November 2022 Ocean Pines Progress by Ocean Pines Progress

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Southside firehouse cost estimate drops A feasibility study of the Ocean Pines Association’s ability to conduct a capital campaign to help fund construction of a new Southside Firehouse could get under way in mid-November.. A work group of OPA staff, Ocean Pines Volunteer Fire Department representatives, and community members developed a Request for Proposals seeking a consultant to conduct the feasibility study to understand the OPA’s potential for a fundraising campaign and to gauge the level of support for the project. Prospects for a successful campaign may have improved with a disclosure during an Oct. 27 meeting of the OPA’s Budget and Finance Advisory Committee that the cost of the building, originally estimated at $8.6 million, had dropped to $5.7 million. The OPA work group was able to reduce the building’s size from 18,000 to 13,000 square feet, with the functionality of the original floor plan retained in the smaller footprint. ~ Page 8

OPVFD to ask OPA for two more EMTs The Budget and Finance Advisory Committee heard a proposal on Oct. 27 from the Ocean Pines Volunteer Fire Department for two more emergency medical technicians. The proposal, likely to be included in the draft 2022-23 OPA budget, would increase full-time staffing of the department from 14 to 16. ~ Page 13

INSIDE THIS EDITION

Ocean Pines .............. Pages 1-38 OPA Finances .................... Page 39 Worcester County ............ Page 40 Lifestyles ............................. Page 41 Opinion ....................... Pages 42-43 Captain’s Cove .......... Pages 44-63

NOVEMBER 2022

www.issuu.com/oceanpinesprogress

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OCEAN PINES

PROGRESS THE OCEAN PINES JOURNAL OF NEWS & COMMENTARY

COVER STORY

Judge says former Board majority acted in ‘bad faith’ in Janasek ban Judge Oglesby grants temporary injunction, says former OPA director more likely than not to prevail if case proceeds to next level By TOM STAUSS Publisher nother case, another day, another determination of “bad faith” against a Board of Directors majority that a Worcester County Circuit Court judge determined failed to comply with Ocean Pines Association governing documents. Not many months ago, Judge Sidney Campen ruled that the Board majority at the time acted in bad faith when it disqualified Richard Farr as a candidate for the Board. Farr sued, he won, and was seated on the Board early this year. In Mid-October, Judge Beau Oglesby also found a Board majority in Janasek vs. OPA had acted in bad faith while violating association governing documents. After a much publicized incident at the Ocean Pines Yacht Club this past May, in which former OPA Director Tom Janasek verbally accosted then sitting director Josette Wheatley, the then Board majority voted to sus-

Frank Daly

Colette Horn

Tom Janasek

pend Janasek’s access to three Ocean Pines food and beverage venues for three months. Janasek sued, and in short order he was granted a temporary restraining order that prevented the OPA from enforcing the ban. He was free to visit any of the restaurant amenities this summer and did so. To Page 3

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COVER STORY From Page 1 That TRO was extended until a hearing Aug. 25 on Janasek’s request for a temporary injunction and renewal of the temporary restraining order. The TRO was extended again pending a Court decision. When Judge Beau Oglesby issued his decision in the case on Oct. 14, it was an unqualified success for Janasek and his Ocean City attorney, Bruce Bright. Judge Oglesby granted the request for a temporary injunction and said that if the case were to proceed further - with a request for a permanent injunction, a possible next step on the judicial ladder -- it was likely that Janasek would prevail on the merits. At this stage in the litigation there usually is an effort on the part of the competing sides to work out a settlement, guided by the Court’s rulings in the case to date. The Board of Directors met in closed session Oct. 25 to discuss options. [See separate article in this edition for details.] The 12-page opinion by Judge Oglesby rejected arguments made by the lawyer for the OPA’s insurance company, providing very little or no cover for the OPA should it decide to press on with the case. That seems unlikely, as only two directors sued by Janasek, Colette Horn and Frank Daly,

remain on the Board. Two other defendants, including former appointed directors Amy Peck and Wheatley, were defeated in their campaigns for the Board this summer. The fifth defendant, Larry Perrone, opted not to run for reelection this summer. Two current directors, OPA President Doug Parks and Vice President Farr, were opposed to the then Board majority’s vote to suspend Janasek. They contended that the OPA Board had no authority under OPA governing documents to suspend Janasek, a position vindicated by Judge Oglesby’s latest decision on the temporary injunction. They were joined on the Board in August by two successful candidates in this summer’s Board election, Stuart Lakernick and Monica Rakowski, both of whom have said that the Board in recent years has engaged in expensive, unnecessary litigation, starting with the Slobodan Trendic Board spending authority case in 2018, followed by the Farr case and most recently the Janasek case. The position of the third successful candidate for the Board this summer, Steve Jacobs, on continuing or settling the Janasek case is unknown, but in the early weeks of the new Board elected in August he has tended to fall more in line with the thinking of Horn and Daly than with Parks and Farr. Nonetheless, there is a Board majority that dis-

approved of the Janasek suspension, and there is plenty of support in Judge Oglesby’s opinion that sides with the new majority. There is nothing in it that gives any support at all for the position for the old Board majority. Judge Oglesby’s judgment that Horn and Daly had acted in bad faith with the three former directors looms large. He also summarily dismissed an argument made by certain OPA directors in voting to suspend Janasek. Former Director Perrone and others said the OPA charter gives the Board authority to make decisions to promote the general welfare of the community, and that banning Janasek was consistent with this provision. Judge Oglesby disagreed. He said as a matter of law specific provisions in governing documents supersede general provisions, and these documents in the case of the OPA limit suspensions to those who fail to pay annual lot assessments or have declared violations of restrictive covenants. Poor conduct at an amenity is not one of the itemized reasons for an amenity ban. Judge Oglesby’s opinion on the inapplicability of the so-called business judgment rule was based on what he determined was the bad faith of the defendants. “The general rule under Maryland law is that To Page 5

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Judge Oglesby decision

From Page 3

decisions made by a homeowner’s association’s board of directors will not be disturbed unless there is a showing of “fraud or bad faith,” he wrote. “The courts have explained that, right or wrong, there is a presumption that directors of a corporation act in good faith and in the best interest of the corporation, and that the business judgment rule precludes judicial review of legitimate business decisions of an organization, absent fraud or bad faith.” In the instance of the Janasek ban, Judge Oglesby said that presumption did not apply. “The night of the incident, Mrs. Wheatley wrote a letter to her fellow Board members seeking advice on how to handle the verbal altercation with Mr. Janasek. At the hearing in this matter, Mrs. Wheatley testified she asked the other Board members ‘what do you guys do as a board of directors if that happens to you? Could somebody advise me?’ “Mrs. Wheatley was advised to write down the details of the incident, go file a police report, and press charges. Mrs. Wheatley stated, more than once throughout the hearing, that she did not identify the individual who accosted her as she wanted an honest answer,” Judge Oglesby wrote. “It was only after the identity of Mr. Janasek became known to the Board that there was a spe-

cial meeting called and a motion made to suspend Mr. Janasek’s right to use certain OPA amenities and facilities. The actions of the Board, in advising Mrs. Wheatley to report the matter to the police and then moving to suspend Mr. Janasek only after learning he was the other individual involved in the altercation, is a sufficient demonstration of bad faith to justify judicial review. “Mrs. Wheatley’s own testimony shows beyond a doubt that the Board’s ban of Mr. Janasek was in bad faith. She made the deliberate decision not to reveal Mr. Janasek’s identity to the other Board members when seeking their advice. She wanted their unbiased, unprejudiced opinions,” Judge Oglesby wrote. Judge Oglesby noted that the move to suspend Janasek only occurred when she identified Janasek as the individual with whom she had a confrontation. The judge then itemized the factors the Court weighs in deciding the appropriateness of a preliminary injunction. Those factors are the likelihood of the plaintiff prevailing, the balance of convenience on whether greater injury would be done to the defendant by granting the injunction or by its denial, whether the plaintiff would suffer irreparable injury if the relief isn’t granted, and the public interest. All four factors work in the favor of Janasek, according to Judge Oglesby. On the likelihood of Janasek prevailing on the merits, he said that OPA governing documents

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expressly limit the OPA’s authority to suspend access to amenities to the failure to pay annual assessments and the presence of a continuing violation of restrictive covenants that has been declared by the Board. That limitation is found in the by-laws, Section 5.13, and in Board Resolution in M-02, he said. Judge Oglesby noted that the defendants cited the OPA Charter, arguing the ban was enacted to further and promote community welfare in accord with language in the charter. “The Court does not find this argument persuasive, as explicit terms of contracts take precedence over general terms governing the same subject and the specific terms will control it,” he said. On the balance of convenience issue, Judge Oglesby disagreed with the OPA position that “if the preliminary injunction is granted, a precedent will be set that the OPA is powerless to act to protect OPA members and patrons of OPA amenities from other patrons. He called that argument unpersuasive, citing Horn’s testimony. “She states that, through the president of the association, the Board can direct the general manager. Board Resolution M-02 vests the power to suspend use of the amenities by any person who breaches the rules, regulations or policies of the OPA to the general manager. He said the Board isn’t left powerless because To Page 7

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COVER STORY Judge Oglesby decision From Page 5

it can act “through its relationship with the general manager.” In the case of Janasek/Wheatley incident, General Manager John Viola took no action to suspend Janasek, and there is no record to suggest he was asked or pressured to do so. At the time, Horn and other directors said that Viola and Yacht Club management had acted appropriately in the way it handled the incident. Judge Oglesby said the balance of convenience issue favors Janasek because if the ban remained in place “he would be deprived of his ability to patronize the Yacht Club, the Beach Club, and the Clubhouse Bar and Grille. As a member in good standing, Mr. Janasek has paid his dues which rightfully should allow him to use all OPA amenities and facilities.” On the issue of irreparable injury, the judge said the likelihood that Janasek would suffer irreparable harm if the suspension were imposed “weighs decidedly in the plaintiff’s favor.” He cited Janasek’s employment as a partner in AC Beverage and that he is responsible for cleaning the tap lines at OPA food and beverage amenities. “The ban, as enacted, provides no exceptions” by which Janasek is allowed into these amenities “to fulfill employment responsibilities,” the judge

November 2022 Ocean Pines PROGRESS 7

What’s next in the Janasek case? Lawyers update Board on options, but no decision yet

By TOM STAUSS Publisher he Board of Directors met in closed session Oct. 15 to hear lawyers give them options on how to proceed in the Janasek case, in light to the shellacking the Ocean Pines Association and five defendants received in the most recent decision by Worcester County Circuit Court Judge Beau Oglesby.

said. Judge Oglesby noted that there is a Board resolution that gives managers at each facility “complete control” of all activities under their supervision, also noting again that the Board can “direct the general manager to address conduct issues.” But he said that there are no provisions in OPA governing documents or an appeal process available that provide a means for Janasek to resolve the dispute. His “only remedy was to bring this action,” Oglesby said. On the final issue of public interest, the judge said this factor “weighs in favor of the plaintiff.” He said the public has an interest in the Board

That decision awarded former Director Tom Janasek with a temporary injunction, in addition to the temporary restraining order against enforcement of an amenities ban imposed by a Board majority several months ago. The lawyers advising the Board on next steps were Jeremy Tucker, the OPA’s general counsel, and Megan Mantazavinos, of the u

“acting in accord with its governing documents,” and Board actions “should be predictable to residents and the general public.” Judge Oglesby pushed back on defendants’ argument that “the OPA Board was trying to foster a safe, family-friendly environment as its restaurant amenities.” He noted that the Board suspended Janasek only from those three amenities. “It did not prevent the plaintiff from being around other members of the OPA or the general public at the remaning amenities. If the Board truly wanted to create a safe environment, it would logically follow that plaintiff would be banned from all amenities and facilities,” he wrote.

8 Ocean Pines PROGRESS November 2022 What’s next? From Page 7 Marks, O’Neill, O’Brien, Doherty and Kelly law firm of Towson, Md., representing the Ocean Pines Association’s insurance company. The lawyers imposed a strict noleak directive on their clients. OPA President Doug Parks said that should be understandable, as it’s not in the interests of the OPA that any director make comments that might hurt the OPA as the case proceeds. Several sources told the Progress that the directors made no decision on next steps. The choices are not difficult to fathom, however, Settlement talks are perhaps the most obvious option, with both parties well aware that Judge Oglesby has indicated that more likely as not Janasek will prevail on the mrits if the case proceeds. Another option possible would be an appeal of the judge’s most recent decision. Still another option is to let the case play out, with Janasek’s attorney, Bruce Bright, filing a request for a permanent injunction against enforcement of the ban. Bright could ask for attorney fee reimbursement given Judge Oglesby’s finding that the Board majority had acted in bad faith in the original suspension decision. Janasek did not respond to a Progress text asking him what he would ask forin settlement talks. It’s been widely assumed, however, that at minimum Janasek will be asking to have his attorney’s fees covered. Before voting to go into closed session, Director Steve Jacobs asked about the status of former Director Amy Pecks’s request to attend the closed meeting. Peck, along with former directors Larry Perrone and Josette Wheatley, are defendants in the case, as are sitting directorsFrank Daly and Colette Horn. Parks responded that the request would be discussed in closed session, but the Progress has learned that earlier in the day Tucker determined that a former director should not attend a meeting reserved for the Board only. Peck later said she simply wanted to attend to gain a first-hand briefing on the case, to save the lawyers some time in doing a separate briefing, but added that she’s satisfied with the extent to which she’s been kept in the loop on the case’s status.

