OPA budget deserved seven favorable votes

Although the 2023-24 Ocean Pines Association budget passed 5-2 at the Board of Directors’ Feb. 18 monthly meeting, it really should have been unanimous. The reasons for voting against it by two directors were flimsy at best.

They displayed an unseemly amount of pearl-clutching over a projected $100,000 loss in Aquatics and an alleged violation of an OPA policy that sets out as a goal breakeven finances for each of the OPA’s fee-based amenities.

This policy prescription is a goal, unlike other policy prescriptions in the governing documents that constitute requirements. Here’s the applicable language in Board Resolution M-02, Amenity Policy:

“Fee based amenities and those providing food and beverage services shall be budgeted separately. These amenities should be managed to cover, at a minimum, operating costs through fees and operating

Elections Committee

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lining: Payroll costs would be less than budgeted, conceivably enough to cover the projected $100,000 loss in Aquatics, or a portion of it.

revenues.”

Note the use of the word should, not shall, with respect to covering costs.

Elsewhere in M-02 the language is even clearer:

“Fee-based amenities are funded, insofar as possible, by revenue generated by charging fees for use of that amenity. Operating costs not covered by fees shall be covered by using a portion of the annual assessment.”

There’s no ambiguity here. Break-even amenities are a goal, not a requirement. When the goal isn’t reached, the assessment “shall” be covered by the annual lot assessment.

That said, directors Frank Daly and Colette Horn are entitled to vote against the budget because of objections to the projected deficit in Aquatics in 2023-24. What they’re not entitled to do is to misquote or misinterpret M-02 to justify their vote.

To the extent that the Elections Committee can determine it, the safeguards built into the system prevents that from happening. Emails containing pertinent data must be exchanged between the vendors, but the committee apparently believes this situation is ripe for error.

Perhaps it is, but this past summer there was no credible information to suggest that mistakes happened.

Director Frank Daly, who last year had pressed for an audit of the 2022 voting by an independent firm, during the Feb. 18 Board meeting did not join with Horn and Jacobs in criticizing the committee.

Instead he posed a question that he should have already known the answer to: How many lots participated in the 2022 election?

That information was included in the former committee’s two reports from last year and in the new committee’s report completed in late January. This number is not in dispute, or at least there is no reason to suggest it should be.

Daly wanted this number so he could determine whether more votes were cast in the election than could have been cast by the number of lots whose owner participated in the election.

That’s Daly test to determine whether the reported hand recount in September produced an accurate result.

Here’s the information contained in the former committee’s report from October and also cited by the new committee in its latest report.

According to both groups, 2,906 lots voted, comprised of 811 ballots voted on line and 2095 scanned ballots.

As for the projected Aquatics deficit, it should be kept in mind that it’s only a projection.

It’s a best guess based on full funding of 40 lifeguards and additional support staff at the pools this summer. Full funding is needed for a full schedule at all five OPA pools this summer.

It’s always possible, though, that staffing shortages will once again be a problem this summer, a situation that while undesirable has a silver

Those 2,906 lots represented a total of 8,718 potential votes cast [2906 x 3].

Addendum four of the former committee’s report confirmed that 2,095 paper ballots and 811 on-line ballots were cast.

Results of the election after a Sept. 30 hand recount were Steve Jacobs, 1,894 votes; Stuart Lakernick, 1,682 votes; Monica Rakowski, 1,363 votes; Amy Peck, 1.348 votes; Josette Wheatley, 990 votes; and Paula Gray, 836 votes.

The number of votes counted for all six candidates totaled 8,113.

That’s 605 votes less than the owners of 2,906 lots potentially could have cast, meaning that under Daly’s test for a valid or invalid election, the reported results after the hand-count were not flawed.

Again, this is not rocket science.

OPA President Doug Parks during Board debate Feb. 18 disputed Horn’s contention that the Board had received “nothing” from the committee in the response to the Board’s inquiries from last year.

“We got a lot of information from that committee,” Parks said. “To paint them as having done nothing is a little disingenuous.”

That’s putting it mildly.

A better way of putting it is that accusing the committee of not being responsive to the Board’s quest for information is insulting, unfair and about as inaccurate as it’s possible to be.

Doctor Horn should apologize, but of course she won’t, any more than she apologized for going down the “bad faith” rabbit hole exposed in recent litigation involving former Director Tom Janasek and, before that, sitting director Rick Farr.

It is richly ironic that Farr is now Board liaison to the reconstituted Elections Committee and part of a Board majority resistant to whatever agenda Horn chooses to pursue in the waning months of her final year of her second term as a director.

Daly in his comments during the Feb. 18 budget discussion focused entirely on what he regarded as a need to raise Aquatics membership dues, with Horn adding that daily fees could also be adjusted to cover the projected loss.

This ignored the history of membership dues increases in Ocean Pines and basic economics: Charging more for something means there will be less of it, in this case fewer members.

Daly in particular said only revenue increases will suffice to eliminate the projected deficit, ignoring or perhaps blissfully unaware that staffing shortages could result in lower labor costs.

Daly’s prescription is the wrong one, as of his colleagues readily understand.

Meanwhile, the Elections Committee is doing what it should be doing in recommending ways to avoid repeating last summer’s mistakes, as they work to restore faith in OPA’s elections.

If the price for that is elimination of electronic voting this summer as a search for a paper trail system continues, then so be it. --

Tom Stauss