JP Neighborhood Council Member Resigns Before First Meeting

The new-look JP Neighborhood Council met for the first time on Tuesday.

But one of the advisory group's freshly-elected members resigned even before taking his seat.

Brian Squadrille resigned because his work schedule conflicts with Neighborhood Council meetings, Councilor Andrea Howley told fellow council members and spectators at the council's Tuesday meeting at Rogerson House.

Squadrille did not respond to an email from JP Patch. He was a participant in many of the Whole Foods-related meetings and was among those who had a banner ripped away from them by police at a community "town hall" in June. Three people were arrested at that meeting and charged with disturbing a public assembly. On JP Patch, he went by the user name Sureño (Brian Squadrilli).

The other 15 councilors elected Saturday did show up. The 20-member board is much changed from its previous term, returning only seven incumbents after the bruising battle over Whole Foods coming to JP.

Counting Squadrille's abandoned seat, five seats remain to be filled on the volunteer board. It makes neighborhood-level recommendations to city boards such as the Zoning Board of Appeals, though it holds no direct power and is sometimes overruled.

The Neighborhood Council will fill those five seats by appointment after advertising the vacancies. Persons interested must live in either the Area A or Area B council districts.

Squadrille has been a strong anti-Whole Foods voice. He recently signed a letter from the anti-gentrification group Whose Foods that demanded the grocer give 1 percent of the JP's store's revenues to "anti-displacement organizing" and an affordable housing fund.

Whole Foods, which plans to open a store in Hyde Square later this fall, rejected the idea of a signed "Good Neighbor Agreement" put forward by the Neighborhood Council. Instead, the grocer said it follows its own corporate policies about giving back to the communities where they have stores.