A, B, C - parallelism error. The correct usage should be 'as the former chair .......and a former board member' to clearly express the meaining
D - run on sentence

E - I agree with you that to clearly express the meaning tense should be 'has attended'. once the 'former' is removed from the sentence there is no time information

this is clearly a problem that gmat test makers want to test your understanding of sentence correction. you don't want to use "former" because it wouldn't make sense. It sounds like, Joan Philkill was a former chairman (retired) and still attending the meetings. You want to make this sentence sound clear so you would use "as the" chair of the planning board.

Sentence doesn't say he is attending, it says he attended

Answer choice A indicates that Joan, for 18 years, was the former chair; it doesn't make sense to think that she would be attending meetings while she was the former chair. The sentence is attempting to indicate that Joan served for 18 years as the chair, and during this time she attended meetings. Thus, E is more clear and precise in its meaning than is A.

We have two shortlisted answers:

1) As the former
2) As the

The former does nt appear in- board member but he can be a former chairman but still a board member- so in name of parallelism- you cannot rule out that option

Attended or has attended -what is right?? This is for sure that he has been attending meetings during past years but are we sure that he is attending meetings now or nt?

Why As the former is nt the right answer?

Tough question- can any expert pls reply in detail

why can't "As the Former" option be correct?

This sentence is more to do with the meaning..

He was serving as the board member for 28 yrs..of which 18 yrs he served as the chair person.

So parallelism comes to rescue...

As the chair....and a board member....

jus an example...

As a ProjectManager for 25yrs, John has attended 400 meetings and reviewed more than 300 applications.

John till date has attended 400 meetings and reviewed 300 apps till date...

It doesn't mean that he is not going to attend any more..

arvindm07 wrote:why can't "As the Former" option be correct?

Because, "As the former chair... for 18 consecutive years", isn't the right construction. We automatically know what it means, but technically its saying that this person has been the former chair for 18 years, that it's been 18 years since they've been the chair.

As for why it shouldn't be "has attended", "attended" means they have stopped going to these meetings. "Has attended" leaves open the possibility that they are still going to these meetings.

E..

As the blah blah blah

Here

As is used "in the capacity of "