July-Early August 2013
Vol. 9, No. 4
410-641-6029
www.issuu.com/oceanpinesprogress
Budget committee moves forward with municipality study
THE OCEAN PINES JOURNAL OF NEWS & COMMENTARY COVER STORY
OFF AND RUNNING Competing for the OPA board of directors as opponents of some past board decisions, Langevin and Collins adopt some positions at odds with their competitors. NEWS ANALYSIS By TOM STAUSS Publisher ot running as a team but with overlapping views, two of the candidates running for the Ocean Pines Association’s board of directors this summer have staked out positions that set them apart from their competitors. Ocean Pines property owners will decide whether or not those differences matter. Ballots are scheduled to be mailed to eligible property owners during the second week of July. Ballots are due back to the OPA for counting on the day before the OPA’s annual meeting in August. These two candidates, Roland Langevin and Jack Collins, have never run for a seat on the board, and therefore can more easily set themselves as opponents of the status quo. At the June 24 candidates forum sponsored by the Ocean Pines Elections Committee, both candidates, to varying degrees, took issue with the sitting board on certain issues. And that wasn’t as easy as it could have been, because the questions posed by the Elections Committee were pedestrian, almost as if designed not to elicit sharp distinctions among the candidates. The first one was a real brain twister: What’s the main function of the OPA? The second one was based on a faulty premise: How would you build the OPA’s operational budget? That’s faulty because the board doesn’t build the operational budget, the general manager
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and his staff does. The board’s job is to review it, make any changes that a majority believes is justified, and then approve it. The Elections Committee came under some criticism recently for meeting in closed session to draft the questions for use in the forum, which technically is a violation of the Maryland Homeowners Association Act. Had the committee’s questions been fully vetted in public, the committee might have been peruaded to replace them with more substantive ones. After the committee’s queries were dispatched with little disagreement – Langevin was the notable exception to the rule – the candidates each had a turn asking one other candidate a question during the forum. For the most part these questions weren’t particularly probing, either. OPA President Tom Terry, who is running for a second three-year term on the
board, did turn the tables on Langevin at one point by informing him that, contrary to a statement by Langevin, the Java Bay café at the Yacht Club has not lost $1 million since it opened more than two years ago. What Langevin might have said had he researched the issue in more detail is that there is no separate accounting for the Java Bay café at the Yacht Club and that no one knows how much the café has lost since its inception. It’s probably not been responsible for generating $1 million in losses, but that’s at best an educated guess. The fact, it’s not been a financial success. At several moments during the forum, Langevin in particular was adamant in his view that the OPA spends too much and collects too much in assessments. At one point he suggested that the new two-story, 20,200 square foot Yacht Club now under construction is too large and probably doomed to lose money for the OPA once it’s opened to the public. He said the referendum that approved up to $4.3 million for a new Yacht Club only passed because lower cost alternatives were not available on the ballot. Lanvegin also is running as an unabashed critic of General Manager Bob Thompson. In contrast, Collins steered clear of anti-Thompson rhetoric during the forum, telling property owners um that at one time he and Thompson once worked for the same bank. He did suggest at one point that the board needed to do a betTo Page 21
While personally agnostic on whether creating a municipality to govern much of Ocean Pines and environs is in the interests of residents and members of the Ocean Pines Association, members of the OPA’s budget and finance advisory committee are certain of this much: It’s an idea worth considering and deserves additional study, despite the issue’s many complexities and hurdles in the way. At the committee’s June 28 meeting, members unanimously agreed to proceed with further study, with the next step inviting representatives of the Maryland Municipal League to a committee meeting as soon as possible. ~ Page 8
Capital improvement plan falls short policy of objectives The first phase of a draft capital improvement plan presented to the Ocean Pines Association’s board of directors by General Manager Bob Thompson at the board’s June 26 monthly meeting falls substantially short of policy objectives specified in a motion offered by Director Dan Stachurski last September. At best, it’s only a down payment on what Stachurski’s motion was intended to accomplish – “a comprehensive, accurate, workable ten-year plan including requisite work and financing that the board can vote to approve in June, 2013.” ~ Page 10
Terry repeats his warning to Casper during election forum When candidates for the Ocean Pines Association board of directors in this summer’s election discussed amenity out-sourcing during the June 14 Election Committee-sponsored forum, it was OPA President Tom Terry who was the most outspoken on the need for one particular outside contractor to perform – or else. The contractor at issue was Billy Casper Golf, which is the third year of its contract to manage the Ocean Pines golf course. Terry told Ocean Pines OPA members that he had informed Casper executives, with the contract up in the fall, there would be “no excuses” for poor financial performance. ~ Page 22