Third Board seat to be filled in this summer’s election

Daly follows through with resignation in time to allow the newly created vacancy to appear on the the ballot

By TOM STAUSS Publisher

Four Ocean Pines Association members have filed as candidates in this summer’s Board of Directors elections, with three of them guaranteed to fill one of three seats to be contested.

A third vacancy was created in mid-June by the formal resignation from the Board of Frank Daly, who would have been serving the final year of a year-three beginning this August.

The OPA by-laws spell out options for dealing with vacancies that occur, and the Board opted for the one that allows OPA members to fill the vacancy in this summer’ balloting.

Before Daly’s resignation, only two vacancies would have been filled in this summer’s balloting, from among the four candidates.

In accord with the OPA by-laws, the top two finishers in the election will serve three-year terms beginning this August, while the third place finisher will serve out the final year of Daly’s term that runs from August, 2023, to August of 2024.

The four candidates running for the Board are Elaine Brady, John Latham, Jeff Heavner and Jerry Murphy. Profiles of the four candidates appeared in previous editions of the Progress, which are archived at issuu.com/ oceanpinesprogress.

All four candidates responded to a Progress question-answer survey that begins on Page 35, along with questions formulated earlier by the Election Committee.

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In addition, the candidates responded to even more questions posed by the Elections Committee in a candidates forum June 19. A video of the forum is available for viewing by a link provided on the OPA Website.

The Progress will be publishing a special edition the week of June 26 covering the forum. It will be distributed electronically via local social media. It also will be available at issuu.com/oceanpinesprogress.

In a June 2 meeting of the Elections Committee, chairman Tom Piatti confirmed that ballots will be mailed by the OPA’s new elections vendor in Washington State on July 11, and must be mailed back no later than Tuesday, Aug. 8, one day earlier than what would normally occur.

“We’re going to give a day to see if any ballots are dropped off Tuesday” at the dropbox at the police department, in which case these late ballots will be sent by FedX to Washington state for counting, he said.

He noted that Board Resolution M-06 says that the deadline for returning Ballot envelopes for the election of directors “shall be prior to” the end of Association regular business hours on the Wednesday before the annual meeting of the members in August.

That language does not preclude the committee from moving up the deadline one day earlier than the traditional Wednesday, he said, because the deadline is still “prior to” the end of regular business hours on Wednesday.

M-06 also references the same deadline for electronic ballots, which the Board earlier this year decided to forgo in favor of paper-only ballots to be sent to each lot of record whose owners are in good standing.

That decision will allow the new vendor, Election Trust, of Bainbridge Island,Washington State, the opportunity to conduct what Elections Committee members hope will be a flawless, controversy-free election.

That in turn will likely lead to a formal recommendation by the Committee to resume a hybrid paper and electronic voting process next year.

During the June 2 committee meeting, Piatti said that of the 8500 or so eligible lots in Ocean Pines, about 7800 are in good standing with paid up annual lot assessments and no established violations on record with the OPA’s Department of Compliance, Permits and Inspections.

Each of these lots will receive ballots, a departure of practice of recent years in which owners of multiple lots did not receive one ballot per lot.

Last year, such owners were told they had to request additional ballots from the OPA administration offices if they wanted to cast ballots for each lot owned, but it was an instruction that was not well communicated and thus some owners of multiple lots were to some extent disenfranchised.

The former Elections Committee tried to encourage mutiple lot owners to cast ballots electronically, but the message either was not received or many of these voters preferred to cast paper ballots in the usual manner.

Another change this year is that every OPA member with a valid email address on file with the OPA will receive a confirmation email from Election Trust that a ballot has been received and counted in the election.

This is the first time that such a confirmation has occurred in the history of Ocean Pines elections.

Piatti advised that property owners who want to receive such notification should make sure that a valid email address is on file with the OPA.

“A lot of people haven’t updated their Mediacom addresses to Comcast,” he said, urging members to check to make sure their addresses are up to date.

A spread sheet file containing the names and email addresses of OPA members will be forwarded to Election Trust and in turn will be used to generate the confirmation emails to members, Piatti said.

Those without email addresses on file with the OPA won’t receive confirmation.

Committee members will be available throughout the election season to answer questions from OPA members by phone. The dedicated number is 410-208-3989. Calls will be checked twice a day and returned, Piatti said.

Also during the June 2 meeting, the Board’s liaison to the Elections Committee, Rick Farr, complimented the committee for a job well done in working through issues related to this summer’s election, including the momentous decision to replace a local vendor who has handled the mailing and collection of ballots in OPA elections for more than 20 years with a vendor that can handle the sending out, collection and counting of ballots with no direct involvement of committee members in the counting process.

This year, the vote count will be monitored on-line by committee members and any OPA members who wants to view the process, which is expected to take much less than time than it has in past years.

The deadline for ballots to arrive in the offices of Election Trust is Wednesday, Aug. 9 by 4 p.m.

Ballots will be counted on Thursday, Aug. 10, in Washington state, beginning at 5 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, with results announced that day.

Election results will be certified at the annual meeting of the OPA on Saturday, Aug. 12, if a quorum of at least 100 OPA members is present.

If no quorum is present, results will be certified by the old Board of Directors at the earlier opportunity in a special meeting called for that purpose.