SaveTheHill.org

July 7th Election - One Week to Go!! by Kevin Wine, Jun 27, 2026, 4:38 PM, reply, branch, edit

The second attempt at holding the 2025/2026 election is barely a week from now, July 7th. Since this is the second attempt, the quorum requirement drops to 40% of the units in good standing, which means only 34 more ballots are needed. Therefore, I'm assuming the election will take place on July 7th.

WHY SUFFER?? VOTE!!

VOTING IS THE EASIEST WAY TO GET OUR MAINTENANCE FEES BACK UNDER CONTROL! After this election, if the leadership is the same, I'm sure there will be a "punishment fee", either in the form of an immediate special assessment, and/or as a nice fee increase for 2027. You can be certain I will be blamed for the cost of the board's own mistakes.

If you have not voted yet and are missing the ballot, you are almost out of time to be requesting a replacement. There is the proxy backup plan, where you can complete a proxy form, designate someone else (like me) as your proxy holder, and then mail that to the election administrator. You could put a stamp and mail it, but there is a holiday in between, so you have to do that ASAP!!!! The proxy form is here:

https://www.savethehill.org/Election/Proxies/Proxy2026.pdf

Print it out, and fill it out like this:

https://www.savethehill.org/Legal/2026ProxyCompleted.pdf

If you put me as the proxy holder, you are allowing me to vote for candidates on your behalf. I will vote for Anthony Blanco, Zhaid Khan, Vincent Marchitto, Hitendra Patel, and Kevin Wine.

Scan it and email it to smlenak@greenbaumlaw.com, with the subject of the email "Society Hill Election - PROXY". Don't wait till the last minute - there is a proxy filing deadline.

You also might want to check your maintenance fee account, to make sure there are no surprise charges hiding in there that will cause your vote to be disqualified. The link to the First Service website is:

https://portal.connectresident.com/

There is also the final last-chance option of coming to the meeting in person at 7PM on July 7th. They have to let you vote in person up until 7:15 PM. I'm sure the deadline will be strictly enforced.

In order to participate in the bi-weekly mass email messages, the candidates had to agree not to send any mass emails themselves, but now that the election will most likely take place on July 7th, it is finally safe for me to resume the savethehill emails. Here is a link to the 4th edition, in case you missed it:

https://www.savethehill.org/Legal/2026CandidateEmail4.pdf

The mass emails had their purpose, but there were several content restrictions and a 1-page limit which made it difficult to fully and openly debate the numerous issues before us. Both my statement, and Candidate Marchitto's statements were flagged again this week and had to be "corrected". There are no such restrictions here, so I can give you the rest of the story.

Marchitto's statement originally talked about the recent rash of tire slashings. I have not received any updates on that incident, so it's all speculation on who did it. It's pretty clear that someone was trying to send a message, and there is a chance that someone is not happy about something here in the hill. It is a know fact that the board has done many things which get many people upset, and if they keep pushing and pushing, eventually they will get a reaction by someone that has nothing to lose, or is willing to take a chance. Apparently this line of reasoning was considered inappropriate for mass email distribution, so it had to be removed.

The other part of the message that caused a problem was when Candidate Marchitto attempted to unmask the anonymous author of the the two Society Hill "Truth Social" letter attacks on us. Those letters contain several details that only board insiders would know about. The letters claim that the sender is not one of the candidates, so that kind of narrows things down, doesn't it. That would be President Matthew Phillips, Vice President Mohiuddin Syed, and Secretary Mona Wan. The style is not consistent with Secretary Wan, but is consistent with prior writing of both President Matthew Phillps and Vice President Mohiuddin Syed. Interesting, neither of them were here for some of the events they mention from 15 years ago, so it is likely there are other contributors who could be candidates. In any case, Candidate Marchitto was not allowed to speculate who the anonymous sender might be, so that portion of his message had to be adjusted.

If we do the candidate mass emails in a future election, there will have to be more thought given to content regulation. The idea was to be able to openly debate the issues, and if there are a lot of restrictions, then that purpose is undermined as it is difficult to say what really needs to be said. For example, I would have liked to respond more fully to the numerous "false truths" in the two attack letters, but a single page limit makes that difficult.

Contractor Lawsuit
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As I mentioned weeks ago, the board has gotten itself involved in multiple legal conflicts, including a dispute with the contractor that was originally going to build the new pool retaining wall. The board still doesn't seem to understand the concept of a signed contract, and is trying to wiggle out of another one, after already making a sizable down payment. If you recall, the board was hiding this litigation from me and Trustee Blanco until I received a call from the contractor a few months ago. There was an executive session meeting about this a few weeks later, and I and Trustee Blanco were allowed to participate. There was a good discussion and I asked several questions, one of which I would really like to mention here but if I do I'm sure I will be removed from the board for breaching confidentiality.

The litigation is in the public record, so anyone can go look up the case and see all the filings. The most recent entry happens to be a "substitution of attorney"! The board has finally found a little bit of sense and has submitted the complaint to its D&O insurance carrier. That will cap the future cost at the $5k deductible, taking it out of the hands of Becker, who has already invoiced us for $164k in general legal fees through April 30th.

