ZBA Hearing - July 28, 2026

he can't be testifying it as an expert on the law or the constitution of the

of the Commonwealth, but, uh, right. I would say, cause so we're, we're going to be okay,

taking a written report from them. Right. And then response, your, your summaries would be

go back. And even that point, you could make a comment relative if she tried to do that. Right.

That's fine. Okay. Yes, chairman. I, as long as we can reserve any objection to the report,

Right, right. And then again, in light of before making a legal argument.

and then again in in light of before making uh legal argument do you want legal argument uh

following this hearing you want just witnesses now or well the legal arguments will be in the

summaries at the end right okay all right um so why don't we do your witnesses now

certainly right and we'll go from there okay all right thank you very much uh by the way we we go

So, Mr. Chair, I would just like to point out that I know that you're on similar and Serena Eisenberg are in the audience, and that they would like to officially intervene in this matter.

And the board, the chair can let us know how you would like them to do that.

I don't know. I mean, we're, we're almost done. I mean, I don't.

it's also an appeal yeah you know right this case is you know so uh we we won't do that we won't do

that they would just like to intervene um with the appellants and and there's no additional

evidence to be added for that i i would find it highly objectionable at this stage yeah yeah

and so do i i mean why don't we why don't we move on you have two witnesses sean uh yes i have two

witnesses both of whom will be very quick all right why don't we move okay uh chairman i would

call uh christopher blatney christopher christopher brattney is coming in as the panelist now thank

you you're welcome hi i've uh hi good morning could you please state your name and spell for

the stenographer yes christopher blatney um last name is spelled b's and boy l-a-t-n-e-y

all right do you swear or affirm to tell the truth whole truth nothing but the truth

I do.

Ansel?

Thank you very much.

Mr. Blatney, you're here as the owner of the property, correct?

Yes.

And can you briefly describe the property to us?

Just a residential lot that was purchased years ago with the intent to build a home on it.

It was then sold to another party who subdivided the property and also wanted to develop homes on the lot.

Ended up buying the lot back from him and proceeded to work on design to build a single family home for the property as originally purchased.

Okay. And did you retain any experts when you started to proceed towards the design of the home?

Yes. I mean, I'm not a design person, so I hired engineering professionals to help with the development of the land to make sure it met the requirements for zoning in order to move a project forward. So, yes, hired engineering and other counsel to help with that.

Okay. And is Michael Galante the name of that engineer?

Yes, it is.

Thank you.

Um, and if a single family house is not allowed on this property, are you aware of any other

use that you could put this property to objection relevance? I asked whether he's aware of any other

use that he could put the property to. No. Thank you. Um, I have no further questions.

Dawn, do you have questions?

Briefly.

Mr. Blatney, are you aware that there's never been any development on this property?

I'm not aware of that, but it doesn't look like there is.

And are you the owner of this property, or is this part of a self-directed IRA?

I own the property in an IRA, correct.

i have no further questions leonard next witness thank you very much mr blatney thank you i would

call michael galante okay while he's coming on uh mr tancredi mr reuter do you want me to walk

through mr galante's credentials and experience or would you just accept him as a licensed engineer

in the state of penn state of pennsylvania i mean the city stipulates to his expertise

i would stipulate as well okay thank you i do not see michael galante in a virtual audience

I do not see Michael Galante in a virtual audience.

Okay.

He texted me that he was on.

Galante, G-A-L-A.

G-A-L-A-N-T-E.

Okay.

Jared, do you mind if I try calling you real quick?

Sure.

Yeah, that person is not in the audience.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Why don't you log out because you can see the, yeah, usually, he said you can see it

here.

Okay.

Okay.

Sean could you pull the mic closer yeah we're going to figure that out once once you finish

okay all right and you know all three you'll have an input into that

are we still waiting on michael galante we are

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Do you think they'll see all of us?

Sure.

Yeah.

It should be, plus he sees us, I don't understand, but it looks to me like an angel, but it

And hear us, but not actually be visible.