OCEAN PINES

Viola clarifies timeline for new Southside Firehouse fundraising Estimated size, cost of building plummets to $5.7 million By ROTA L. KNOTT Contributing Writer feasibility study of the Ocean Pines Association’s ability to conduct a capital campaign to help fund construction of a new Southside Firehouse is expected to get under way in mid-November. A work group of OPA staff, Ocean Pines Volunteer Fire Department representatives, and community members developed a Request for Proposals seeking a consultant to conduct the feasibility study to understand the association’s potential for a fundraising campaign and to gauge the level of support for the project in the community. Prospects for a successful campaign may have improved with a disclosure during an Oct. 27 meeting of the OPA’s Budget and Finance Advisory Committee that the cost of the building, originally estimated at $8.6 million, had dropped significantly to $5.7 million. To make this possible, the OPA work group was able to reduce the building’s size from 18,000 to 13,000 square feet, with all the functionality of the original floor plan retained in the smaller footprint. Options under consideration by the working group include razing the existing building, renovating the existing equipment bays and attaching a new building to the bays. Another option that is being explored is to build anew on Route 589 in Memorial Park across Cathell Road Extended from Taylor Bank. The latter option might require patience, as obtaining a necessary variance could take up to seven

years, committee members were told. The proposed new building would have room to expand if needed. If a decision is made to opt for the Rt. 589 location, then the existing Southside Firehouse could be converted to more space for Public Works and a Board of Directors meeting room. Members of the committee also brought up the topic of whether the OPVFD needs the Northside firehouse for operations, and the answer came back a resounding yes. It’s used for volunteers, storage and records, say OPVD leaders. During the Oct. 15 Board of Directors meeting, General Manager John Viola said that the RFP was issued to ten firms and individuals seeking proposals for the feasibility study. The RFP was released by the OPA in late September with proposals from consultants accepted through Oct. 31. Viola expects to present a recommendation for award of a contract for the study at the Board’s Nov. 19 meeting. “We are looking for a partner who is experienced with planning and conducting a fundraising feasibility study and is familiar with the HOA/Community Funding environment,” the RFP states. “The study should assess the current funding situation for the new South Fire Station and potential fundraising capacity for a campaign. It will also make recommendations on a strategy to maximize the fundraising efforts. Proposals are required to include a project budget, timeline, and action items.” The RFP says the feasibility study report should address the OPA and OPVFD’s real and perceived To To Page Page 10 10

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Fundraising From Page 8 strengths and weaknesses in fundraising, the community’s perception of OPA and OPVFD, identification of potential leaders in the fundraising effort, names of potential major donors/funders and what their interests might be, and a determination of the amount of money that can be reasonably raised. The report should also include feedback on the preliminary case for support to identify strengths and weaknesses, other major fundraising campaigns in the area that might compete for the same donors, possible alternatives for raising funds needed to complete the project, roles and responsibilities of OPA and OPVFD Board members, staff, and volunteers in a campaign, and appropriate time frame for both the campaign planning study and the fundraising. Viola said he anticipates the feasibility study will take two to three months for the selected consultant to complete. The required deliverables include a findings summary, a

list of key donor prospects and their potential interest, including their giving range, key areas of the case for support that resonate or hinder donor supports, and a presentation of findings to the Board and key staff. Once a feasibility study is complete, the OPA will issue an RFP for a consultant to lead the fund-raising efforts based on the findings of the feasibility study, Viola said. In April, the OPVFD was awarded $1.6 million in state grant funds to help cover the cost of the new building. It has two years from the date of the grant award to “activate” the grants by beginning to use the funds. Once the grants are activated the OPVFD has seven years to fully expend the funds. Viola said that means the OPA will have a full year to engage in a capital campaign before the OPFVD has to activate its state grant. “The fundraising would not stop after 12 months. It would continue. But that gives us a good solid year to hopefully bring in more money as opposed to grants and the monTo Page 13

November 2022 Ocean Pines PROGRESS 11

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November 2022 Ocean Pines PROGRESS 13

OPVFD to ask for two new EMT positions

Other details about the proposed OPVFD budget for next year include a request for operational support from the OPA in the amount of $1,107,271, compared to $1,038,923 in 2022-23. The OPVFD’s local revenue budget would climb from $1,324,001 this year to $1,501,102 next year. The expense budget would increase to $2,680,375 from the current year’s $2,362,983. The OPVFD is projecting higher expenses in fuel costs, utility costs, and turn-out gear. Fire officials said the number of emergency calls for all of 2021 was 1,898, and into October the number has already hit 1,500. To Page 15

he Ocean Pines Association Budget and Finance Advisory Committee heard a proposal from the Ocean Pines Volunteer Fire Department for two new emergency medical technicians. The proposal, likely to be included in General Manager John Viola’s draft budget for 2023-24, would increase full-time staffing of the department from 14 to 16. The proposal surfaced during the committee’s Oct. 27 monthly meeting. The reason for the increase: Fewer volunteers showing up during daytime hours to respond to fire calls, meaning that cross-trained EMTs are required to go on fire calls instead of being on call for medical emergencies.

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Fundraising From Page 10 ey that the fire department has already,” he said. The relationship between the OPA and the OPVFD is defined in a 1977 Agreement and a 2011 Memorandum of Understanding between the parties. OPA currently provides about 35 percent of the OPVFD’s annual revenue of approximately $2.2 million. Worcester County and EMS billings to insurance companies and Medicare and Medicaid provide approximately 40 percent and 23 percent, respectively. Fundraising and contributions currently provide less than two percent. In a frequently asked questions document created by the OPA about the South Fire Station project, one question asks about the OPVFD’s ability to do fundraising beyond its annual raffle and to host fundraising events such as carnivals, concerts, bingo, barbecue chicken dinners, to help fund the new building. The response was that the “OPVFD is not staffed to fundraise beyond what is already done to support apparatus replacement.” It states the OPA and OPVFD equally provide funding for apparatus replacement. To fundraise for apparatus, OPVFD has a vehicle raffle, mail out, and sign program. “This barely covers current apparatus costs. Member requirements for emergency response, meeting attendance, continuing training, and fundraising stretch member availability to the breaking point,” the FAQ states. Another question asked if the OPVFD will seek funding support from the Atlantic General Hospital and Tidal Health centers in Ocean Pines, the Ocean Downs casino, and other businesses on Route 589 that it protects. The only answer was that the fundraising feasibility study will develop the a plan for that would likely include those businesses.

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14 Ocean Pines PROGRESS November 2022

Please VOTE AGAINST QUESTION A Over five thousand registered Worcester County voters signed our petition providing you the opportunity now to decide if many millions of our public funds should be spent on this new Sports Complex. Here are few reasons why you should vote AGAINST Question A: • These difficult times call for conservative fiscal control and we don’t want to add millions of dollars in new debt to our taxpayers. • We already have many sports facilities throughout the county that meet the needs of our local youth. • For example there is a 76-acre Northern Worcester Athletic Complex located in Berlin. • The total ultimate cost of this proposed Sports Complex to the taxpayers is unknown.

Please join us and vote AGAINST Question A!!! Authority: People for Fiscal Responsibility, Katherine Lynn McCloskey, Treasurer

OCEAN PINES

Public Works proposes overhaul of leaf removal procedures

November 2022 Ocean Pines PROGRESS 15

Fee-based system would restrict use of the Public Works Yard to Ocean Pines residents By TOM STAUSS Publisher ocal social media lit up over a post on the Residents Oversight Community Facebook page Oct. 27 over a discussion about possible changes in leaf removal procedures unveiled in a meeting of the Budget and Finance Advisory Committee Oct. 27. According to former Director Amy Peck, who posted a summary of the discussion on the ROC Facebook page, the committee met with Director of Public Works Eddie Wells, who said that the Ocean Pines Association currently spends about $120,000 annually for leaf removal in Ocean Pines. “In an effort to decrease costs and reallocate expenses, the team is recommending changes,” she wrote. Current practice is to allow residents to dispose of yard waste during May and then again from Thanksgiving to the end of December at the Public Works Yard in South Ocean Pines, free of charge. This has caused headaches for Public Works because contractors have been known to dump their leaves on the site, and there’s been no way to confine dumping to Ocean Pines residents. The proposal is to charge residents $50 to $100 per year for a stamp, with outside contractors or non-Ocean Pines residents not allowed to purchase a stamp. Ocean Pines would continue to collect bagged leaves in paper bags, and Republic Services would continue to collect bagged yard debris.

EMTs From Page 13 Fire calls were 335 last year, and 285 so far this year, with a year end projection of 375. The proposed OPVFD budget also reflects the need to replace three heart monitors at an estimated cost $100,000, replacing monitors that reached the expected retirement age of ten. During discussion, OPA General Manager John Viola suggested that OPVFD seeks investments with returns of three percent or more, without tying up the funds long-term.

Peck said that during this fall’s leaf collection season, Public Works would run a vacuum truck to clear ditches, but that would not be the case next year, except for vacant lots. “If residents rake more than the

ditch leaves, a CPI violation would be issued,” she said. Peck later told the Progress that Public Works will have a way to gauge whether a ditch has been overfilled with leaves.

A policy change like that would require Board approval. Peck also said that beginning next year, Public Works will be hauling leaves from the Public Works Yard to county disposal sites, rather than relying on local contractors. The combination of all these proposals would save the OPA considerable sums of money while generating a new source of revenue. “Bold moves,” General Manager John Viola said of the ideas, according to Peck.

16 Ocean Pines PROGRESS November 2022

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Board deﬂects forensic audit of 2022 election

Four directors reluctant to spend money on task they believe can be done by newly appointed elections committee By TOM STAUSS Publisher he Board of Directors in a special meeting Oct. 10 tabled a motion by Director Frank Daly to authorize a forensic audit of the 2022 Board election by an outside firm, but not before four directors made it abundantly clear they were not ready to authorize an audit unless the newly appointed volunteer Elections Committee indicates that it needs the help. The four directors who in discussion indicated reluctance to spend OPA resources on a task they believe can be done by the Elections Committee were OPA President Doug Parks, OPA Vice-President Rick Farr, Treasurer Monica Rakowski and Secretary Stuart Lakernick. These four directors are the new controlling majority on the Board. Farr is the Board liaison to the Elections Committee. Pressing for an immediate solicitation of a request for proposals from outside auditors were Daly, the former OPA vice-president; Colette Horn, the former president; and Steve Jacobs, a newly elected director. When it became clear that Daly, Horn and Ja-

cobs didn’t have the votes for an immediate RFP, Daly accepted a proposal by Parks to table the motion. Parks agreed to a Daly suggestion that the committee would have a hard deadline of Dec. 1 to conduct its own review of the 2022 Board election, identifying areas that went wrong this summer and offering recommendations on how next year’s election should be conducted. The committee will be tasked to respond to a charging document that has been drafted by Farr and Rakowski and that has been amended based on the Board discussion during the Oct. 20 meeting. If at any time before Dec. 1 the committee indicates that it would like help from an outside firm to conduct its review, the directors informally agreed that the Board would convene and vote to provide the request for assistance. Parks said he would “reach out” to the firm that conducted a forensic audit of OPA finances in 2018 to see if the company is capable and interested in conducting an election audit should one be authorized by the Board. Parks said it’s not definite that this particular firm, Gross Mendelsohn, a Baltimore-based audit

firm, will be interested but said he had no problem with reaching out. Farr told the Progress in an Oct. 27 text that the company told Parks that it doesn’t do election audits and that companies that do tend to focus on state and national elections. That finding reinforced Farr’s view that the Board should simply let the Elections Committee do its job. Before voting unanimously to table Daly’s motion, Parks shot down a proposal by Horn to appoint an independent task force or working group to come up with suggested issues about the 2022 election to be researched. It was not clear whether Horn was asking for a process that would bypass the elections committee, but Parks responded as if it was. He told Horn that he didn’t think adding another “layer” of review would get the OPA any closer to obtaining clarity on what went wrong with the 2022 election and how to fix it. No other director spoke in favor of Horn’s proposal. Parks’s offer to the minority was to table the u

