NYC Co-Op Treasurer Navigates Building Upgrades, Emission Cuts, and Insurance Hikes

Community

Taking Charge

TOM HARRIS- NOLAN

Board Treasurer,

214 Riverside Dr.

By Paula Chin

Tom Harris-Nolan has the perfect skill set for being board treasurer. The Pennsylvania native holds a bachelor’s degree in communication and media studies from Susquehanna University and is vice president of corporate events at NBCUniversal Media — both of which have helped him with his board duties at Chatillion, a seven-story, 103-unit co-op at 214 Riverside Dr. on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

Harris-Nolan’s comments have been condensed and edited for clarity.

Stepping up. I was in a co-op studio on the Upper East Side, which was my introduction to owning in New York City, and was ready for a one-bedroom and a change of scenery. A broker friend told me the Upper West Side would be a great place to live, and she was right. I’ve been here 20 years. In 2019, my husband and I bought a second unit in the building for my mother, and once we started to own more shares and have more of an investment, I thought that it made sense to get more involved by joining the board. I was secretary for a year or two, which is great exposure because you learn what’s going on. Eventually I was asked to be treasurer.

Learning the basics. Once I started to receive our monthly management reports, which were about 70 pages long, I realized I didn’t know what I was looking at. I asked our managing agent at Halstead to set up a Zoom call with their accounting team to show us how to read the document, a kind of Finance 101 course. Six out of seven board members — we were a mix of longtime directors and new ones — were on the call, so it was reassuring to see that I was not the only one in the dark.

Money matters. At the very end of the reports were all our open invoices, totaling about $168,000. That’s when we realized we clearly were not bringing in enough money to pay our bills. Part of that was due to COVID-19, when the board was very sensitive about raising people’s expenses. In 2022 our new managing agent — the previous one had retired — reached out to all our vendors, and it turned out we owed $250,000 for everything from our security service to plumbing to lawyers. 

At the same time, our FISP cycle was coming up, and the proposals from contractors were coming in at around $2 million. We already had a $400,000 assessment, but since you can’t dip into your reserves to pay operating expenses, we had no choice but to raise maintenance. It’s increased about 25% since 2022, and now we’re in a really good place finance-wise. Also, we found a contractor who came in with a much lower bid and ended up paying about $1 million for the facade repairs. That savings, along with refinancing our mortgage, allowed us to put money in our reserves for future capital improvements.

Upgrades and renovations. Our building is over 100 years old, so we’ve had a lot of recent projects, including maintenance on the boiler and installing second plungers for the elevators to bring them up to code. We now have a committee of shareholders who are coming up with proposals to redesign our lobby. We’ll probably replace our sidewalk, and we’re figuring out how to upgrade our laundry room since the contract is expiring soon. 

As for Local Law 97, we’re not facing any penalties right now, but we have to find ways to curb our emissions going forward. We had looked into solar panels, but our rooftop isn’t really conducive to that because of a neighboring building that casts a lot of shade. We’re currently talking about electrification, but that would be a big and expensive commitment. 

Insurance hikes. We brought in a financial consultant, the Folson Group, to monitor expenses closely to make sure we aren’t overspending. They haven’t found a lot of waste but are educating us on ways we can improve. Folson also found an insurance broker who really helped us understand what coverage we need and what coverage we should get. There wasn’t necessarily a cost savings with our new policy because of the tight insurance market and high interest rates. But our management company told us we probably have the best coverage for our building. 

In the loop. ​​My career is in event planning, so finding and creating ways to bring people together is something that I do for a living. I’ve done that at our building, organizing little shareholder parties here and there, which is something they can enjoy and creates a sense of community. Communicating with shareholders is also important, whether it’s monthly Zoom calls and other meetings where we update people regularly and share information. Nobody wants bad news, but keeping them apprised of expenses and how they have to address them is something they appreciate. We’ve gotten a lot of compliments for that, which has been the most satisfying reward of being on the board.