2013 Babbs Award Goes to Bernadette Kelly

The award was presented to Kelly at the GPHC Annual Meeting by 2012 recipient Tracey MacDermott.  The text of her speech follows

This year’s recipient has been a jack of all trades, a voice of reason, a quiet force, is the calmness in the middle of the storm and someone who I am honored to call friend. This year’s award goes to Bernadette Kelly.

Bernadette has gone above and beyond the call of duty this past year on behalf of GPHC.  She continued to act as the Secretary for both the monthly GPHC Board Meeting and the monthly/bimonthly Executive Committee Meetings – now that’s a lot of minutes!  While continuing to serve as the Zoning Chair and the District 5 Representative, Bernadette also willingly took on the role of Newspaper Manager on behalf of GPHC.  In addition, she became a monthly contributor to the Greater Park Hill News by writing a monthly “Z & P 500” article to share important zoning information with the Park Hill community.

Bernadette continued to serve as the GPHC representative for the Independent Neighborhood Cooperative (INC), Zoning and Planning (ZAP) Committee representative throughout 2013.  In this role, she attended the ZAP meetings, held monthly, on Saturday morning.  In this capacity, one of the Bernadette’s undertakings was to review the liquor license rule changes proposed by the City.  Bernadette reviewed the liquor license code, line-by-line, and attended the hearing on behalf of GPHC, where she offered detailed feedback on the proposed changes.  Now that’s commitment!

At the request of the GPHC Executive Committee, Bernadette performed an audit of the GPHC office, when the previous Executive Director resigned.  The office audit enabled the Executive Committee to gain a much better understand the tasks and duties assigned to the ED position, and allowed the Executive Committee to reassign and restructure the duties.   She attended every board meeting and every EC meeting, missing only one to go on a much needed and deserved vacation.  Bernadette assisted the GPHC Chair with the Independent Contractor Agreements, as well as, met with several neighbors seeking zoning variances or zoning exceptions.   Bernadette participated in the hiring processes for the Executive Director and Graphic Design/Layout Artist positions AND took the lead on the posting, scheduling interviews and hiring of the new Ad Sales Representative.

Before Bernadette stepped in, and up, to serve as the Greater Park Hill Newspaper Manager, it was not unusual to have numerous complaint calls and voice mails from frustrated neighbors and blockworkers.  As the Greater Park Hill Newspaper Manager, Bern listened to the newspaper staff, learned the newspaper processes and began leading the newspaper team.  Since becoming the Newspaper Manager Bern has successfully fielded questions from callers and has reduced the complaint calls to zero over the past eight consecutive months – great job Bern!

Bernadette was “there” for GPHC 110% this last year, and GPHC is better because of it!

Thank you Bernadette for all you’ve done on behalf of GPHC since volunteering to serve as the Greater Park Hill Community, Inc.,  District 5 Board Representative and the Property Use Committee Co-Chair in March 2008.   Your contributions are many and are greatly appreciated.