POPBA Holds Board of Directors Holiday Dinner Party

It was a wonderful night for the Point of Pines Beach Association (POPBA). On Dec. 12, Gary Ferragamo, the recently elected president of the POPBA, treated his entire board of directors of the POPBA to a filet mignon dinner in the North End.  “This was just a small gesture from me to every member of my board to say thank you and to let them know how much I appreciate all the time and effort each of them volunteered that past summer to keep our beautiful beach clean and safe for all our residents to enjoy.  It was a really awesome dinner with perfectly cooked and very delicious filet mignon for everyone, along with fresh-grilled, large asparagus and huge baked stuffed potato with all the fixings,” said Ferragamo.

“First and foremost I must thank several people for without their help, this amazing dinner may not possibly been able to happen. A very special Thank you goes to BJ’s Wholesale Club in Revere who donated much of the food.  Another special thank you goes to Alex Herrara, partner/owner/chef of Rigoletto Restaurant on Salem Street in the North End of Boston for hosting and cooking the food. And a final thank you to Dan Luberto of Luberto’s Pastry Shop in Revere for donating a beautiful and delicious custom made cake for the POPBA,” Ferragamo said.  You can see the cake on the table in the picture. It was beautiful and delicious and had the new POPBA logo on it.

This journey all only started last June, when the POPBA elected Gary Ferragamo, a Pines resident for 16 years, as their new president.  Gary served on the board for several years back in the mid 2000s, but has not been involved at all for the past six-seven years.  However, he always felt that the Point of Pines was a very special, very rare, wonderful and amazing place to live.

After being elected president, Gary ran a monthly board meeting every month.  Each board meeting had an agenda with important points to discuss, discussion from all board members on options to achieve them, then clear direction on getting them completed.

“This past summer of 2017 we accomplished many, many amazing things here in the Point of Pines” said Ferragamo.  Here are some of them.

“We introduced, voted on and accepted a new POPBA logo.

“We produced a new POPBA monthly/quarterly Newsletter that many feel is an extremely important way to communicate to all the approximate 450 homes here in the Pines.

“We re-introduced street captains, whose purpose is to distribute the newsletters to every home on their assigned street, get to know who is and is not a member, and to answer any questions they may have.

“We created and introduced a new laminated POPBA membership card.

“We created and introduced a new discount and perks program that gives every ‘current’ member of the POPBA a membership card and discounts to dozens of local restaurants, businesses, etc.

“We conducted our first official membership drive/contest.

“We completed six, expensive beach-access walkway repairs.

“We cleaned our beach, what many are saying, better than most recent years anyone can remember.

“We are all so proud of the fact that this past summer we even had our beach professionally cleaned and raked with large bulldozers, backhoes, dump trucks, etc., and possibly for the first time ever, even a beach rake machine, all of which were donated to us from Steve Caruso of Caruso Construction in Revere.  However, possibly our most important achievement was that we surpassed the 200 POPBA membership mark for the first time on over 15 years.”

Ferragamo continues, “Again, with all these achievements, many of them would not have been possible without the time, energy and efforts volunteered by everyone on the POPBA board of directors.  With that said, I would like to give a very heartfelt and sincere, Thank you, to each and every one of the board of directors.”  Bring on 2018!