Galveston chapter of the NAACP. “We’re adults, taxpayers.”

While some members vehemently opposed workforce housing development at the site, they thanked the commissioners. Others heckled them.

Tarris Woods, of the Galveston County Coalition for Justice, went well beyond the requested three-minute public comment time to tell commissioners he wouldn’t be silenced.

Woods accused Betty Massey, a Galveston Housing Authority commissioner, of a conflict of interest and self-serving motives for wanting to develop workforce housing at 4700 Broadway. He accused Robert Booth, an attorney for the housing authority, of standing to profit through legal fees if the development were approved. Booth at the meeting said Massey didn’t have a conflict of interest that would prevent her from voting.

Woods also called out Daily News Editor Michael A. Smith for not publishing Woods’ comments during a previous meeting accusing Massey of conflict of interests because she serves on the board of Vision Galveston and Build Galveston, two nonprofits working on the island’s affordable housing crisis. Tarris previously and in Thursday’s meeting accused Massey of general dirty dealings.

Smith declined to publish the accusations because they were unsubstantiated and made in a setting in which Massey couldn’t respond, he said after Thursday’s meeting.

Massey in responding Thursday to Woods and others who made harsh accusations against her, said: “I can’t say it isn’t hurtful.”

Massey said her only objective is to help solve the affordable housing crisis in Galveston and help households burdened by rising costs.

“There is no personal gain,” she said.

‘HEAVEN KNOWS’

Massey cited a 2017 study that showed 5,417 island residents making less than $50,000 and were burdened by the costs of simply providing themselves with a home, electricity and running water.

The number of islanders facing those cost burdens likely has swelled since 2017, she said.

“Heaven knows how many there are now,” she said.

Commissioner Patricia Toliver said the authority should stick to its core mission, which isn’t workforce housing but to serve low-income families and the elderly, she said.

Toliver and Commission Raymond Turner argued the authority had an obligation to listen and serve the community.

Commissioners Brax Easterwood and William Ansell said they were moved by public comments and came away with a better understanding of the importance of the community center to people who depend on it.

But Easterwood, an architect, said the building wasn’t designed well for its purpose.

“It’s incredibly inefficient,” he said.

The existing community center is about 80,000 square feet, of which only 65,000 square feet is used, with about 15,000 square feet devoted to hallways and other underused space.

‘I’M HEARING YOU’

Ansell said it was never the commission’s intention of razing the community center and not replacing it with something better. A vote for a request for bids was only a start, he said. Without speaking with private developers, there was no way to answer the questions from the public.

But what Ansell did know after the meeting was he wouldn’t vote to demolish the community center, he said.

“I’m hearing you guys,” Ansell said.

While some in the audience agreed workforce housing was a problem that needed solving, the units belonged elsewhere in the city, they said.

But the authority owns the 4700 Broadway property and using it would mean the authority wouldn’t have to buy land, Ansell said.

Easterwood made a motion to table the vote, which Ansell seconded. Massey was the dissenting vote.

‘DOWN THE ROAD’

“I can’t in good conscience keep kicking this down the road anymore … while people are suffering,” Massey said.

The vote on workforce housing came as the housing authority wraps up a program to replace 569 public housing units demolished after being flooded during Hurricane Ike in 2008. Replacing the units sparked incendiary opposition, which was referenced at Thursday’s meeting.

City leaders broke ground last year on the massive $114 million project to construct the Oleanders at Broadway, the last large-scale public-housing development needed to replace the 569 units lost to Ike.

All three of the authority’s mixed-income developments are north of Broadway on land once occupied by public-housing projects.