Hillers plan new civic organization
by Joel Hoffmann

Dissatisfied with the Chestnut Hill Community Association’s current leadership and the slate of business-friendly candidates determined to succeed them, a group of current and former CHCA board members has decided to create a new community organization, which its founding members say will better represent Chestnut Hill residents.

“It’s obvious that the business association is going to take over the community association,” CHCA board member Joseph Pizzano said in a phone interview on Monday. “It will create a problem in terms of [real estate] development. The residents will be worse off.”

Pizzano believes that the Chestnut Hill Business Association’s 10-candidate Positively Chestnut Hill Team would favor the interests of developers over those of the community at large if elected. (In a letter to the editor this week, Pizzano addresses his concerns in more detail.)

The new community group, Chestnut Hill Neighbors United, is still in the planning stages, according to Pizzano, but he anticipates drawing enough members to establish clout at City Hall.

Membership will be open to all Chestnut Hill residents at no charge, according to Pizzano. The organization will be run entirely by volunteers and will hold its first organizational meeting at the Chestnut Hill Library on Wednesday, May 6.

CHBA president Greg Welsh said in an interview last week that the business association was not planning to take control of the community association or the Local.

In that interview, Welsh said he did not believe the members of the Positively Chestnut Hill Team would advance a business agenda, even though they have been endorsed by the CHBA.

“We’re neighbors,” he said.