FIPPOA’s Quality of Life Task Force was formed last Fall tasked with finding mindful, creative, and effective recommendations to address community concerns, particularly with respect to those that exist around noise and sanitation. 

The Task Force is multigenerational and consists of members representing homeowners, tenants, and business owners. The Task Force members are Gabe Brotman, Chris Collins, Vinnie Petrarca (Chair), Thai Pham, Richard Pittelli, and Henry Robin.

Like FIPPOA itself, the Task Force has no enforcement or regulatory authority. It seeks to establish community-based expectations for how we respect each other’s quality of life by establishing guidelines, highlighting existing ordinances, and starting an overdue conversation among all community stakeholders to establish shared expectation and heightened community standards.

In June, the Task Force shared an initial draft of recommended guidelines. In them, the members worked to clarify and interpret the Town of Brookhaven ordinances concerning noise and trash and suggested a framework to de-escalate conflict among community members and visitors. In the future, the Task Force plans to address other concerns based on the suggestions and comments received from Pines residents. 

On June 26th, the Task Force organized the Pines’ first ever Town Hall to discuss quality of life issues and solicit feedback on the draft guidelines. In total, we had nearly 100 contributors either in attendance at the Town Hall or through the feedback forum. 

The original draft guidelines have since been revised, and the finalized guidelines addressing this first phase (Version 1.0) of the Quality of Life Task Force’s work may be found here. 

We will be working with realtors, homeowners, and renters to get these guidelines distributed and read as widely as possible by the many residents and visitors of the Pines. We also encourage you to share them with your friends, guests, housemates, and renters.

At the end of this season, the Task Force will meet to consider how, if at all, to expand its work beyond this initial set of guidelines i.e. from 1.0 to a potential version 2.0. If you have suggestions, we encourage you to share them here?

Please keep in mind that we want to limit our focus to areas for which FIPPOA has control or considerable influence. Matters over which FIPPOA has no control, limited or no influence, may seem desirable for potential conflict resolution; however, they are unlikely to lead to us successfully improving upon them because of the inherent limitations to positively affect outcomes.  

With appreciation for the dedication and hard work of the Task Force members.

Henry