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18 Ocean Pines PROGRESS November 2022 Election audit From Page 17 Daly motion until such time as the Elections Committee indicated that it needs outside assistance. Daly was able to secure Parks’s agreement for a hard deadline of Dec. 1 for the Elections Committee to submit a report and recommendations. Whether Dec. 1 is a truly a hard deadline remains to be seen, however. Should the committee fall a little short on meeting that deadline, while making good progress on producing a report and recommendations, it’s not clear that Daly, Horn and Jacobs would have the votes to bypass the committee unless its members request outside help. Daly, in fact, said that bypassing the committee was not the intent of his motion for an independent forensic audit of the election. He said he expected the committee would be

OCEAN PINES

very much involved in the process, while obtaining help from the outside firm to investigate areas that a committee of volunteers might have trouble with. He cited contact with the vendor of the scanning equipment that malfunctioned during the recent election. Farr, the liaison to the Elections Committee, said he believed the committee would be capable of discussing the malfunctioning scanning equipment with the vendor. Before the board began discussing Daly’s motion, former Director Amy Peck spoke in favor of it, but not before criticizing various actions taken by Parks in the process leading up to a hand recount of paper ballots. Parks didn’t respond directly to any of the criticism, but reminded Peck that public comments during special meetings are limited to the

topics on the meeting agenda. Daly then launched into a detailed argument in favor of his motion. He said an outside forensic audit should reconcile the initial count of paper ballots conducted by the former committee members in early August using scanning equipment that some suspected even before the 2022 election had programming issues. Daly said the initial count recorded vote totals exceeded the number of ballots received, ranging from about 500 votes more than 1,000, a widely reported fact in the local media. The initial vote totals were overridden by a later committee hand recount of vote totals, which still had candidates Jacobs, Lakernick and Rakowski winning the election but with Peck only 15 votes behind Rakowski in fourth place. Usually the difference between the third and fourth place finishers

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are about 50 votes, so this year’s spread of 15 votes “doesn’t inspire confidence” in election results, Daly said. He said that issues with scanning equipment could have been a problem “for a long time,” a comment that implicitly left the impression that Daly doesn’t necessarily accept the election results from any of the years in which the current scanning equipment has been used. Up to about four or five years ago, the OPA had used equipment called ScanTron, with no reported concerns about accuracy. Daly also pointed out another well publicized problem with the conduct of this summer’s election, the fact that owners of multiple lots in Ocean Pines were provided with only one ballot rather than one ballot for every lot owned, unless specifically requesting ballots for each lot. He said that OPA records show that there are 535 lots in Ocean Pines that are owned by property owners who own more than one lot, with 479 eligible to participate in the 2022 election. “We don’t have a handle [on the number of eligible lots that could have voted in the election but didn’t],” Daly said. He went on to argue that the OPA spent more than $200,000 on the 2018 forensic audit of OPA financial after allegations of theft surfaced, and that spending a much more modest sum on an election audit would not be opposed by most OPA members. “We have to determine whether the scanner is accurate,” Daly said, also suggesting that it’s possible the initial miscount of votes was caused by committee members sending bundles of ballots through the scanner more than once. Daly said if it’s determined that To Page 21

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OCEAN PINES Election audit From Page 18 the scanning equipment indeed is faulty, then there will be a need to obtain new and better equipment in time for next year’s balloting. He concluded his argument by saying that if any municipal, state or national election had been conducted the way the OPA’s had been this summer, authorities would have swooped in to investigate. Rakowski was the first director to indicate that Daly would have trouble obtaining four votes for his motion. She said she agreed that a review of the election was necessary, including a probe into whether socalled test ballots used to calibrate the equipment before it was used in the initial vote count was responsible for vote discrepancies. She said once it was clear that the scanning equipment was malfunctioning, “why wasn’t a hand-count” immediately conducted by the former committee. She also questioned why paper ballots weren’t sent to every lot in Ocean Pines, a committee decision that led to the disenfranchisement of OPA members who own multiple properties. A cover letter included in the elec-

tion materials sent to OPA members indicated that the old committee was recommending owners of multiple properties cast their ballots electronically. “I’d like see a review [of the election], but I’m not sure I’m in favor of [using] association dollars to do it,” she said. Daly responded that a “gazzilion” dollars wouldn’t be needed, but Farr followed Rakowski in suggesting that review needn’t include any expenditure of funds for an outside audit. He said that the newly repopulated Elections Committee was capable of conducting the review “and figuring out what went wrong” and recommending changes in procedures. “We have a very competent chair (Tom Piatti),” Farr said, adding the committee members would be able to contact the vendor to determine reasons for the malfunctioning equipment. Daly argued that an outside vendor might find it easier to discuss election issues with members of the old committee, and might be to complete its portion of a review faster than the committee would, perhaps only needing two weeks to complete its audit. Farr said the Board should let

ΊΙΙΛΘΟΎ΍ ψϟ Ύϊϝ ΍χϚϋͧ йрͿкйͿлйкт November 2022 Ocean Pines PROGRESS 21 ΎϞϖ ϊχϚϋͧ йрͿкйͿлйлй Price: 98.500 (00.00) the committee conduct a “deep dive” Ί΍и into the election and “let them tell Coupon: 3.25 (00/00/00) us what they can’t do [if anything],” When should you07/15/2036 start receiving Social Security? he said. “I’m not ready to endorse” Maturity Date: (00/00/00) Daly’s motion pending a report by Callable Date: (00/00/00 or your N/A) Think carefully about 07/15/2028 when to start receiving benefits. the committee. Jacobs offered his support for the 100 CallYouPrice: (000)your benefits by 39%. could be reducing motion, outlining questions about / AAA the election that persist. Among his Rating: Aaa (XXX/XXX) I am here to help make that decision easier for you. questions: Was the scanning equipOther: Please contact(Obligor) me at 410-208-1704 for a ment cleared of test ballots? He also one-on-one complimentary, no obligation * wondered about the significance of me at 410-208-1704 (0.00%) TAX-FREE 3.25 TAX-FREE* Please contact for a% oneoron one complimentary, consultation attend our seminar.no obligation, consultation the scanning equipment jamming attend our seminar. Call for times, and location. Call for times, date anddates location Prince Georges Md (Name of MuniCnty Bond) during the August count. Carrie Dupuie, AAMS 98.500 “I’ve heard a half dozen theories My picture Price: Dupuie, (00.00) Carrie AAMS® Coupon: (00/00/00) 3.25 (Financial Advisor Financial Advisor on what went wrong,” Jacobs said, here Financial Advisor Name) Maturity Date: 07/15/2036 (00/00/00) (Approved Title) adding that “we’re asking the com215 North Main Callable Date: 07/15/2028 (00/00/00 Street N/A) 215 North Mainor Street 100 Call Price: (000) mittee to take on a task they may Berlin, MD 21811 Berlin, Aaa /MD AAA 21811 Rating: (XXX/XXX) not be prepared for.” (Address) Other:410-208-1704 (Obligor) 410-208-1704 He said that “making sure that (City, ST 00000) Carrie.Dupuie@RaymondJames.com OPA elections are done right” is a (000-000-0000) I (Toll-Free: Carrie Dupuie, AAMS 800-000-0000) Raymond James(Financial Financial Services Inc.,Name) Member FINRA/SIPC Advisor “good way to spend some money,”Investments advisory (Approved Title) James Financial Services Advisors, Inc. services offered Raymond Fax:through (000-000-0000) adding that putting out an RFP (Address) (E-mail (City, STAddress) 00000) wouldn’t necessarily mean that the (000-000-0000) I (Toll-Free: 800-000-0000) (Website) Fax: (000-000-0000) Board would have to accept a pro-

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(Website) posal. Horn said that OPA members have “lost faith in the integrity” of Subject to availability and price change. Minimum purchases may apply. The yield is the lesser of yield to maturity or yield to call. Interest is generally exempt from federal taxation and may elections and that spending monalso be free of state and local taxes for investors residing in the state and/or locality where the bonds were issued. However, bonds may be subject to federal alternative tax (AMT), and ey to restore that faith was “a good profits and losses on tax-exempt bonds may be subject to capital gains tax treatment. Ratings by Moody’s/Standard & Poor’s. A credit rating of a security is not a recommendation to investment” and might result in re06/07/2018 buy, sell or hold the security and may be subject to review, revision, suspension, reduction or **As As ofof00/00/00. withdrawal at any time by the assigning Rating Agency. Insurance pertains only to the timely writes to the processes used to conpayment of principal and interest. No representation is made to any insurer’s ability to meet its Subject to availability and price change. Minimum purchases may apply. The yield is the lesser of yield to maturity or yield to call. Interest is g financial commitments. Ratings and insurance do not remove risk since they do not guarantee duct elections. from federal taxation and may alsothebemarket free ofvalue stateof and local taxes for investors residing in the state and/or locality where the bonds were is the bond. may be subject to federal alternative minimum tax (AMT), and profits and losses on tax-exempt bonds may be subject to capital gain Rakowski said what bonds she was Securities offered through Raymond James Financial Services, Inc., member FNRA/SIPC. Ratings by Moody’s/Standard u & Poor’s. A credit rating of a security is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold the security and may be su 06/07/2018 **As As ofof 00/00/00.

Subject to availability and price change. Minimum purchases may apply. The yield is the lesser of yield to maturity or yield to call. Interest is generally exempt from federal taxation and may also be free of state and local taxes for investors residing in the state and/or locality where the bonds were issued. However, bonds may be subject to federal alternative minimum tax (AMT), and profits and losses on tax-exempt bonds may be subject to capital gains tax treatment. Ratings by Moody’s/Standard & Poor’s. A credit rating of a security is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold the security and may be subject to review, revision, suspension, reduction or withdrawal at any time by the assigning Rating Agency. Insurance pertains only to the timely payment of principal and interest. No representation is made as to any insurer’s ability to meet its financial commitments. Ratings and insurance do not remove market risk since they do not guarantee the market value of the bond. Securities offered through Raymond James Financial Services, Inc., member FINRA/SIPC.

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OCEAN PINES Election audit From Page 21 hearing in the comments by the motion supporters “is that we don’t have faith in the committee” to conduct a review, calling Daly’s motion premature. Horn argued that there have been issues with the past five elections in Ocean Pines, with the integrity of committee members challenged. She said she wouldn’t want “to see the [new] committee attacked before even getting started,” noting “snarky” comments against the old committee posted on social media. Lakernick, who earlier had complained about being blocked out of the Teams meeting four times, suggested that the minority directors were over-complicating the issue. “It’s not brain surgery,” he said, expressing confidence in Piatti and the committee to conduct a through review. “Tell me who’s more competent,” he said, joining Farr and Rakowski in saying he “was not sure I’m in favor of spending money” for an outside audit. “It’s over,” he said of the election. “Let’s move on.” Farr told his colleagues that he and Rakowski had drafted a charging document itemizing areas of concerns about the last election. “If they (the committee members) tell us they can’t do it, let’s address that at that time,” he said. Jacobs then doubled down then on the idea that the committee might not be the best group to handle a deep dive into the election. “I’m sure the committee will do good, but in fairness we shouldn’t ask them,” he said. “We have theories on theories on theories on what went wrong,” noting next year’s election process will be beginning in a

few months and a pending vote on amending restrictive covenants relating to short-term rentals can’t begin until issues with scanning equipment are resolved. “They have no expertise in the field,” he said of the committee, echoing Horn by saying that OPA members “would expect us to spend money” on fixing election process issues. Daly said he had “all the faith in the world” in the committee but it doesn’t have the expertise “to nail down how many votes” were not counted accurately in the election. Parks then made it clear he was siding with Farr, Rakowski and Lakernick in the discussion. While he said “all information is helpful,” the Board “already has an idea on what caused the problems” in the most recent election. Before spending money on an outside auditing firm, he said the first step will be for the committee to engage in conversation with the scanning equipment vendor, and also to reach out to former committee members for their views on what went wrong. “We can make that determination later [if the committee needs help],” Parks said. Horn wasn’t satisfied, opining that the “first step is a full-time job” and it’s too much to ask a volunteer committee to do.” Parks made it clear he disagreed with Horn, but in response to a question from Daly said that the same Dec. 1 deadline for a report and recommendation from an outside vendor should apply to the committee. He also said he didn’t oppose reaching out to Gross Mendelsohn for some preliminary information on the company’s willingness to assist u

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Election audit From Page 23 the committee if needed. He said he would do so. That’s when Horn said she’d like to have a work group appointed to handle the inquiry, but Parks immediately shot that down. ‘I don’t see [a need] for an additional layer,” he said, prompting Horn to say that a working group could help vet any proposals that might result from the issuance of an RFP. No director expressed support for a working group. Lakernick said before Parks reaches out to Gross Mendelsohn, Piatti should be asked how much time is needed to conduct a review, and Farr suggested reactivation of the committee’s information email to solicit information about OPA member experiences in the last election. Daly then salvaged what he could from the debate, taking up Parks’s apparent support for a deadline of Dec. 1 for a committee report. “We put Tom on the hook” to meet the deadline “or we go to audit,” Daly said, asking his colleagues how that deadline should be “memorialized.” Horn suggested a friendly amendment to Daly’s motion, but Parks smacked that idea down. Instead, he said that Daly should offer a motion to table his original motion “so it doesn’t get defeated” and that no formal Board action was needed for a Dec. 1 deadline. “Maybe they’ll tell us they can’t meet it,” he

Electronic voting likely to continue Parks says that problems with this summer’s Board election didn’t include electronic voting By TOM STAUSS Publisher ssues that arose in this summer’s Board of Directors ranged from problems with scanning equipment, mismatched ballot counts and votes cast, and a shortfall in the number of paper ballots sent to owners of multiple properties, effectively disenfranchising a swath of a Ocean Pines Association members. One area of the vote process that was immune from obvious flaws was electronic voting, in which about 800 or so property votes cast votes from their home computers or telephones. Election materials included an exclusive code allowing access to the voting Website. So-called “weighted” voting was supposed to guarantee that owners of multiple properties who voted electronically would have votes cast for each of the properties owned. There were no complaints that owners of multiple properties who voted electronically had their votes discarded during the count, handled by an independent vendor. Ocean Pines Association President Doug Parks said in a recent telephone interview that he doubted there would be a recommendation by the newly appointed Elections Committee to discard electronic voting. He said there has been no interest expressed by members of the Board in eliminating electronic voting. At the same time, he said that despite issues with counting paper ballots this summer, he didn’t think there would be any interest in moving to an electronic-only election in 2023. “Too many property owners prefer this method of voting,” he said. “We just have to fix what went wrong this summer. I have every confidence in Tom Piatti and the new committee.”

said, adding that no friendly amendment is needed. After the directors informally agreed to add some additional items to the charging document

that directs the committee to conduct a review and what areas of concern to pursue, Daly offered the motion to table. It passed unanimously.

