(May 26, 2016) When two men from a local nonprofit came to ask the Berlin mayor and Town Council to waive the $65 application fee for a wheelchair ramp, the town went one better by waiving the fee for all such ramps for the entire fiscal year.
Chesapeake Housing Mission Executive Director Don Taylor and Vice Chairman Rick Nelson came to Town Hall on Monday evening to address what would be their first project in Berlin: building a ramp onto the home of 91-year-old Nadia Shockley.
Shockley, who lives on Branch Street, is the aunt of Berlin Councilmember Elroy Brittingham.
“We’re a Christian mission who believes that God calls on us to help one another,” Taylor said in an interview before the meeting. “We have no full-time, paid employees – it’s all volunteers, and we enlisted over 1,000 volunteers last year in our projects.”
The mission finished 58 projects last year for people living below the poverty line in the four lower counties. Most of the projects were for wheelchair ramps, with 14 of them installed in Worcester County.
Nelson said the mission had first gone to Berlin Planning and Zoning, which referred them to the Town Council.
“We’d like to introduce ourselves because they probably haven’t heard about us, but we’re not just a shot in the dark,” Nelson said. “We’ve been doing this for a long time. We build safe ramps, we get background checks for all of our volunteers and we want to give the town a good feeling of why we do it.”
If the mission had to pay administrative fees for every project it did, Nelson said that would add up for roughly $3,000-4,000.
“That would be about two less projects we could do,” he said.
Taylor said volunteers last year put in more than 7,0000 hours of work.
No experience is needed to volunteer. The mission offers training, and provides all of the tools needed – literally and figuratively.
“What we’re really doing is bringing communities together,” he said. “We’re asking you to give a day. Building the ramp is part of it, but the fact is that you took your time and sat with someone who you would probably have never meet, and you showed them that you cared. To me, that’s as powerful as the ramp is.”
During the meeting, Planning Director Dave Engelhart said there was precedent in the town for waiving administrative fees for nonprofits, citing the Small Miracles group that made a similar request in 2014.
Brittingham noted that he would not vote on the motion to grant the single exception, because Shockley was his “mother’s sister.”
“She’s a little over 91 years old and … she’s been in a hospital and nursing home,” he said. “We thought she would never get out of the nursing home. She is living independent and she’s trying to get that ramp not only to get to church, but she wants to drive her car.”
An expanded motion to wave “any and all” handicapped ramp fees, proposed by Councilmember Troy Purnell, passed unanimously. According to the language, the planning director must ask the council to renew it each year.
For more information on Chesapeake Housing Mission, or to volunteer, visit www.chesapeakehousingmission.org.
Chesapeake Housing Mission Executive Director Don Taylor and Vice Chairman Rick Nelson came to Town Hall on Monday evening to address what would be their first project in Berlin: building a ramp onto the home of 91-year-old Nadia Shockley.
Shockley, who lives on Branch Street, is the aunt of Berlin Councilmember Elroy Brittingham.
“We’re a Christian mission who believes that God calls on us to help one another,” Taylor said in an interview before the meeting. “We have no full-time, paid employees – it’s all volunteers, and we enlisted over 1,000 volunteers last year in our projects.”
The mission finished 58 projects last year for people living below the poverty line in the four lower counties. Most of the projects were for wheelchair ramps, with 14 of them installed in Worcester County.
Nelson said the mission had first gone to Berlin Planning and Zoning, which referred them to the Town Council.
“We’d like to introduce ourselves because they probably haven’t heard about us, but we’re not just a shot in the dark,” Nelson said. “We’ve been doing this for a long time. We build safe ramps, we get background checks for all of our volunteers and we want to give the town a good feeling of why we do it.”
If the mission had to pay administrative fees for every project it did, Nelson said that would add up for roughly $3,000-4,000.
“That would be about two less projects we could do,” he said.
Taylor said volunteers last year put in more than 7,0000 hours of work.
No experience is needed to volunteer. The mission offers training, and provides all of the tools needed – literally and figuratively.
“What we’re really doing is bringing communities together,” he said. “We’re asking you to give a day. Building the ramp is part of it, but the fact is that you took your time and sat with someone who you would probably have never meet, and you showed them that you cared. To me, that’s as powerful as the ramp is.”
During the meeting, Planning Director Dave Engelhart said there was precedent in the town for waiving administrative fees for nonprofits, citing the Small Miracles group that made a similar request in 2014.
Brittingham noted that he would not vote on the motion to grant the single exception, because Shockley was his “mother’s sister.”
“She’s a little over 91 years old and … she’s been in a hospital and nursing home,” he said. “We thought she would never get out of the nursing home. She is living independent and she’s trying to get that ramp not only to get to church, but she wants to drive her car.”
An expanded motion to wave “any and all” handicapped ramp fees, proposed by Councilmember Troy Purnell, passed unanimously. According to the language, the planning director must ask the council to renew it each year.
For more information on Chesapeake Housing Mission, or to volunteer, visit www.chesapeakehousingmission.org.