November 1, 2007 Issue
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Classified Chestnut Hill Local Don't Miss an Issue, Tell us what you see or Winner of Two |
CHCA Board: Conditional approvals, profit and personnel The Chestnut Hill Community Association Board of Directors covered a lot of ground at an extra-long meeting, Thursday, Oct. 25. The jam-packed agenda included making a rare conditional approval of a zoning variance request for 8623 Germantown Ave., a new personnel committee for the Local, several changes to the board’s makeup (members and officers) and a semi-annual report from the Chestnut Hill Community Fund. As an encore, CHCA president Tolis Vardakis gave a short presentation on the financial condition of the Local that called for an increase in subscription and newsstand prices. 8623 Germantown Ave. Jeremy Heep, vice president of the CHCA’s Physical Division (the name for the association’s zoning and planning committees), presented the first action item on the board’s agenda: the approval of a variance for 8623 that would legalize a previous subdivision of the property and preserve a portion of a Chestnut Hill Parking Foundation lot. The property in question includes the building that houses Sovereign Bank and an office building in the rear that houses a doctor’s and dentist’s offices. Pat Gallagher, a local Realtor with Eichler and Moffley and a representative of the sellers, Evergreen Associaties, said a purchase of the Sovereign Bank property was initiated in early summer by a buyer the identity of which Gallagher said he was not at liberty to disclose. He said the variance was needed to legalize the conditions of the subdivision, which was purchased in 1998 by dentist Dr. Stephen Unger and Barbara Plager. The main issue, according to Gallagher and Heep, was the required setbacks of the office building. The variance, Gallagher assured the board, would make sure that nothing on the property, including the parking spaces, would change. Heep said the buying group wanted the board to approve the variance on the condition that a subsequent review by the Land Use Planning and Zoning Committee endorses the details. Several board members said they were concerned about the deviation in process; normally the LUPZ reviews a project and recommends action before it comes before the board. Others wanted to know why the buyer insisted on anonymity. Heep said he was not aware during the initial presentation to the Development Review Committee that the group wanted to remain anonymous. He said local developer John Capoferri represented the buyers at the DRC meeting. The board voted to approve the variance on the condition the LUPZ agrees after its review. In another zoning matter, the board approved a variance for the Apothecary Garden, 7721 Germantown Ave. The use variance will allow Apothecary Garden to offer therapeutic massage in a second-floor space of the building. New directors for board The board considered several changes to its makeup, including the addition of three new members to fill slots of directors who had resigned earlier this month. According to the association’s bylaws, when any director resigns before his or her term expires, the next closest runner-up in votes from the election that takes over the remainder of that term. Board members Nancy Hutter, Howard Lesnick and Doug Knauer resigned and the next three runners up were Robert Rossman, Joseph Pizzano and Mark Keintz. All three terms were for three years and expire on March 31, 2010. Though the bylaws were specific, there was some controversy over promoting Keintz. Keintz was serving on the board as a representative of the Chestnut Hill Parking Foundation at the time of the resignations. Keintz said he had opted to resign his position as the parking foundation representative so he could accept the remainder of one of the three-year terms vacated. Former CHCA president Ron Recko thought the move wasn’t logical. “Mark was already on the board,” Recko said. “You had a guy, Paul Bono [the fourth runner-up] who said he was ready to serve. … We’re eliminating a person.” Board member Carole Cope said that it was a right Keintz had earned because he had received the votes, more than Bono. The board voted to approve the new members. Also, the board voted to approve board member Kritina Sullivan as the new secretary, a position vacated by Hutter, and approved of Keintz’s appointment to the Bylaws Committee. Personnel and Profit The board considered two items concerning the Local, a Personnel Committee and a Power Point presentation on the Local’s finances made by CHCA president Vardakis after the meeting’s regular business was complete. First, the board approved a Personnel Committee that CHCA operations vice president Dina Hitchcock said would examine and rewrite the personnel manual that sets the terms of employment for all Local and CHCA staff. She said the idea stemmed from a discussion about the subject during meetings of last year’s bylaws committee in which some expressed the need for a committee to handle employee complaints if and when those employees felt Local managers were not properly addressing their concerns. Kathy Jones, who was selected for the committee said the scope of the committee was only to review the manual. Others on the approved committee are: Bob Bacino, Ed Berg, and Hitchcock. All are board members. The Power Point presentation on the Local’s finances was projected on a screen from a laptop computer and included several graphs and spreadsheets that Vardakis said indicated a precarious financial situation for the Local. He said the presentation was not intended to produce any board action that night, but to show the board his findings on the Local. Using what he said were year-end profit and loss statements derived from audit statements over the last 10 years, Vardakis said the Local had lost nearly $150,000 since 1998. No explanation of how the losses occurred or how the Local managed to operate with the losses was offered. In another spreadsheet, Vardakis showed figures that calculated potential profits if the single-copy price of the Local was increased to 75 cents and $1. The current price is 50 cents. It also showed a subscription / membership increase from the current rate of $30 to $40. Because the presentation was late in the meeting and ran past the time the board has use of the library (where all meetings take place) there was little discussion. The matter is on the agenda of the next Executive Committee meeting, Thursday, Nov. 8. Other business Heep said that a number of CHCA members were reinvigorating the association’s Traffic Transportation and Parking committee. The new chair would be board member Pat Moran. The CHCA will sponsor a blood drive at St. Martin in the Fields church on West Willow Grove Avenue on Monday, Nov. 12, from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m.
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