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Entire election committee resigns, replaced with five new members Horn expresses displeasure with method used to fill vacancies By TOM STAUSS Publisher ollowing the resignation of the five-member Elections Committee on or about Oct. 5, the Board of Directors moved quickly to fill the vacancies at the Oct. 15 monthly Board meeting, but not without some criticism of the process used by Director Colette Horn. The resignations followed published remarks from an authoritative source in the October edition of the Progress indicating that some Directors were unhappy with the way in which the Board election unfolded this summer. Criticism of the former committee also appeared on local social media. It was also disclosed that the Board would be voting to replace

Committee Chair Carol Ludwig with Tom Piatti, a former appointed OPA Board member and president of the Parke section in the South Ocean Pines. Piatti’s appointment was among those that came to pass at the Oct. 15 Board meeting. In a statement issued Oct. 5, Ocean Pines Association President Doug Parks announced that the Board had “unfortunately ... received resignations from several members of the Elections Committee.” It turned out that it wasn’t just “several” members but all of them. “The decision from each committee member to resign was their own decision alone,” Parks said in his statement. “We are saddened these volunteers chose to resign their position, as the work they have done

and the time they have spent supporting the community has been commendable. The Board thanks them for their volunteer spirit and their willingness to step up and serve the Association.” The press release then went on to solicit volunteers for membership on this “important advisory committee,” which conducts candidate forums and counts ballots cast in annual Board elections and referendums. It took no time at all for the applications to pore in. Initially there were six applicants, but one dropped out. Early in the week of the Board meeting, on a draft meeting agenda circulated to directors, there were six applications, with the drop-out reducing the number to five.

But then another applicant filed, Sherrie Clifford of the Residents Oversight Community social media site. Parks told the Progress that since Clifford was not on the first iteration of the meeting agenda, but made it on the agenda published on the Wednesday prior to the meeting, logic dictates that she was the last one to file her application. That turned out to be an important fact, as the Board when voting on committee appointments during the Oct. 15 meeting voted on the applications in more or less the order received. When it was Clifford’s turn to be voted on, Parks said that all five positions on the committee already had been filled and that a vote on Clifford was unnecessary. He said her application would be kept on file in the event of any future vacancy. Also not voted on as a member of the Elections Committee was Ken Petrini, whose name also will be kept on file. The method of voting was not a u

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Former Elections Committee member blames election problems on test ballots

Says former committee members recommend OPA go to electronic and phone ballots By ROTA L. KNOTT Contributing Writer est ballots may have been the cause of inaccuracies in the paper ballot count during this year’s Board of Directors’ election, says a former member of Ocean Pines Association’s Elections Committee. During the Public Comments segment of the Board’s Oct. 15 regular monthly meeting, Mary Anne Whitcomb, one of five members who resigned from the Elections Committee amid the controversy, said she wonders if ballots used to test the scanning software prior to the official count of paper ballots in August somehow threw off the results. “We apologize for the inaccurate first count of the Board of Directors elections,” she told the Board, adding the Elections Committee knew that the SNAP survey software used to tally the scanned paper ballots had problems. She said the scanner could not accurately read recent referendum ballots and those that were hand counted. Last month, the committee decided to do a hand recount of the scanned paper ballots, with vote totals for the candidatates differing significantly from the scanner results. The top three candidates from the scanned results still won seats on the Board, but there were only

15 votes separating the third and fourth place finishers. Prior to counting the election ballots this past August, the former committee members worked with the OPA’s IT staff to test the software using test ballots, Whitcomb said. “We wonder if those test ballots were the cause of the erroneous additional votes.” She noted that there were no errors in the online voting, which is the former committee’s preferred method of conducting the election. She said the committee could not further explore that potential cause of the election snafu because the OPA “has the computer with this data and we were told not to contact OPA staff. This was very worrisome to us. This is a departure from current operations,” she said. While the OPA bylaws state that the Elections Committee operates independently from the Board in order to avoid potential conflicts of interest with those running for the governing body, it has always had the ability to work with OPA staff in the past. For example, she said if OPA members requested a duplicate ballot, the committee would contact staff to ensure they received one. If the committee can’t work with OPA staff then it can’t do its job, she said. Whitcomb wished well to new

Committee resigns

in Virginia, a national committee member for a firefighters organization, in which he served on the executive board with responsibility for annual elections; Elaine Brady, former owner and publisher of Bayside Gazette, former president of the Berlin Chamber of Commerce, former vice president and publisher of the Community Newspaper Group, Washington Post Company; former publisher of Comprint Military Newspapers and DCMilitary. com; and George Alston, a business consultant, computer software consultant and business owner. The committee’s initial task will be a thorough review of what went wrong with the 2022 Board election, with the Board expecting a report including recommendations for fixes by Dec. 1.

From Page 26 rejection of Clifford’s candidacy, but it didn’t sit well with Horn, who in the end abstained from voting on the five candidates who were approved by the other six directors. She did not offer an alternative proposal for voting on the committee members. The five new committee members include Piatti, the committee chair, whose volunteer positions have included the chairmanship of the Search Committee and membership on the Budget and Finance Advisory Committee; Nanci Osbourne, a former election judge in Ocean City and former system auditor for the federal General Services Administration; Tom Schwartz, a retired retired lieutenant of a fire department

members of the committee, who were appointed later in the same meeting. She encouraged the Board to allow them to function independently as designated in the governing documents. She also asked the Board to post an amended annual report for the committee and encouraged consideration of its recommendation to move entirely to online and phone-in vot-

ing. She said that would avoid problems with the current ballot-counting software. The amended report had already been posted on the OPA Website, reflecting new vote totals from a hand recount of paper ballots. OPA President Doug Parks noted Whitcomb’s requests but didn’t say whether or not the Board would act on them. Parks more recently told the Progress he doubted the Board would vote to conduct Board elections by electronic means only, noting that there are still many OPA members who prefer to cast their ballots using traditional paper ballots.

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Salt marsh restoration sign recovered Pete Gomsak is pleased that stolen ‘work of art’ discovered by neighbor

By TOM STAUSS Publisher hand-carved sign honoring the memory of an United States Army Corps of Engineers construction manager who oversaw the 2001 salt marsh restoration project in the area of Bluewater Court in the Point community of South Ocean Pines has been stolen. But in what might be described almost as a miracle, what was lost has now been found. In a note to the Ocean Pines Police Department, a copy of which was obtained by the Progress Oct. 28, Bluewater Court resident Pete Gomsak said he was “pleased to report that the A. J. Corts sign has been recovered and is undamaged.” Gomsak, who had asked for media assistance in recovering the sign in the hopes that the sign thief would have a change of heart, said he received a call from a neighbor, whose home is on Bluewater Court at the Northeast corner intersecting with Ocean Parkway. “He discovered [the sign] at the back of his property this morning and he is safely holding it until it can be returned to its previous position. He previously had discovered and retrieved the undamaged posts from the marsh, and they are safely in my garage,” Gomsak said. He credited recent publicity, including a photo he had taken of the sign years ago, with producing “remorse on the part of the thieves” and the return of the sign. “A good ending to a disturbing action,” he said. This was the second time an A.J. Cort Memorial Salt Marsh sign had gone missing. The first time was in 2006, when it was damaged and blown away in a storm. The original iteration of the sign was unveiled in a ceremony held in May of 2002. Gomsak, a former Ocean Pines Association director, was involved in the replacement and re-dedication of the sign in June of 2009. At the time he was president of the Point homeowners association. He lives near the marsh and still enjoys the view. The 2006 storm left the two support posts standing, but this year’s thieves removed the posts as well. Gomsak, now a summer Ocean Pines resident who spends most of the year in Florida, was very upset that the sign had been stolen. He expressed hope that by publicizing the theft in the local media, “the public can be made aware of it and perhaps help in recovering the sign. People who do such deeds often brag about it, or show their trophy off to others. Alert citizens can then be very helpful in informing authorities.” Gomsak said the theft deprived “the Point Community and Ocean Pines residents of this beautiful piece of art, [and] is a dishonor to the memory of A. J. Corts and his family, as well as to the Army Corps of Engineers, which was responsible for the Salt Marsh Restoration Project and which chose to honor Mr. Corts by having the original sign created and project named for him.”

The A,J. Corts Memorial Salt Marsh sign, recently stolen, has been recovered and is undamaged,

According to a June 26, 2009, article in the Ocean City Today weekly newspaper provided by Gomsak, A.J. Corts was the construction manager for the project, working for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Corts died on the same day the project was completed, said the article written by Ocean Pines resident Nancy Powell. “The project’s goal was to remove phragmites and many people had been concerned about possible noise, dust, traffic problems and damage to Ocean Pines roads by trucks transporting material to the county landfill,” according to the article. “When work was completed in October 2001, there were no complaints, not even from people who had opposed the project.” The article went on to say that the project was the first of its kind in the coastal bays watershed and, according to the Army Corps of Engineers, resulted in the first increase in salt marsh acreage in Maryland in the past three centuries. “Part of the project’s success was attributed to Corts, who spent his nights sleeping in a trailer at the work site,” the article reported. “Corts had asked the OPA board in September to grant an extension of hours permitting the work to begin 30 minutes earlier. He also asked for permission for the work to continue on Saturdays because he was eager to complete the project.” The project finished early, the article said, and Corts went home to Baltimore on Oct. 5, where he died in his sleep in his own bed.

The original sign was commissioned and paid for by Keith Adams of K&K Adams, the company that reestablished the wetlands on the site. “He and others wanted to do something in memory of Corts and his work. So his company paid for the sign naming the area the A.J. Corts Memorial l Salt Marsh,” according to the article. More than 100 people, including local, state and federal officials, attended the May, 2002, dedication and memorial ceremony at the site. Gomsak was one of the locals attending. His garage was used to keep the food out of the sun during the event, the article said. “He must have been a very dedicated person,” the article quoted Gomsak. “The dedication was a sensitive thing to do.” After the 2006 storm blew away the sign, Gomsak was determined to see it replaced. It didn’t happen overnight. Three years passed before Gomsak’s efforts paid off. The OPA Board of Directors and Worcester County declined to help, according to the article, but then OPA General Manager Tom Olson helped solicit donations to replace the sign. The work was done by Todd Peterson of Redwood Burl in West Ocean City. It was installed and rededicated in May of 2009. A date on when the sign will be reinstalled and perhaps rededicated has not yet been determined.

