|
|
The foundation is also asking the board to allow a six-week summer camp, increase its full-time staff, increase its Sunday School classes, allow for more people to attend its Friday Juma Prayer session and increase its holiday attendance to allow for up to 400 participants.
But officials from the foundation spent most of the meeting fending off allegations from residents.
Attorney Jim Greenfield, representing a group of residents living near the foundation, raised concerns over whether a registered sex offender was spending time on the foundation's property.
Greenfield entered into testimony the page from the state's Megan's Law Web site on Farhat Mghirbi.
Mghirbi was convicted in Delaware in 1999 of unlawful sexual contact with a 15-year-old girl, according to court records.
Pennsylvania law requires individuals convicted of certain sex crimes to be registered where they live and work. The information is then put on the state's Megan's Law Web site for the general public.
Later, two residents testified that they saw Mghirbi at the foundation around the spring of 2005.
"There was an open house ... that's when we saw him," neighbor Mark Hershorin said.
When asked by board member Robert Fox what Mghirbi was doing during the open house, Hershorin said he was mingling.
The foundation's director, Manal El-Menshawy, denied knowing who Mghirbi was and said the FBI sent agents to the foundation and showed her a photo of him, asking her if she knew him. She testified that she told them that she had never seen him.
Later, Greenfield also entered into testimony a summary of Lower Merion police calls to the address of the foundation, to which the attorney for the foundation objected.
"This is a meaningless list of information," foundation attorney Fred Fromhold said as he looked over the list of police calls.
Fromhold objected to entering the list, saying there were no details on the police list and the calls could have come from people making calls from the street in front of the foundation.
The board did not make a decision on the foundation's request, but could in the next few weeks.
A scheduled hearing on the plan for Waverly Heights to expand its facility by constructing 18 villa residential units and expand its nursing unit was put on hold until June 8 Zoning Board meeting.
