Hill Team Ties In Race For Management Team Chair

A second attempt to elect new officers for the Hill North Community Management team went into overtime — with no winner named.

The race for the new chair position is a toss-up between old guard and new guard. A tie at a meeting this past Tuesday between Lena Largie, the former longtime chair whose term expired last year, and interim chair Howard Boyd, led the team to schedule a third special election for this coming Tuesday night.

The group did manage to secure a new vice-chair (Ron Hurt), treasurer (also Ron Hurt) and secretary (Cowiya Arouna).

The election followed an abortive attempt in October that went awry after a dispute over bylaws — regarding who could and couldn’t vote — arose. In that meeting, interim officers were chosen to fix the bylaws.

“I am going to wait and see,” Largie said after the vote, held in the cafeteria of Career Regional High School. The team could not break the tie immediately, as some voters had already left by the time the vote was counted.

Boyd, for his part, already has plans in the works. He has given the neighborhood’s new Livable City Initiative specialist, Arthur Natalino, a tour. He said he hopes to form small groups within the team, like a youth group; he might try to partner with local churches to make getting to meetings easier. And he wants the team to meet more often each year.

If nothing else, at least the turnout was a good sign: Boyd commended the crowd of around 25 who had shown up, even though it was Valentine’s Day — a sure sign of commitment to the community, he said.