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Viola unveils raised planter box that will replace space once occupied by guardhouse North Gate improvement project continues to unfold with help from the Garden Club By ROTA L. KNOTT Contributing Writer ith new lights finally installed on the North Gate bridge, the Ocean Pines Association is planning to dress up the structure even more by adding a planter box at the former site of the guardhouse. General Manager John Viola, during the Oct 15 Board of Directors meeting, said staff is working with the Ocean Pines Garden Club to design a raised planter box that can be used to add flowers and decorations to the bridge. “It’s really coming along nice,” Viola said of the renovations to the bridge. He said the raised flower box, with guidance from the Garden Club, will be used as the new site for

The raised planter box to be installed on the North Gate bridge.

the Christmas tree as well as plantings for each season. The OPA removed the old North Gate guardhouse from the bridge in

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December and has installed wood decking over that footprint for safety reasons and continuity of appearance. The guardhouse was completely removed from the bridge by Public Works crews at a cost of just $2,500. Viola said two other improvements to the North Gate area are coming as well. A new fountain will be added to the pond. The outside wall trim will be finished to complement the bridge. “We’re looking at streamlining that like the rest of the bridge,” he said. The fountain will be the second at the North Gate, in the pond on the north side of the bridge. He estimated the project cost at $15,000 for the raised planter and

finishing the bridge, and another $7,000 to $8,000 for the fountain. The long-awaited lighting project was completed in September and Viola said he has received a lot of positive feedback. The project involved replacing the old globe style lights with ten new lights, four larger anchor lights on the corners of the structure and six along the bridge sides. Crews had to install the concrete bases for the primary light poles at the bridge corners and then erect the four light poles. To replace the six lower lights on wooden beams along the length of the bridge, the OPA had to cut down the beams to allow for installation of the new lights. Not everyone likes the new lights though. OPA President Doug Parks said the Board received an email from an association member that said they didn’t like the bridge because the lighting “looked too modern for this community.” He added that “it goes to show you that some people will accept the changes and some people won’t.” As for the bridge lights, Viola previously called them “iconic,” but added that the traditional globestyle lights simply aren’t available anymore. The four new anchor pole lights as well as light along both sides of the bridge were installed at a cost of $46,390. Bridge lights were installed on one side of the structure at a time and because it required closing the work side of the bridge. Earlier this year, Viola told the Board he is exploring the possibility of adding a third lane or widening current lanes on the bridge now that the old guard house has been removed to help relieve outgoing u

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OCEAN PINES North Gate From Page 30 traffic backups. He said he is investigating options for two exit lanes, one feeding traffic south and the other north on Rt. 59. A single lane would enter Ocean Pines via the bridge. The need for improvements to the

North Gate bridge was first brought up at a Board meeting by Director Frank Daly more than a year ago. At that time Daly said Ocean Pines residents deserve to have an attractive and festive North Gate entryway for the holidays. He said at that time that the North Gate bridge entryway is one of the major entry points into Ocean

Pines, but normal wear and tear, a number of vehicle-bridge accidents, weather-related factors and littering had taken a toll on its appearance. Last year residents called the bridge area an eyesore with mold growing on the guard house roof, debris under the bridge, vehicular damage to the bridge structure, and

missing or broken lights. Daly has said the North Gate bridge is scheduled for replacement in 2034 and will likely necessitate a referendum vote of property owners due to the high cost. When the bridge structurally deteriorates, the OPA may be eligible for financial support from the state and county for its replacement cost.

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OCEAN PINES

32 Ocean Pines PROGRESS November 2022

Board approves another round of expenditures to fix gas leak Total cost of repairs, including a new C fuel dock, exceed $500,000 By ROTA L. KNOTT Contributing Writer he cost of repairs prompted by a faulty fuel supply line at the Yacht Club Marina is slowly creeping upward, with the Board of Directors approving another $367,302.31 in contracts for replacement of a dock and installation of a power pedestal. The total cost of marina projects resulting from a fuel leak this summer has topped $500,000. There was a fuel leak at the Yacht Club marina this summer, but the leak was quickly contained, General Manager John Viola, said. As a result of the leak, the OPA had to shut down some of its pipelines and take off line a few fuel dispensers. During the Oct. 15 regular Board meeting, Viola asked for Board approval of contract awards for the two latest marina projects. He said Ocean Pines Association staff

covid-related supply chain issues. Because of those delays, the OPA did not enjoy a full-season of use of the new t-docks. Viola hopes to avoid that problem next year. He said Gator Dock and Marine Inc., not the same company the OPA used for the t-docks, has assured the OPA that it has all of the materials needed to build C dock in stock. Last month, the Board approved replacement of the fuel pipes and lines where the marina experienced the leak this summer. “That was needed because one, we weren’t going to meet code, and we had some problems this year,” Viola said, adding, “Obviously, we’re going to have to replace the dock.” The OPA is replacing the gas lines and fuel dispensers to include a fuel management system on C dock at the Yacht Club. The Board voted in September to award a $169,520 contract to Petrol Supply Inc. for the work. Together with the cost of the new C dock approved in October, the cost of marina projects related to the fuel leak has exceeded $500,000. Viola said the new gas pump and fuel management system will comply with recently updated Maryland regulations and a plan will be sub-

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worked with Vista Design Group to develop the plans for a new C fuel dock. He said the new dock is required for the OPA to garner Maryland Department of the Environment approval to sell fuel next year. Based on a staff recommendation, the Board approved a $350,720.38 contract with the Florida-based company of Gator Dock and Marine Inc. to build the dock. “This is similar to what we did with what we call the t-docks [installed this summer],” Viola said, adding that the new dock will be built off site and then shipped to Ocean Pines for installation. He said it is crucial to order the new dock and power pedestal now so they can be built and installed before the boating season next year. Last year, the OPA experienced significant project delays because the company building the two new t-docs for transient use boats couldn’t get the necessary materials because of

mitted to Maryland Department of the Environment 60 days prior to the contractor beginning the work. He said that the OPA knew the fuel pipes needed to be replaced as far back as 2012-2013 and they are included in a replacement reserve study. At the Oct. 15 meeting, the Board also approved a $16,581.93 contract with Dock Builders Supply for a marina power pedestal for C dock. The power pedestal will have two hose connections, two hose holders, and two electrical outlets. Despite faulty lines that forced the OPA to shut down a few of its pumps at the Yacht Club marina this summer, Viola said the facility was still able to meet boaters’ demand for fuel all summer. “The team down there did a great job this year keeping the marina open and meeting the needs and demands of all the customers,” he said. The problems at the marina began when the fuel pumps were shut down because of mechanical issues after the price of gas soared about first $5 and again at $6 per gallon and then a pipe developed a leak. The OPA had to update the gears in the marina gas pumps because they did not go to a $5-plus price point. and then they have to be updated again after the price topped $6 per gallon. Shortly after the gear adjustments were made, there was a line leak associated with the piping of the above the ground storage tank system.

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34 Ocean Pines PROGRESS November 2022

OCEAN PINES

Board approves golf course equipment Emergency bulkhead repair for Moonshell Drive slated

By ROTA L. KNOTT Contributing Writer wo pricey pieces of equipment needed to maintain the Ocean Pines golf course topped the list of capital purchases approved during the Oct. 15 Board of Directors’ meeting. General Manager John Viola said it is crucial to order the equipment now so it arrives in time for the start of the 2023 golfing season. Both pieces of equipment, a surrounds mower and utility vehicle, will be replacing existing, aging items used by crews to maintain the Ocean Pines Association’s golf course and will be paid for from the replacement reserve. The Board approved the purchase of the Toro surrounds mower, used on the outside of the greens and the rough, from Turf Equipment for $53,568 and the John Deere utility vehicle from Finch Turf for $38,495.74. Director Stuart Lakernick asked if it would be more economical to lease the equipment instead of purchasing it outright, and wanted to know what happens to the old equipment. Viola said the leasing equipment is generally costlier than buying the equipment, but added that it depends how long it is used.

“In the past we pushed, and we pushed it and then stuff would break down,” Viola said of the OPA’s reluctance to replace equipment in the past. He said that resulted in equipment breakdowns during the golfing season. “At times they would be stuck in the busiest season,” he said. Now, Viola said, the OPA is replacing equipment on a schedule based on the DMA replacement reserve study. He noted that the life and replacement schedule for every piece of equipment is different. Justin Hartshorne, golf course superintendent, agreed and said the equipment generally has a five- to seven-year life span. “When we do replace an old piece of equipment we do try to sell it and recoup the best that we can from the old piece. But it is removed from the site…” he said. In response to Lakernick’s question about the value of the old surrounds mower, Hartshorne he isn’t sure yet. “Sometimes it’s only $1,000 by the time we’re done with it,” he said of the resale value of equipment, which buyers often look for just for parts. “This type of equipment is usually not worth much,” Viola said. “We don’t just throw it out. We try.”

Director Colette Horn asked if part of the reason there is no resale assigned to the old equipment at this time is because it’s still in use by golf maintenance crews. Hartshorne agreed and said he doesn’t know what it will be worth next year. Director Steve Jacobs about the timing of the purchase and wondered why it is being purchased now when the OPA doesn’t plan to use it until next year. Viola said the OPA would normally wait to purchase new equipment but because of supply chain issues it is requesting the approval to purchase now. That way the equipment should be on site by May 2023 in time for next golfing season, he said. Since the OPA is ordering the equipment now but it’s not due to arrive until next year, Jacobs wanted to know if it is the 2022 or 2023 model. “It’s the most recent one,” Viola said. But added that he’s not sure how the model years line up so he doesn’t know which year it would be. Hartshorne also said it will be the most current model of the mower. He said there has been quite a lot of time lapse between when orders and u

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OCEAN PINES

November 2022 Ocean Pines PROGRESS 35

Mailings for short-term rental DR changes apparently delayed by scanner issues Jacobs presses Viola on lifeguard shortage By ROTA L. KNOTT Contributing Writer nitiation of the referendum process for proposed changes to the Declaration of Restrictions to regulate short-term rentals was expected to come this month, but now could be delayed because of problems with the Ocean Pines Association’s ballot counting system. Linda Martin, OPA officer manager, told the Board of Directors during its Oct. 15 monthly meeting that she needs directors to sign-off on beginning the mailing process. Martin said it’s been paused while an implementation team appointed by General Manager John Viola drafted an opening informational

Golf course From Page 34

placed and when they are finally fulfilled. He said replacement pieces of equipment from last year’s golf maintenance budget, still have not arrived. “We should be seeing them in the next month or two.” “So you’re getting by with old equipment limping along until new comes?” Horn asked. Hartshorne said staff continues to do the regular service to maintain the equipment and keep it operational until the new equipment arrives. “We’re in good shape,” he said. “None of this is an emergency right now.” The Board also approved a contract with Fisher Marine Construction for $75,075 for emergency bulkhead replacement. The project will replace the bulkhead from 44 to 50 Moonshell Drive at a cost of $455 per linear foot for 165 linear feet. Directors wanted to know if the owners of the lots scheduled for bulkhead replacement are aware they need to remove items on the back end of their property, like a patio or deck, prior to the bulkhead work. “That’s part of the process,” Viola said of property owner notification. “They are aware. They know that there’s an easement there.” The OPA has a 15 foot easement specifically for bulkhead maintenance and replacement.

statement and worked with the association’s attorney on language for the referendum. “We’re kind of on hold on this right now,” she said. Martin said the implementation team has a plan for how to perform the referendum process. In November the team plans to meet with the Board to discuss next steps, including when to begin the mailing process and how many times do it. “This is an intensive process, and we just want to make sure that this is still on track and that the Board is going forward with this before we start it,” she said. OPA President Doug Parks said he would send an email to the Board about moving ahead with the referendum process so directors can be ready to discuss the issue by the November meeting. Questions about the accuracy of the ballot counting software could delay mailing of the referendum, though.

Aquatics

General Manager John Viola said the OPA is investigating options for filling lifeguard positions at the swimming pools for next summer.

Some of the ideas under consideration include paying for certification for lifeguards and paying a summer differential, two options that will be reviewed as part of the budget process. He said they are also considering participating in job fairs. This summer, he said “certain pools were closed, were not open 100 percent of the time.” He said the Yacht Club and Beach Club pools were open all the time, while the other OPA pools were only open 60 to 65 percent of the time last season. “We did have a lifeguard shortage. We are working on it. That didn’t seem to satisfy Director Steve Jacobs, who lectured Viola on the need to do better next summer after the general manager made it clear that hiring more guards next summer was a top priority. One example of the extra effort expended so far: A campaign to encourage older Ocean Pines residents who might have had guard experience in their teenage years to obtain certificateion and join the OPA guard staff.

Road Repaving

About three miles of roads are

scheduled to be repaved this fall. Those roads are Barnacle Court, Beach Court, Birdnest Drive, Fosse Grange, Garrett Drive, Ivanhoe Court, Liberty Bell Court, Little John Court, Moonshell Drive, Rabbit Run Lane, Surfers Way, Watergreen Lane and Willow Way. Viola said road striping has already been completed in other areas of the community using reflective paint. Contractors are now repainting the crosswalks and directional arrows on Ocean Parkway using the same reflective paint.