Right.

so while while we're sitting here um lynn the date we gave uh the last group

not there's what one we would though let's let's figure out when we were vote if we could work

backwards from that excuse me michael galante has been promoted all right thank you thank you

good morning sir good morning hi could you please state your name is bill for the sonographer

yeah michael galante m-i-c-h-a-e-l-g-a-l-a-n-t-e right do you swear referring to tell the truth

the whole truth nothing but the truth yes counsel uh thank you mr galante while you were working on

getting uh involved in this hearing uh counsel all agreed to accept you and stipulate to your

The council all agreed to accept you and stipulate to your expertise and experience as an engineer and a licensed engineer.

expertise.

So if you could, please just state where you practice and confirm that you are a licensed engineer in the state.

Yeah, I'm a licensed engineer in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, state of New Jersey.

I practice. My office address is 334 West Front Street, Media, PA.

Thank you very much.

19063. Yep.

And Mr. Galante, what is your involvement with 118 Hillcrest?

I got involved in 2020, around that time, probably a little bit before that, and been working with the owner on developing a plan to develop the property for a residential home.

Okay. And did you ultimately develop a plan for a residential home?

Yes.

And were you the zoning applicant to license and inspections for that home?

Okay.

And could you walk me through that process, please?

Yeah.

At the time, when I first started working on the project, it was before, I think it predated the Eclipse system.

Because every time, at the time, you had to go actually into the building, meet with the planning department, go through the plan, and obtain their sign-off on the plan.

And over that time, I remember meeting with the planner at the time, Keith Davis, who actually forwarded me.

We worked on the overlay district.

At one point, I received a mapping and their location on where they saw the 200-foot overlay.

And that's how we developed it on the plan.

Okay.

And then over time, if you want me to just go through the rest of the history, the plan was submitted to the city over time.

it was clear that the 200-foot line was on the property. The driveway was considered impervious

surface. At some point during that process, permeable pavers were not considered impervious

surface, and therefore, we were able to obtain our zoning approval. Okay, so Mr. Galante, is it

fair to characterize the process as a lengthy one with significant back and forth between yourself

as the applicant and the reviewers at l and i i think yes i would say yes 100 okay and

chair i'm going to share my screen quickly

mr galante are you seeing a site plan on the screen yes uh is this the approved plan that

you received from the city that is the stamp plan from the planning commission correct

okay and uh in here there's a blue arrow with a note uh can you read that note for me please

no new impervious within 200 feet of waterfront is met per pwd's approval of the porous asphalt

driveway and that says kd kd yeah keith davis kd is keith davis i believe and pc pc um i believe

that's philadelphia planning commission some language there okay and mr galante uh how did

you learn of this 200 foot setback arc that's right here uh from from i learned that from

I received a map from the city where they actually utilized their available mapping and sent me where they depicted the line.

Okay, so this was not a line that you created or came up with in any way, correct?

It was in conjunction with the City of Philadelphia Planning Department.

Okay. And other than get just receiving that line from that arc from them, not a line, uh, from the city, did you have any input or, or feedback with the city as to where that line belonged or where it went?

Um, I've generally just, you know, my recollection was back in 2019, 2020, that, that time, um, as when I first developed the line, um, it was, it was based on the map that was provided.

okay so you you fully relied upon materials that were provided to you from lni that is correct

and ultimately you received a zoning permit and had final stamped approved plans from the city

correct correct thank you very much i have no further questions mr sangray do you have any

questions? Don, you're muted. Hello? Sorry about that. Do you have any questions? I do. Mr. Galante, you stated that you received a map from the city.

Mr. Galante, you stated that you received a map from the city indicating where you should start your measurement from?

It actually depicted the 200-foot line as they determined it based on their records.

And do you have a copy of that map?

Yes.

Could you share that with us?

um i could i don't know if i have i'm not on my computer but i could forward the email

to uh miss sean and he could share it yeah the objection i haven't seen that before so

i i would just ask sean do you know if that map is different than the map that's been

presented in evidence as part of the exhibits i do not

i i haven't seen this email so i'm not sure i've only seen documents so i'm not sure

what specifically is attached to this email okay mr galante is the map marked up or is it just a

copy of the city swales and streams map no it's marked up okay i would like to see a copy of that

sure

and Sean this was sent for the record

Sean this was sent to you on April

17th 2023

so you should have a copy somewhere

Did you send it? Mr. Galanta sending it right now?

