Sanford Mayor Larry Dale, a private commercial real estate developer and investor, took the next step to having the board removed by informing each of the members by letter of their alleged misconduct.

Dale had a Seminole County Sheriff's deputy deliver the letter to each member. The board has 10 days to rebut the charges of negligence and inefficiency. After that period, the Sanford city commission will formally vote on the allegations and the mayor's motion to fire the entire board.

The unprecedented action comes as this blue collar Orlando suburb of 37,327 residents awaits a final report from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on similar charges.

City hall insiders tell GlobeSt.com the HUD report will blast the authority's members and their 39-year-old, $103,000-a-year executive director, Timothy Hudson, for their arrogance and negligence in managing federal funds and supervising the activities of Hudson since he took the post in 1996.

The newest charges by the Sanford mayor accuse the housing board of blatantly allowing 128 of HUD's 480 apartments to be vacant, shuttered and unrepaired; approving construction work on the apartments to be done by unlicensed contractors who didn't pull city permits for the work; failing to request an annual performance evaluation of itself from HUD; neglecting to review Hudson's performance in the last five years; and ignoring its disarrayed accounting system.

Sanford-based Greene Dycus & Co. wrote Hudson this week it could not complete an audit of the authority's books because the financial information was incomplete and undocumented.