Drainage

Viola said contractors have completed installing pipe liners in 20 major pipes throughout the community, including four key pipes going into the Yacht Club at Mumford’s Landing that were a problem area. He said the process, which involves underground pipe replacement instead of the typical process of cutting through the pavement, is more cost effective. Three other pipes that empty stormwater into the canals or the bay were also targeted for replacement. “They are 30 to 50 years old,” Viola said of the pipes. The contractor, Deppe Brothers, has already replaced a pipe at Water’s Edge at a cost of $8,850. Next on the list is a pipe on Clubhouse Drive at cost of $8,850. A Birdnest Drive pipe replacement will be bid u

OC Chopsticks celebrating two years in Outlets Ocean City Voted Top 100 Chinese Restaurant in the USA

Jack Chen, chef/owner

OC Chopsticks Asian Bistro located in the Outlets Ocean City is celebrating its second anniversary. It had its grand opening on Sept. 10, 2020. “We want to thank all our customers for their support over the past two years,” said Jack Chen, chef and owner of the restaurant, which has been voted among the Top 100 Chinese restaurants in the United States. OC Chopsticks features an extensive selection of authentic Chinese, Japanese and Thai menu items, and sushi. Carry-out, dining-in and on-line ordering are available. The restaurant’s Website is occhopsticks.com. OC Chopsticks is the fourth restaurant to be opened by Chen in the area. These other Eastern Shore eateries include the East Moon Japanese Restaurant in Salisbury, the Lucky Star Restaurant in Fruitland, and the Peking House Restaurant in Cambridge. OC Chopsticks is open seven days a week, year round, Sunday through Thursday 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Friday and Saturday 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.

36 Ocean Pines PROGRESS November 2022 Floating planters From Page 34 soon and will be a late fall or early winter project.

Strategic plan

The Strategic Planning Committee and OPA staff are wrapping up an update to the association’s strategic plan. Martin gave an overview of the recommended goals established by Strategic Planning Committee: achieve a strong and sustainable financial position; maintain and enhance infrastructure, community appearance, and current amenities; maintain a high level of safety; and foster a sustainable and engaged community, driven by our core values of integrity, accountability, collaboration. A fifth goal added by OPA staff is to support leadership training and development. Martin said OPA teams began developing their strategic plans for their individual departments in July with drafts sent to the Strategic Planning Committee in August for review in September. Changes were incorporated into the draft and reviewed with each department for their approval. The draft strategic plan has been provided to Board members and standing committees for review. It’s been posted on the OPA Website in the General Manager’s section. It’s still subject to changes by the Board of Directors.

Golf course

Days continue to be busy at the Ocean Pines Golf Course with all types of bookings and weekends are especially busy thanks to package play, Viola said. He added there are numerous events coming at the golf course through the end of the year. In the area of golf maintenance, he said crews have been topdressing, applying light amounts of sand, to the greens and tees and addressing irrigation issues from the summer. He said there were irrigation leaks on holes one, four and seven and twelve. Crews have also been bust with post-storm clean-up following the recent hurricane. They are planning tree and drainage work for fall and winter months.

Racquet sports

Renovation of existing pickleball courts was completed in late September at a cost of about $75,000 and the new courts are now fully operational for play. Viola said all courts were available in time for Oct. 7 tournaments. “This one is a big win,” he said.

Clubhouse Grille

Football Sundays are busy at the Clubhouse Grill, with specials, happy hour drinks, and plenty of television on which to watch all of the football games, Viola said. “Each week more and more patrons have come to watch football.” He said every seat in the building was filled on Oct. 2 during Hurricane Ian.

OCEAN PINES

Board settles on first town hall meeting topic Voting, amenity rights suspended for property owners violating DRs By ROTA L. KNOTT Contributing Writer he Board of Directors first Town Hall meeting of the year will spotlight the amenities, programs, and committees of the Ocean Pines Association. During an Oct. 15 meeting, Directors accepted a Communications Committee recommendation for a “meet and greet” with property owners to communicate and market all that the Ocean Pines Association has to offer its residents. Director Steve Jacobs presented the committee’s recommendation under new business. He said the committee would like the opportunity for the various OPA departments, amenities, and committees to provide information and materials to interested residents. “Members who come to the Town Hall meeting and can become more informed about the committees and the amenities that are offered,” he said. Jacobs acknowledged that type of Town Hall meeting will require more planning by the Board and staff. “I think that’s a great idea,” Director Colette Horn said. She said the OPA used to offer a residents academy in person for people to learn about Ocean Pines, but that has transitioned to a virtual program as a result of the pandemic. “But I think this serves another purpose to promote what’s now the online residents’ academy,” she said, adding it is also a way to encourage volunteerism. OPA President Doug Parks also liked the idea. “We committed to having at the very least one or two Town Hall meetings,” he said. “This would fit as something conducive to having a Town Hall meeting. Parks said the event will have to be coordinated with General Manager John Viola and his staff to make it an effective Town Hall meeting and ensure it covers the appropriate topics. But, he said, “Let’s get that on the calendar.” No date has been announced for the Town Hall. In other new business, the Board voted unanimously to declare the existence of the open violations on 11 properties, and suspended the voting rights and use of association amenities for owners of these properties as long as the violations remain open. The properties are 72 White Horse Drive, 141 Teal Circle, 55 Duck Cove Circle, 268 Windjammer Road, 51 Offshore Lane, 10 Footbridge Trail, 52 Nottingham Lane, 164 Nottingham Lane, 47 Nottingham Lane, 3 Cross-

bow Trail, 11 Chestnut Way, 83 Wood Duck Drive, 66 Wood Duck Drive, and 127 Pine Forest Drive. Horn made the motion, saying the Architectural Review Committee and Compliance, Permits, and Inspections office believe approving this request would shorten the timeline to compliance. She said it would also save the association money and provide a better forum for property owners to work out their problem as opposed to the Worcester County Court system. “This action does not mean that property owners who fail to comply during this period may not be forwarded to the attorney if it remains necessary to force compliance,” she said. Horn said all of the properties were inspected by members of ARC to verify their status, and all had continuing violations as of the Board meeting. All but two of the violations were cases forwarded to legal counsel in 2022. “I’m all for enforcement,” said Director Monica Rakowski. “My only question is how do we enforce the restriction on the amenities.” Linda Martin, senior executive office manager, said the properties will be flagged internally in the association’s software. Staff will see the flag if members try to use the amenities. Once the violation is cleared, the flag can be lifted from the account. Parks asked if this process will create more work for staff. “What if any effect does this have on OPA’s operations staff?” Viola said it will not have an impact of staff, as it is a simple matter to place or remove the flags in the software system. The previous method used to persuade residents to comply with open violations on their property was to send two notices, after which the case is referred to the general manager for further action, which means the case is sent to legal counsel, provided the property owner has not complied prior to that. Horn said “even in normal times this has proven to be inefficient and costly to the Association. COVID made the situation worse in 2020 and 2021, since the courts were closed for much of the time. The change from previous legal counsel and lack of attention to diligently pursue cases by current legal counsel are also a contributing factors.” At an April 21 Board meeting, ARC brought to the Board’s attention the need to u

OCEAN PINES

November 2022 Ocean Pines PROGRESS 37

At the request of the Communications Advisory Committee, the OPA recently acquired drones with the capacity to take high quality aerial photos. The drones are under the control of the Ocean Pines Police Department. Cpl. Ricky Kerrigan was at the controls when this photo of the Ocean Pines Yacht Club was taken.

OCT. 15 PUBLIC COMMENTS

OPA member concerned about rising sea levels By ROTA L KNOTT Contributing Writer cean Pines Association member Gary Miller broached the issue of rising sea levels and its impact on Ocean Pines during the Public Comments segment of the Oct. 15 monthly Board of Directors meeting. He said he has watched news accounts of recent storms and reports about climate change and rising tides and wanted to know if the Ocean Pines Association is considering the potential future impact on the community. “I’m just wondering if Ocean Pines has any plans to do something about the higher tides that we’re seeing come in,” he said. He wanted to know if there are any plans to possibly raise the bulkheads when they’re being replaced or some gener-

Town Hall

From Page 36 use interim enforcement tools currently at their disposal to help reduce legal costs and to try to prevent property owners from having to become involved with the County Courts. The authority

al plan to help with what’s coming in the future. He expressed the hope that the Ocean Pines Association has something in the works and at least is thinking about ways to have properties protected over the next 15 to 20 years. Raising the level of bulkheads is an idea that has been discussed from time to time over the years but has been rejected as impractical. Higher bulkheads in some areas would divert or channel stormwater in the canals to properties without the higher bulkheading, potentially causing greater damage to those areas. No one responded to Miller’s during the meeting, Also during the Oct. 15 Public Comments, OPA member Dutch Oovsteen asked why property owners who pay their annual property assess-

to grant this request is found in the Declaration of Restrictions, The OPA Articles of Amendment and Restatement, dated September 12, 2013 and the Bylaws. Horn said ARC and CPI intend make use of this process to bring more cases like this to the Board for action.

ments on a payment plan instead of in one lump sum are not able to vote in OPA elections. “There people here who pay their dues through the year, right?” he asked, and then added that some residents told him that they made payments on their dues before the first of May but still were not eligible to vote. “Is that true?” he asked, wondering if property owners who make installment are prohibited from voting. OPA President Doug Parks said the OPA’s bylaws require annual dues to be paid in full in order for the owners to be eligible to vote. Oovsteen said he doesn’t think that is fair. “I’d like to see the people get a right to vote, too.” That would require a change in the by-laws. He also commented on new lights installed at the North Gate bridge, and apparently was not a fan of them. “I cannot see that we put these lights up in Ocean Pines. I don’t want to see you make Ocean Pines like Times Square,” he said. Oovsteen perhaps was referring to a proposal by the Communications Advisory Committee for electronic signage at the North Gate, a proposal that may be a topic for a future Town Hall meetu

OCEAN PINES

Ocean Pines PROGRESS November 2022

OCEAN PINES BRIEFS Decision on renaming skatepark after Gavin Knupp pending

he Board of Directors is yet to make a decision on whether to name the Ocean Pines skatepark in White Horse Park after the Ocean Pines teenagter, Gavin Knupp, who was killed in a hit-and-run incident this past July. During the Public Comments segment of the Sept. 24 monthly Board meeting, Tiffany Knupp, Gavin’s mother, approached the Board with a request to name the skatepark as the Gavin Knupp Skate Park. Gavin Knupp, 14, was killed in a hit and run incident in July. His friends and family plan to create a lasting legacy by doing good in the community through the Gavin Knupp Foundation. “We have started a foundation, the Gavin Knupp Foundation, and we plan on doing amazing things here,” Tiffany Knupp told the Board. She said the family is working with an attorney to establish the foundation and one of its priorities will be to fund improvements at the skate park where Gavin enjoyed spending time with his friends. Knupp said those improvements could include landscaping, installation of solar powered phone charging stations, and extra seating. OPA President Doug Parks acknowledged Knupp’s request and said the Board will discuss it at a future meeting. Parks told the Progress that the request could be placed on the Board’s meeting agenda in November or December. “We’re still gathering information, but we don’t want to prolong this either,” he said, predicting that a decision would be made before the end of the year. The Progress has learned that there recently was an internal Board kerfuffle over an idea broached by Director Steve Jacobs with Ray Knupp, Gavin’s father, over whether the family would accept a memorial bench as an alternative to a skateboard naming. Certain directors were incensed that Jacobs approached the family without authorization from the full Board about a proposal that directors had not agreed to present. The Progress has been told that Ray Knupp remains steadfast in preferring the skatepark nam-

ing over a memorial bench.

Public Comments

ous year. “If we can’t get backups or enough police officers, we gonna lose them in our community too and I don’t want to see that happen. We’re right here five miles from Ocean City where everything in the world is happening over there,” he said. Thomas said “protection is my number one goal here” and encouraged the Board to consider the safety of Ocean Pines and its officers. He had a different opinion than Oovsteen on the matter of voting rights for property owners making installment payments on their annual dues. “If you’re not a good member of society you certainly can’t vote,” he said, adding “you’ve got to pay your bills to vote.” Paula Gray, who ran for the Board in this sum-

From Page 37 ing. OPA member Mark Thomas complimented Ocean Pines and said “it’s getting better by the day.” He said it’s good to see progress on the new fire station and was supportive of the police department. As he did at a previous Board meeting, Thomas urged the Board to name the Ocean Pines skatepark after the late teenager Gavin Knupp. Thomas was concerned about police officer safety and the OPA’s ability to hire and maintain a full staff. He said nationally five officers died that week on active duty, and so far in 2022 a total of 55 died compared to a total of 61 the previ-

Advisory committee members

In addition to five new members of the Elections Committee [see article elsewhere in this edition for details], the Board of Directors during the Oct. 15 monthly Board meeting approved new advisory committee members. Unanimously approved were August Flentje, first term, By-laws and Resolutions; Robert Hillegass, one-year extension, By-laws and Resolutions; Timothy Peck, first term, Environment and Natural Assets; and Steve Ransdell, first term, Aquatics.

Coffee with directors

Ocean Pines homeowners are invited to join the Board of Directors for coffee and donuts, 30 minutes prior to each regular Board meeting. Coffee and donuts will be served at 8:30 a.m., and several Board members will be there to meet with the membership and answer questions. “We feel these kinds of steps are important, because members don’t often get to interact with Directors in an informal manner and we want to promote better communication,” Association President Doug Parks said. “If you have the time and want to meet the Directors, please stop by before the meeting.” Regular Board meetings are scheduled to start at 9 a.m. on the third Saturday of each month.

