Co-op board should be cooperative

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To the editor:

Thank you for your recent analysis on the Park Reservoir management controversy. 

For sixty years Park Reservoir has been a beacon of stability.  Its grounds and buildings are extraordinarily well-kept and as you noted in your article, we have been fortunate to be able to maintain the interiors of our homes largely because of an outstanding maintenance and security program that is cooperatively managed with the nation’s oldest cooperative, Amalgamated Housing.  In addition, that relationship affords cooperators the opportunity to participate in a myriad of educational and social activities like concerts, health lectures, NORC activities, trips for seniors, art exhibits, holiday lunches and dinners, health and fitness programs, and much more.  These programs are the envy of communities across the city because experts at every level of government and social development know these are what keep communities stable and strong and give families the best chance to grow healthfully.

Incredibly, we are now faced with a secretly developed proposal that intends to do away with the relationship we have had with Amalgamated.  It projects to save money by cutting these education programs and also security.   It is ridiculous to think this will make our community more stable and secure and there is every reason to think it will have the direct opposite effect.

Also, it is astounding that the Board is deliberately hiding the proposal from the constituents they serve.  In fact, they refuse to return calls or emails or communicate with cooperators.  This runs directly counter to the cooperative spirit that has sustained us for six decades.  How revealing for a Board member to have unabashedly told your paper that, “we were not obligated to tell the stockholders anything,” and, referring to an inquiring cooperator, “that’s not his place to know.”  Really?  Someone who has invested in his home and community does not have a right to know what is being planned on his behalf and what his elected Board of Directors is working on?  A proposed change of this magnitude requires that every cooperator be fully informed and have a say in deciding Park Reservoir’s future. 

Furthermore, the admission to your reporter that the Park Reservoir budget is hard to understand is revealing.  If that’s the case, then the Board should be spending its energies addressing those issues before engaging in protracted deliberations on this monumental, complex change to the structure of the cooperative that will affect not only the families who live there, but our finances and the very stability of New York’s first Mitchell-Lama cooperative, a housing project that was recently named to the State and National Registers of Historic Places.

At a lobby meeting held last Friday night, the same Board member announced that their proposal would save Park Reservoir $200,000.  At a subsequent meeting the next Monday night, the unsigned one-page proposal they handed out said the savings would be $300,000-$400,000.  Miraculously, their specious plan earned a couple of hundred thousand dollars in just three days.

Your article also points out the difficulties of operating under archaic bylaws that were crafted in a different era, but never updated.  Along with fixing and making the budget transparent, bringing those bylaws up-to-date should be the Board’s top priority.  But as you pointed out, cooperators can undertake that in a general membership meeting.  Clearly that should be the first item on the agenda when we get together on September 11.

How can they possibly make a credible proposal that calls for sweeping management changes without a clear budget and up-to-date bylaws?  The bottom line is, they can’t. 

Park Reservoir Board members should come to their senses, take a step back, work with cooperators to get the budgets and bylaws in order, and then begin a transparent dialogue on how to address any outstanding problems.

Sincerely,

Gary Axelbank
Suzanne Axelbank
Ariya Blitz
Eric Blitz
Marjorie Copeland
Mary Copeland
Harriet Guttman
Robert Guttman
Rama Mastronardi
Rosa Perez

Committee to Save Park Reservoir

 

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