On the topic of legal fees, I am going back and forth with management, trying to get to the bottom of why $46k of general legal expenses were backed out in April. It turns out the check payments for 24 Becker invoices were voided with no explanation. I am waiting for the details on what happened. I can't find any duplicate invoices, which would be one logical reason. If it was an error I figured it would have been fixed in the May statement, but I don't see that either. Officially on the books as of May 31st the general legal expenses are $112k, which is short by the $46k, and another several thousand from December of 2025, before Becker was officially hired. They just couldn't wait to start running up those fees.

The Appeal
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I assume everyone has received the multiple emails and letters about the lawsuit over the removal of a board member in early March. By the way, this is another example of how the board keeps pushing and pushing, and eventually they will trigger someone that is going to push back. We respond with a website, emails, and lawsuits, and others respond with flat tires. We still believe the authority on which the mediator relied to remove a board member is very questionable. They used the "removal for good cause relating directly to an ability to serve" language in N.J.A.C. 5:26-8.11(b). The decision was made outside the court by a mediator, who has a close working relationship with Becker, the board's attorney. That decision needs to be reviewed. On Friday, June 26th, the necessary paperwork was filed with the NJ Appellate Division, to initiate the appeals process to have the decision reviewed by another court. It is likely that this same backdoor trick has been abused in other associations to remove "problem" board members. It is not too difficult for a board to come up with a new definition of "able to serve", declare a member unable, and remove them. Appeals are tedious and take about a year. The association will have the option of filing a brief if they want, but most of the work is on the appellant (which is us).

The Dumpster Incidents
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Late last week, I heard about 2 more incidents at the clubhouse, involving the property manager and President Matthew Philips, confronting owners using the clubhouse dumpsters to dispose of trash and recycling. President Phillips has appointed himself as the Society Hill Police force, and has no problem aggressively and rudely confronting people at the dumpsters, demanding to see their ID. He needs to blame the recycling dumpster failure on someone other than himself, so "outsiders" using the dumpsters is a good target. In one of the cases, the actual police were called by the resident that felt threatened by President Phillips, and later reported to me that the police where not that nice to her either. Interesting.

One of the owners involved in the confrontation reported that Matt identified himself to her as "a manager at the clubhouse". So I guess that's another secret motion the board majority made and didn't let me know. lol

Maybe if the board leadership over the last 8 years, including Tong Zhou, Mohiuddin Syed, and Matthew Phillips, didn't cancel the community internet project, which included the security cameras, we would have some idea of who is really a resident using the dumpsters and who isn't, and who is running around slashing tires.

The Anonymous Letters
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I see that someone here in the association has co-opted the US President's "Truth Social" concept and has sent two anonymous letters recently, purporting to be the voice of truth in Society Hill.

As mentioned above, the authors are likely to be the Board President Matthew Phillips and/or the Board Vice President Mohiuddin Syed. There is just way too much internal board detail in the letters to be coming from an outsider. If it is an outsider, they certainly had help from some insiders. The letter boldly endorses the other 5 candidates - Teresa Douglas, Mark Kelsey, Jay Patel, Lisette Romero Velez, and Lin-Ing Wang, and claims the letter "was not written, sent, or endorsed by any candidate".

The possibly fatal miscalculation here is that the supporters of either camp have already made up their minds months ago, so these letters will have little to no impact on those groups. If you look at the statistics of Society Hill elections, you will see that the outcome is usually determined by 30 or so "swing voters", that mix and match their votes. Most of these voters read the candidate statements and other documents, give some thought to it, and make a decision based who who they think is best. This group of voters is not a fan of overly negative or attack-style campaign messaging. The letters are in that style. The second one accuses me of being a drug user, and stealing money from the association. For the record, both are false. I have helped a lot of people over the years, especially while I was involved in the management, and I am still being criticized for that. The board had 8 years to conduct all their investigations, found nothing, and never apologized to me for their unfounded accusations. The authors still didn't get the message. Several things they wrote are defamatory, over which they could be sued, which is consistent with their style of doing things that lead to more litigation.

The second letter doubles down on accusing Candidate Marchitto of "assaulting management", when in fact management was never assaulted. Notice how the same person that is "assaulting" owners at the dumpsters, is accusing others of assaulting people. It accuses Candidate Blanco of not enabling his video in zoom while at the same time President Phillips and Vice President Syed rarely have their video turned on. It quotes Candidate Marchitto saying something he never said, after blasting what he did say in their "litigation update". The dues have not been lowered in the last 7 years because the big spenders have had a voting majority on the board the whole time! It has nothing to do with any state laws. Costs may have gone up, but that is being used as an excuse and a cover up for nearly a million dollars of wasteful spending over the same time period. Just because other associations in Piscataway are naive enough to allow themselves to be taken advantage of by the contractors, doesn't mean we need to fall in line and be robbed also!! Management's "Continuing the Progress" email clearly said the pool retaining wall is complete, when in fact it wasn't even started - photographic evidence was provided. The recycling dumpsters are run by Middlesex County, but the board needs to figure out how to fix the problem rather than throwing up their hands and assigning blame. I could go on, but I think this is enough to expose the hypocrisy, and most people are tired already and just want lower fees and less drama.

Kevin