Rt. 90 corridor meeting Nov. 9

The Worcester County Bike and Pedestrian Coalition will host a community meeting that will provide updated information on the status of preliminary planning for possible dualization of the Route 90 corridor. The Maryland Department of Transportation’s State Highway Administration has been soliciting public input for the project, which so far has only received state planning money. The meeting is set for the Ocean Pines library on Wednesday, Nov. 9, from 6-7:30 p.m. at the Ocean Pines library.

A presentation will include discussion of the benefits of making communities safe for residents, workers to walk and bike, examples of successful bike and pedestrian project on and around bridges around the country, federal requirements and state guidance on bike access on bridges and highways, and how communities succeeed in advocating for bike and pedestrian improvements included in transporation projects.

Bertino to host Nov. 16 town hall

Worcester County Commissioner Chip Bertino will host a town meeting on Wednesday, Nov. 16, at the Ocean Pines library. Topics include an update on county issues and will lead a panel discussion on the newly formed county Police Accountability Board. Joining Bertino in the panel discussion will be county Sheriff Mathew Crisafulli, State’s Attorney Kris Heiser and County Attorney Roscoe Leslie. Bertino said in a press release that the creation of the accountability board is an unfunded mandate of the state legislature.

Get Involved holiday drives

The Get Involved Facebook Page’s is soliciting donations for its Thanksgiving holiday food drive, with donation boxes at the Yacht club, Southgate Firehouse and the Ocean Pines administration Building. Get Involved is collecting non-perishable foods from now until Nov. 19. Get Involved also will be conducting a toy drive from Nov. 25 to Dec. 19, and a coat drive from Dec. 26 through Jan. 23.

Kiwanis coat and toy drive

All Wednesdays in November from 9 a.m. to noon, the Kiwanis Club of Ocean Pines-Ocean City will be collecting coats and toys in the parking lot of the Ocean Pines Community Center. Coats may be new or gently used and toys new and unwrapped. Coats are for local charities to distribute and toys for Worcester GOLD. mer’s election, thanked those who won seats on the governing body “for the integrity and the professionalism they showed while all this horrendous count was going on.” Despite issues like the election ballot controversy, Gray said Ocean Pines is in much better shape that it was six years ago when she moved to the community. “We definitely didn’t have any black ink, ever,” she said, referring to many years of negative financial reports. Gray suggested including updates from various OPA committees as well as contact information for committee representatives in weekly eblasts from the association. “Information is really, really important right now,” she said.

OPA FINANCES

November 2022 Ocean Pines PROGRESS 39

OPA records a $53,000 surplus in September Positive operating fund variance for the year now up to $745,000

By TOM STAUSS Publisher he Ocean Pines Association recorded a $53,151 operating fund surplus by department in September, somewhat off the tor-

,000

rid pace of much of the fiscal year, but nonetheless bringing the cumulative surplus for the first five months of the 2022-23 fiscal year to $746,669. According to a financial report

by Controller/Director of Finance Steve Phillips, the September positive variance to budget resulted from revenues over budget by $71,436 and expenses over budget by $18,285.

OPA NET OPERATING RESULTS BY DEPARTMENT - SEPTEMBER 2022

Source: OA Director of Finance/Controller Steve Phillips

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The positive operating fund surplus for the year through September resulted from revenues over budget by $799,796 and total expenses over budget by $53,127. In September, all amenity departments except for tennis, platform tennis and aquatics were in the black. All amenity departments except for tennis, pickleball and the Yacht Club had positive variances to budget. For the first five months of the fiscal year, all amenity departments were in the black, many by sizable amounts, and all except the Clubhouse Grille and tennis were ahead of budget. The latter two actually were virtually break-even relative to budget, with tennis showing a $254 negative variance and the Clubhouse Grille a $712 negative variance. The Yacht Club was the top producer among the amenities in September with a $51,201 operating surplus. This was under budget by $13,102, but for the year through September the Yacht Club netted $463,704 and is $100,866 ahead of budget. This is somewhat off the torrid pace of last year, when the Yacht Club’s net through September was $571,270. General Manager John Viola in remarks during the Oct. 15 Board of Directors meeting said that accruing for Matt Ortt Companies profit-sharing earlier in the fiscal year accounts for the year-over-year difference. Golf operations were the second top producer in September, netting $33,639 and recording a $23,171 positive variance to budget. For the year through September, golf operations are in the black by $519,755, the OPA’S leading amenity department by that measure. Golf had an cumulative positive variance to budget through September of $182,789, also the leading amenity department by that measure. A year ago, golf had generated $489,354 in net earnings. Although Beach Club operations tapered off in September, it nonetheless netted $14,378 during the month, ahead of budget by $10,746. For the year through September, the Beach Club shows that it remains as a significant cash cow for the OPA. The club’s year-to-date net revenue was $240,105, ahead of budget by $84,259. A year ago through September, u

WORCESTER COUNTY

Ocean Pines PROGRESS November 2022

Voters to decide fate of bond for proposed sports complex By ROTA L. KNOTT Contributing Writer oters will have the opportunity during the Nov. 6 General Election to determine whether to allow Worcester County to issue bonds to pay for the construction of a new sports complex on land near Stephen Decatur High School in Berlin. Question A on the ballot is a Local Referendum by Petition on the bond issuance for design and construction costs of a Worcester County Sports Complex. The question asks voters to determine whether the County Commissioners may finance a portion of the costs of designing and constructing a Worcester County Sports Complex by issuing a bond. The issue was brought to referendum by the People for Fiscal Responsibility Committee after the commissioners voted to move forward with issuing bonds to pay $11 million for the purchase of land sports complex project. This spring the commissioners introduced a flurry of bond bills, including ones to fund the sports complex purchase. They had to pull all of the bills due to an advertising error, but opted not to reintroduce the one relating to the sports complex. With Ocean Pines’ representatives continuing to oppose the project, in September a majority of commissioners voted to extend their $7.1 million contract for the purchase of land to Jan. 31, 2023. The county approved the property purchase settlement extension to give the commissioners time to identify a funding source for the proposed purchase of property for the sports complex. Vince Gisriel, chairman of People for Fiscal Responsibility Committee, in a September letter to the county said that in order to purchase the land the commissioners must pass a resolution or bill. “I submit that a land purchase which facilitates a major capital project requires a resolution or bill, to be voted upon, and only after proper advanced, advertised notice; and thus, subject to referendum by the people.” A majority of the commissioners voting to enter into a contract for the land acquisition following a public hearing doesn’t meet that criteria, he said. Gisriel also argued that the actual contract of sale, which was not seen by all commissioners before its signing, should be signed only after a separate resolution or bill is adopted. “Again, in my opinion, a simple voice vote is not sufficient.” He also questioned why the county signed a contract to purchase the land for $7.15 million, when the capital improvement plan showed land projected at $2.38 million.

Commissioner races

Only one of the races for a commissioner seat in District 1 is contested in the General Election. Incumbent Democrat Josh Nordstrom faces off

against Republican challenger Caryn Abbott. Ocean Pines area Republican Commissioners Chip Bertino, District 5, and Jim Bunting, District 6, face no general election competition. Democrat Diana Purnell retained her District 2 seat, while Republican newcomer Eric Fiori captured the District 3 seat being vacated by long-time Commissioner Bud Church. District 4 Republican Commissioner Ted Elder fended off several primary challengers to keep his seat, and District 7 Republican Commissioner Joe Mitrecic faced no competitors in the primary.

Legislative races

Republican Wayne Hartman, District 38C representative in the House of Delegates, has no competition in the general election. Incumbent Republican Senator Mary Beth Carozza will face off against Democratic challenger Michele Gregory.

Board of Education races

In the District 6 Board of Education race, Nate Passwaters faces off against Katie Ann Addis. The District 5 seat is not up for election this year.

Other races

Republicans Sheriff Matthew Crisafulli, State’s Attorney Kris Heiser, Clerk of the Court Susan Richardson Braniecki and Register of Wills Terri Delaney Wescott are all unopposed in their bids for their respective seats. Republica candidates for Judges of the Orphan’s Court,

September financials

From Page 40 the Beach Clubs’ net earnings were $196,819. Although the beach parking generated relatively little in earnings during September, it is one of the OPA’s top three net earners for the year. Its operating surplus in September was $6,496, with a negative variance to budget of $20. But for the year through September, beach parking has netted $240,105, ahead of budget by $84.259. Through September, beach parking netted $447,981, ahead of budget by $18,453. Through September of 2021, beach parking netted $423,582. Although it dropped into negative territory in September, aquatics continues to out-perform. It lost $45,613 for the month, but that was ahead of budget by $5,426. For the year through September, Aquatics was in the black by $304,396 with a positive variance to budget of $120,068. Aquatics is ahead of year’s last’s net by about $100,000. Last year’s Aquatics net at the end of September was $228,485. Marina operations also tapered off in September, with net revenue of $2,255. But that was

Mike Diffendal, Linda Hess, and Cheryl Jacobs, are all also unopposed.

Other state races

With Larry Hogan terming out, voters have a choice between Republican Dana Cox and running mate Gordana Schifanelli and Democrat Wes Moore and running mate Aruna Miller, and a handful of minor party candidates. The comptroller’s race is between Republican Barry Glassman and Democrat Brooke Elizabeth Lierman. The attorney general’s race is up for grabs between Republican Michael Anthony Peroutka and Democrat Anthony Brown. Republican Chris Chaffee is battling Democrat Chris Van Holden for the U.S. Senate seat, while Republican incumbent Andy Harris is facing Democrat Heather Mizeur and Libertarian Daniel Frank Thibeault for First District representative in Congress. Voters are also asked to vote on continuance in office for the Stuart Berger and Terrence M.R. Zic for judges of the Court of Special Appeals.

Other ballot questions

A series of other constitutional amendments are on the ballot as well. Topping the list is Question 4 asking voters “Do you favor the legalization of the use of cannabis by an individual who is at least 21 years of age on or after July 1, 2023, in the State of Maryland?” Other questions relate to changing the name of Maryland appellate courts, and asking voters to change the requirements for civil jury trials. Another question adds an eligibility requirement that to serve as a senator or a delegate to the Maryland General Assembly, a person must maintain a primary place of abode in the district that the person has been chosen to represent. ahead of budget by $17,688. For the year through September, marinas netted $269,991, ahead of budget by $34,844. A year ago through September, marinas netted $269,156 for the OPA, about the same as this year’s cumulative net earnings. Pickleball continues to be leader among the three racquet sports, both in net earnings and positive variance to budget. But tennis and platform are holding their own. Pickleball is the leader through September with $59,294 in net earnings and a positive variance to budget of $15,686. A year ago through August, pickleball had netted $47,077 for the OPA. Reserve summary -- The Sept. 30 reserve summary indicates total reserves of $8.819 million, compared to $$8.513 million in August, $9.159 million in July, $9.385 million in June and $9.624 million at the end of May. The replacement reserve balance as of Sept. 30 was $6.03 million, with bulkheads and waterways at $1.354 million, roads at $1,054,841, drainage at $252,767, and new capital at $129,429. The roads reserve received a one-time infusion of funds resulting in Board approval of a transfer of funds from the operation fund surplus.

