Thursday, May 8, 2008

Second (Quarterly?) Pot Luck

For four hours during the evening of Saturday, May 3, 2008, University Towers residents gathered in the 122 Community Room, sharing delicious food, drink and good conversation.

The buffet table overflowed with various baked pastas, Asian noodle and rice dishes, pulled pork, chicken casserole, an out-of-this world vegetarian chili, pies, cookies and ultra-fresh Beard Papa cream puffs (provided by yours truly, who can't cook to save her life).

Like the first Pot Luck in February, the party was more about having fun and getting to know each other than UT-related business. Conversations revolved around everything from Fort Greene Park, children (two of which were in attendance :-> ), celebrity sightings, our favorite episode of Star Trek, and so on and so on.

But, towards the end of the evening, we spent about a half-hour talking about the upcoming election for UT's Board of Directors.

The Pot Luck had initially been promoted as a "Meet the Candidates" event, in addition to a party, but Jeff Kagan and current board member Diana Leidel were the only two candidates who were able to attend the event due to the short notice in planning it.

Fortunately, both were very articulate about their desires for the development of the University Towers community.

Diana shared the degree to which she and other board members have participated in various community groups -- including Community Board 2 (she noted that while it is difficult to get a seat on the Board, Robin has attended many meetings to stay abreast of developments).

Jeff expressed a desire for a clearer definition of UT's Board roles. For example, no one is designated as Secretary, Treasurer, etc., as is the case in the other boards on which he serves. Further, he stressed the importance of improving communication between the Board and the UT shareholders.

The remaining time was spent assembling a Q&A about the voting procedures at UT, as well as a list of questions that can be asked of the candidates at the upcoming "Meet the Candidates" session, this Wednesday, May 21st, in the Community Room -- at which, I hope, most if not all of the candidates will be present!!

Both the Q&A and Question List will be published on this blog during the next week.

At the end of the night, as we cleared the tables, happy and well-fed, many residents suggested that this would be a nice event to hold on a quarterly basis.

But instead of "meeting the candidates" perhaps it would be a nice way for new residents to get to know their new neighbors -- and for the rest of us to get to know each other a bit beyond saying "hi" in the elevator (but isn't it nice that we do that here! :-> ).

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