March 16, 2006 Issue                                               

©2006 The Chestnut Hill Local

Editor of Local approved at special CHCA session
by Meredith Sonderskov

New Local Editor Lea Sitton Stanley.

A special board meeting of the Chestnut Hill Community Association was called on Thursday, March 9, to discuss the Editor’s Search Committee’s recommendation for editor of the Chestnut Hill Local. In order to make the meeting legal, a motion was introduced to suspend the bylaw’s provision for giving seven-day notice of the time, place and agenda, for this meeting only. The motion was passed.

Tom Ivory, chair of the Search Committee, asked that the board go into executive session to discuss the hiring. Executive session was declared by Maxine Dornemann, CHCA president, and the members of the public and press left the room.

At the end of the executive session, the proceedings were reopened to the public and press. Dornemann announced that the new editor of the Local is Lea Sitton Stanley, a resident of Mt. Airy. Stanley spent 20 years in a variety of editorial positions on the staff of the Philadelphia Inquirer and at a number of papers before that. She will assume her new duties on Wednesday, March 15.

The scheduled Executive Committee meeting was then called to order and the minutes of the last meeting were approved as presented. Mark Keintz, CHCA treasurer, gave his report and pointed out that the Local is now on budget but the Community Association has a potential $26,000 shortfall and the Community Fund has a potential $8,000 shortfall. A $25,000 transfer was proposed from the Local budget to the CHCA.

Brien Tilley, chair of the Fund committee, urged board members to make their contributions to the Community Fund immediately, if they have not done so already. So far only $30,000 has been raised and allocation requests total $76,000. Intense fundraising is needed.

Sanjiv Jain, chair of the Physical Division, asked for clarification of the line item in the proposed budget for Green Spaces maintenance, which was shown as $0.00. “This is accurate,” replied Keintz. “We don’t have the money.”

Additionally, in the projected 2007 budget, the CHCA was considering increasing the salary for the community manager to reflect that she works 32 hours per week, not the 24 hours she was being paid for. This is not being reccomended as of March 13 budget and finance committee meeting.

Jain reported on the latest developments about the Commerce Bank property on Germantown Avenue. A strong letter, signed by Jain and Dornemann, describing the community’s dismay and outrage at the bank’s lack of action, is being sent to the Commerce Bank directors and then to city council and other community organizations. The letter also requested that the bank pay for a temporary eight-foot high plywood fence to be erected around the current demolition and also to donate $2,500 to the Aesthetics Committee or the Chestnut Hill Historical Society to hire an artist to paint a mural on the plywood. Considerable discussion followed, reiterating the facts of the situation as known and as reported in previous editions of the Local.

Jain read a letter from the Philadelphia Department of Streets announcing that the Willow Grove Avenue Bridge over the SEPTA tracks is immediately closed to pedestrian and vehicular traffic in order to make emergency repairs. Considering the length of time it took to rebuild the Germantown Avenue Bridge over the Wissahickon Creek, Jain urged the board to be aggressive and insist on rapid repairs as the closure of this bridge will adversely affect traffic in the area.

One other topic was reported on by Jain and that had to do with the proposed housing of some 159 homeless women and children at the campus of the New Covenant Church on Germantown Avenue, just south of the border of Chestnut Hill and Mt. Airy. Jain stated that his committee will support the West and East Mt. Airy Neighbors who he reported oppose this proposal. (Laura Siena of WMAN clarified that neither neighbors have taken a position

Jeremy Heep reported for the Water Tower Recreation Center committee that a grant application as been sent through Senator Rick Santorum’s office to HUD for $1 million. CHCA members are urged to write letters in support of this application.

Social chair Dina Hitchcock reminded the board members of the CHCA Annual Dinner on Thursday evening, April 27, at the Chestnut Hill Presbyterian Church; Congressman Chaka Fattah will be the speaker. Board member Stuart Graham asked that filling the board vacancy be added to the agenda for the March 23 board meeting.

There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned.