Another annual meeting will not be held by the Riverhead BID Management Association after all, the organization’s president said yesterday.
Raymond Pickersgill said the group’s election committee met late last week to discuss the situation and review all the ballots in a June 17 vote for new directors.
“No matter what we do now, we can’t really do what the bylaws say,” Pickersgill said.
Pickersgill told RiverheadLOCAL on Thursday the BID Management Association was going to reschedule its annual meeting for July 15, after publication of a meeting notice for three consecutive weeks. When it convened its annual meeting for the election of directors on June 17, the group failed to follow meeting notice requirements set forth in its bylaws, which require either first-class mailing to BID owners and tenants or publication of a legal notice as stated in the N.Y. Not-for-Profit Corporation law.
But the bylaws also mandate the annual meeting be held in June of each year.
“At this point, no matter what we do, we can’t comply with the bylaws,” Pickersgill said yesterday. The three weeks of consecutive publication would push the meeting to July.
“I accept responsibility for this error and if they want me to step down because of it, I will,” Pickersgill said. “It was an honest mistake.”
The BID president said in past years the group advertised the annual meeting above and beyond the legal notice requirement and still had poor attendance anyway.
“We decided it wasn’t really going to make a difference if we held another meeting,” he said.
The election committee members are Larry Oxman, William Andes and Steve Shauger, with Pickersgill sitting in on the meeting as board president, he said.
At the June 17 annual meeting, the following six people were elected to the BID Management Association board of directors: Ray Dickhoff, Steve Shauger and John Mantzopoulos as property owner representatives; and Larry Oxman, Nancy Kouris and James Foster as tenant representatives.
According to the group’s bylaws the board of directors has 13 members, with 10 elected by Business Improvement District members (five by tenants, five by owners in separate balloting) and three appointed by town officials (one by the supervisor, one by the town board and one by the town’s financial administrator.)
The BID Management Association administers funds collected through a special district tax on commercial properties within the district, which encompasses central downtown Riverhead. The association enters into a contract with the Town of Riverhead annually regarding the expenditure of such funds. Its financial records are audited by the town’s accounting department and the town’s independent auditor. It handles about $95,000 in tax revenues each year.
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