FRESH BLOOD SAVES THE ALAMEDA, PART 1, P.2

 

The board that served in 2007 was different from the one serving in 2002, and none of the newcomers were aware of the report. Meg Pinto, a freelance writer living in the building since 2005 and appointed to the board in 2006, found it when reviewing past minutes.

At the annual meeting in late 2007, Osman and fellow dissidents Julie Goldweitz and Joe Lelyveld were elected. Kennedy and Pinto were re-elected, while the sponsor, Aaron Sirulnick, was voted off. (When his ownership of residential units fell below 25 percent, Sirulnick was no longer entitled to an automatic seat on the board.) Within months, the rising acrimony at board meetings led two old-guard members to resign. They were replaced by Helene Laval and Kevin Kehoe. Goldweitz, an attorney for a publishing firm, took over as treasurer. It was a major infusion of fresh blood.

Getting Brighter

As the new treasurer, Goldweitz got a quick education on the corporation's finances. "What we found," she says, "is that there was no cohesive plan for which capital improvements were going to be undertaken. The board was taking things as they came," without much future planning. This is not an atypical attitude among boards, says managing agent Wolfe.

We wanted to do more than the

minimum, but not do things simply

because someone said we should do it.

While the 2002 report gave the property a clean bill of health, with areas to keep an eye on in the future. the property's façade was deceptive. "In this particular building, the stones are very big and thick. In a typical building, the steel would be rusted and it would [warp] and push out the masonry. But because the steel was so deep inside the façade, you couldn't see that there was a steel issue, and you couldn't see that there were underlying issues until you actually removed stuff. That's why this is not one of those jobs where the architect … should have seen this stuff earlier."

Working with management, the new board developed its strategy. "Our goal was to strike a balance," Goldweitz says. "We wanted to do more than the minimum but not do things simply because someone said we should do it. We wanted to have a more cohesive decision-making process. We didn't want to look at wish lists; we wanted to look at priorities."

In Part 2: Hardhats, hard heads, hard decisions

 

Adapted from Habitat March 2009. For the complete article and more, join our Archive >>

Board photos by Carol Ott; building photo by Scott Osman