All right, it's sent.

Chair, I haven't received it yet. I'm happy to do this as a post hearing submission or how you want this like.

Okay, so it's Tancredi's, yes.

Donna, are you still there?

Yes, I am.

Okay.

So the question would be where I was looking at, what's the date that we're

going to vote on the other one?

Find me.

Yeah, but what I want to do is what is the vote date?

August 26th.

August 26th, we were looking to vote on this.

So the question is working backwards. Can we accomplish what we need to accomplish to get to that? Right. So what do you want to talk submission date? Submission date would be August 12th for her witness report. Same as his. And then August 19th. Yeah. If he's going to do that. And then August 19th for the closings or, you know, anything like that. Does everybody agree to that?

uh mr chair i would have to check with mr schusterman i know that in general the next

listing date would have been further out than that and i'm not i'm certain what his vacation plans are

so i don't know if two weeks is enough time i would have to check with him well okay um

i i i i think i i think if possible i mean he didn't show up today right we we thought he was

going on right and so we're going to give him a date and i i would want him to adhere to that date

if it's not possible i'll reach back out to the board if there's

accentuating circumstances but i would would very much appreciate if we get him

to do that okay that way we can come to some closure when we get to uh the vote date okay

Okay. Thank you very much. We'll three agree. Yes, I agree. I do have further questions for Mr. Galante. Sure, go ahead. Okay. Go ahead. So, Mr. Galante, on the email and the document that will be forwarded to me, you're stating that that shows you where the starting point was for your measurement of the 200 feet?

Yeah, it took an overlay of the city, I guess you call that, like that yellowish map with the contours on it. Then it took a GIS map of the parcels, and it also took a depiction of our plan, and the city planner overlaid it for us.

Okay, so you did not do the overlay yourself?

The city planner provided it to me.

And then we then, in turn, added it to our plan.

Okay. And as an engineer, do you have any duty to make sure that that's accurate?

Well, based on, and well, it was, it was multiple.

Well, it was multiple interpretations back and forth of where we would have thought that line would have been based on the mapping that we have.

So I would say that there was a lot of due diligence that went in to actually verifying the accuracy of that line.

You said there were multiple interpretations. Did you have a different interpretation?

well you know you would take the map that's provided by the city that's in their records

and check your 200 foot distance and see where that resides on your property uh i don't recall

every back and forth remember we're in the office at the time so i would go up to the office bring

the plan try to overlay my plan based on that maps that they have and then eventually got to

the point where they just provided me where they said the overlay should be and that's what you

have depicted in front of you in the zoning the approved zoning plan um and who came up with the

multiple interpretations mr tancredi i apologize for interrupting um leonard believes he found the

map that uh mr galante might be referring to i'm gonna just share my screen this i believe was

already testified to uh under keith davis's testimony so i'm if i can share my screen and

mr galante could either confirm or not confirm uh that this is the same map that he's referring to

yes thank you i have to be promoted first okay

somebody's promoting this already happened okay

mr chairman while we wait we should probably put the time of the vote we just said the date of the

vote it's 9 30. yeah yep 9 30. thank you thank you um if nobody objects i'll just ask mr galanti

uh can you see this uh document that i'm sharing on my screen yes is that the map you're talking

about um he generally yeah i mean there's a um do you have the one i just emailed

it's pretty much the same interpretation i think that the map you may be referring to does not have

the green yes it doesn't have the the map i'm referring to does not have the uh the the aerial

imagery on the back oh i see okay yeah so it's not the exact map i emailed over but you've received

a map basically like this similar yes and and that map that you got showed the boundary where

the magenta circle is yes okay um mr henkrey i'm sorry i i interrupted if you had any further

questions oh thank you so uh mr galanta you mentioned there were multiple interpretations

where did the multiple interpretations come from well it would be overlays based on the ones that