LIFESTYLES

November 2022 Ocean Pines PROGRESS 41

Ocean Pines Aquatics searching for veteran guards Two retirees encourage others to join them in lifeguard program

ith a national shortage of lifeguards affecting pool operating hours, two local retirees have helped keep the pools running in Ocean Pines. Dave Blazer has worked as a lifeguard in Ocean Pines for three years. Originally from Catonsville, he moved to Ocean Pines with his family in 1999 and served as director of the Maryland Coastal Bays Program for nine years. Blazer worked for Ocean City Beach Patrol while in college and had experience before that lifeguarding for the YMCA and the Forest Hills Swimming Club in Ellicott City. “I always loved lifeguarding. To this day, when I go to the beach, I still have to watch the water and watch people there. It’s just something that’s ingrained,” he said. At 62, Blazer still competes in triathlons and open water events. “I swam across the Chesapeake Bay one year in the Great Chesapeake Bay Swim, and I’ve been doing the Choptank River Swim every year in May. So, I just love swimming and I love being in the pool,” he said. “Pools have been a very integral part of my life, ever since I was little.” After retiring a few years ago, Blazer said he decided to fill some of his free time by working as a lifeguard. He became recertified and approached Ocean Pines Aquatics Director Kathleen Cook about a part-time position. “Aquatics is a great group of people,” he said. “I work two days a week, I open the pool up, and then I’m done at 1 o’clock and I get the rest of the afternoon to do other things.” Blazer has also worked to recruit other potential lifeguards. He encouraged anyone who is a strong swimmer to consider taking a job. “If you can swim 300 yards, the rest of it we can train and help them pass their certification,” he said. “And it’s a great job. You get to meet a lot

of people, and if you love being in the water it’s a lot of fun and it’s a great experience.” Mike Castoro started working at the Sports Core Pool just this week. He’s originally from Ocean Port, New Jersey and spent 35 years in the IT sector working for companies like Microsoft. At age 50, he retired, went back to school and earned a master’s degree, and became a special education teacher. Castoro and his family moved to Ocean Pines in 2017. More recently, he was among the active swimmers at the Sports Core Pool who Blazer tried to enlist. “I’ve been a swimmer all my life, and I had been taking advantage of swimming at the Sports Core Pool since we moved down here,” he said. “Coincidentally, my oldest daughter is the director of a YMCA in New Jersey and she had been talking about the complete lack of lifeguards and how she couldn’t hire anybody. Keeping her pools staffed was difficult. “It’s a nationwide problem and it’s just everywhere,” Castoro continued. “We were just out in California, and it was the same issue – they’re all looking for lifeguards.” When Castoro saw issues in Ocean Pines he thought, “Gee whiz, maybe I could help with this.” “I talked to some of the lifeguards at the Sports Core Pool and they said, ‘Give it a shot.’ So, I did,” he said. Castoro took a precertification test in Ocean Pines, and then became certified through a Red Cross program in Salisbury. A 70-year-old, Castoro said the test was strenuous, but he had no more trouble passing than some of the other candidate who were 17 or 18. “If you can pass a prequalification test, you’re strong enough to do what has to be done,” he said. Castoro said the prequalification process includes swimming 300 yards – roughly 12 lengths

Dave Blazer

Mike Castoro

of the Sports Core Pool – and treading water for two minutes. In the final test, “they drop a brick in the deep end of the pool, you swim the length of the pool, dive down to the bottom, pick the brick up, come up to the surface, and then swim with the brick on your back the length of the pool,” he said. “That’s the physical strength, stamina and duration required to take the course. The bottom line is, you need to be a strong swimmer,” Castoro said. He encouraged others to take the plunge and join the team at Ocean Pines Aquatics. “If you’ve got the idea, you should go forward with it,” he said. “You’re helping the community and giving back, besides picking up some great skills for yourself in terms of being able to swim better. And you have the capability of saving somebody’s life. “I would say to anybody who is considering it, that it’s a worthwhile endeavor that will build your own self-esteem, your own skills, and allow you to give back to the community,” he added. For more information on becoming a lifeguard in Ocean Pines, contact Kathleen Cook at 443299-9949. Spring lifeguard certification classes are scheduled April 21-23 in Ocean Pines. The Association will waive the class fee for anyone hired as an Ocean Pines lifeguard. Applicants must be 15 by the date of the last class. Certifications are also available through the YMCA in Salisbury.

Pines Steppers seek new members

Square dancing club has been active in Ocean Pines for four decades

he Pine Steppers Square Dance Club is seeking new members to help local people stay active, make new friends, and get dancing. Square dancing gets its name from the shape of the group of dancers. Four couples, or eight total dancers, are arranged in a square with one couple on each side and facing the middle. The dance borrows elements from traditional 16th century dances from England, France, and other parts of Europe. In Ocean Pines, the Pines Steppers club started in the 1980s and was incorporated in 1994 as part of the Delmarva Square Dance Federation.

Current Club President Barbara C. Roos got involved in square dancing because of her mother and father, who were active in Dover. “My husband was taking lessons with them, and I was working at a chamber of commerce in New Jersey where I took lessons. I would come down on weekends to dance with them,” she said. That later led to the couple joining the Pines Steppers in Ocean Pines, and Roos becoming an officer. Roos said club members regularly travel from Salisbury and the Dover, Del., area to take part in classes and events. Workshops are scheduled every Wednesday evening from 7-8:45 p.m. at the Ocean Pines Com-

munity Center on 235 Ocean Parkway, and dances are held on the third Saturday of each month. New members learn 50 basis calls and dance to music choreographed by professional callers from Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. She said many dancers also share another passion: food. “We share recipes, and we try to outdo each other when we have our dances,” she said. “But we’re looking for more Ocean Pines people, and we just want to stay active and involve as many people as possible,” Roos added. For more information, contact Roos at 908-2298799 or barbcroos@gmail.com.

42 Ocean Pines PROGRESS November 2022

OPINION

COMMENTARY

Time to pay the piper for ‘bad faith’ Bad faith refers to dishonesty or fraud in a transaction. Depending on the exact setting, bad faith may mean a dishonest belief or purpose, untrustworthy performance of duties, neglect of fair dealing standards, or a fraudulent intent. It is often related to a breach of the obligation inherent in all contracts to deal with the other parties in good faith and with fair dealing. ~ Legal Information Institute, Cornell University

et’s not sugarcoat it: The five individual defendants in the Janasek litigation got their collective butts kicked in the recent decision granting former director Tom Janasek a temporary injunction against enforcement of a suspension of rights to access OPA bar and restaurant amenities. It was hardly surprising, this outcome. Only the hopelessly myopic or delusional, or those infected with the disease of confirmation bias, predicted a different result, one favoring the OPA. By now, OPA members understandably might be tired of the whole case. After all, Janasek regained access rights to the amenities through a temporary restraining order obtained shortly he filed suit against the OPA. Nothing really changes with the granting of the temporary injunction: He still has the right to use the amenities just like any other OPA member in good standing. This case really isn’t as much about Janasek at this stage in the legal saga as it is a sad commentary on the performance of their duties by certain current and former members of the Board of Directors. Judge Beau Oglesby dispassionately but with precision rendered his verdict on that job performance, and in the manner in which the Janasek matter was handled, his verdict was harsh: Bad Faith. This is the second judge in the space of a year who has applied the term “bad faith” to describe certain actions by certain directors, two of whom are current members of the Board. They were also members when they and the OPA lost the Rick Farr case, complicit in actions that resulted in Farr’s temporary disqualification as a Board candidate. These two directors, former OPA President Colette Horn and former Vice President Frank Daly, owe the OPA membership an apology for dragging the community through this unnecessary and costly litigation. That applies also to the Farr litigation. Resignation should be considered, as should action to remove them as directors. The judge identified one specific example of bad faith: After the much publicized verbal altercation involving Janasek and then sitting director Josette Wheatley, she asked for advice from her

Rick Menard colleagues about how to proceed. They advised her to file a police report. Only after Janasek was identified as the one who had verbally accosted her did a Board majority decide it needed to get involved. The judge also demolished a key argument made by the defendants: That they had the right to suspend Janasek because of broad language in the OPA charter giving the Board authority to act to promote the general welfare of the association. According to the judge, they don’t have that authority when specific language in the governing documents limit the occasions in which a suspension of amenity privileges is permitted, non-payment of assessments and declared violations of the OPA’s restrictive covenants. Should a future Board be tempted to overreach its authority by citing a “general welfare” provision in the governing documents, this part of the judge’s decision should serve as a wake-up call: Don’t. While the entire decision is a point-by-point refutation of the OPA’s arguments, another one stands out. The OPA had argued that Janasek’s presence at three amenities constituted a public safety risk. The judge effectively blew a hole in that argument by noting that Janasek was not banned at other public amenities. Some safety risk, according to the judge. It should be noted that the temperate and rational judgments of directors Doug Parks and Rick Farr, then in the Board minority, had their

views on the Janasek suspension vindicated by the judge’s decision. The next phase in this litigation presumably will involve settlement discussions, a process that will not bode well for the defendants because all of their arguments were demolished by the Court, including the business judgment rule which normally insulates HOA directors from litigation. The exception to that general rule is Bad Faith, and the judge, as noted, rendered his judgment on that. In settlement talks, Janasek holds all the cards, and the five defendants should expect to pay the piper for their various errors of judgment and misdeeds in settlement discussions. Among the options Janasek should consider pursuing: reimbursement of legal fees, with contributions from the individual defendants. As the insurance company may not be inclined to cover settlement costs related to legal fees -- the fine print of the OPA’s liability coverages needs to be examined here -- the question becomes: Why should OPA members foot the bill resulting from overreach and poor choices of certain directors? Janasek might also ask for a statement of apology from the defendants and even resignation by the two sitting directors who acted in bad faith as determined by the Court. And then the current Board majority could consider appointing him to the Board to fill one of the vacancies. Too much to ask? Probably, but as an opening gambit, justified. Let the negotiations begin. -- Tom Stauss

OPINION

November 2022 Ocean Pines PROGRESS 43

Election committee can handle election review

t’s no secret that this summer’s Board of Directors election was an embarrassment. Despite a Board majority believing that it was so bad that an independent audit is needed to review what went wrong, a Board majority has confidence in the newly appointed Elections Committee to conduct it. It’s really not that complicated. About 500 or so owners of multiple properties were disenfranchised to a certain extent because they only received one paper ballot, rather than ballots matching the number of properties owned. This can be easily remedied in future elections. The scanning software performed poorly, crashing several times and producing results at odds with a hand recount conducted on Sept. 30. There has been speculation by one member of the old committee that test ballots were not purged from the scanning software and were therefore counted in the August tally. Another possibility is that some groups of ballots were sent through the system more than once. Or this particular scanner is a lemon that needs to be replaced. Alternatively, paper ballots in future ballots could be counted by hand. The original charging document prepared by the committee’s Board liaison, Rick Farr, asked the right questions and laid out a prudent investigation that the committee

LIFE IN THE PINES An excursion through the curious by-ways and cul-de-sacs of Worcester County’s most densely populated community By TOM STAUSS/Publisher should have no problem in completing by a Dec. 1 deadline. An addendum to the initial document seems to be compilation of comments and concerns and questions by certain Board members. The committee should be able to deal with this, too, although some of the bullet points seem to plow through already thoroughly plowed material. The first objective laid out in the addendum was “to determine if the number votes cast exceeds the maximum number of votes expected based on the number of lots that participated in the election.” This has already been looked into. The August count was flawed by a mismatch, but the Sept. 30 hand recount more or less reconciled the mismatch. Another bullet point directs the committee “to examine the return envelopes, determining how many multiple lot owners voted by paper, and determining the maximum number of multiple owner lots that could have voted via email.” Actually no one voted by email. No doubt the author of this particular bullet point meant electronically, by accessing a Website with an access code. Having a more detailed dive into

the number of owners of multiple lots who voted by paper and electronically, and the number of ballots and votes each category produced, could be useful information if it details the extent that disenfranchisement occurred. The addendum seems to envision yet another recount when it says that “if an audit determines a different hand count that was reported on Sept. 30, the actual vote count, and the reason for the discrepancy.” There’s already been one hand recount, and it’s not clear why another one needs to be done. “To determine as accurately as possible the real vote count,” seems to be the explanation, but that implies that the Sept. 30 results are suspect and that we need to sow doubts as to it accuracy. The authors of the addendum also want the committee “to provide a level of confidence to all homeowners that are (sic) -- here the word is supposed to be our -- voting procedures, when followed, can provide accurate and verifiable tabulations [for - this word was omitted, too] each candidate and that every vote is properly counted and tabulated.” And finally “to have recommendations and/or suggestions for changes in equipment, software, systems and

LETTER Vote against Question A

Imagine just for a moment that We the People of the United States had the ability to reign in out-ofcontrol spending by our federal government. I suspect that we would quickly jump at that opportunity. Likewise, it would be great to be able to curb exorbitant spending in the State government as well. Unfortunately, our only option is to elect fiscally responsible candidates who will do it for us. Historically however, that does not happen with much success. While we cannot change some things in Washington and Annapolis, we can make a difference at the local level. Thanks to the power of the Petition to Referendum, we can stop overspending by County elect-

ed officials. During this election season, the voters of Worcester County will have the opportunity to send a strong message to our County Commissioners. Question A on the ballot pertains to the Bond Bill to construct the proposed Sports Complex next to Stephen Decatur High School. The Bill obligates our Commissioners by providing “...an irrevocable pledge of the full faith and credit and unimited taxing power of the County to the payment of the maturing principal of and interest and premium (if any) on the Bonds as and when they become due and payable.” A vote Against Question A is a vote against an ill-conceived and poorly planned multi-million dol-

lar sports complex which never appeared on a County Capital Improvement Plan until less than a year ago. It is a project with no business plan in place. The cost of the land alone, which we later learned is not part of the bond bill, should provide enough cause for concern. A slim majority of Commissioners voted to pay nearly $75,000 per acre, while land is available throughout the county from $10,000 to $19,000 per acre. We the People have the opportunity to curb the Commissioners’ overspending by voting Against this Question A. I urge all Worcester County voters to vote against Questions A. T Vincent dePaul Gisriel, Jr. Ocean City

procedures ... if any are needed.” The was more or less covered in the original charging document, with more brevity and clarity. Farr wrote it up this way: Investigate and provide findings to the glitches in the voting scan system, tabulation of the votes, and make recommendations so this issue will not arise again and that we have accurate voting tabulation in the next election cycle and provide correct results. The addendum asks the review to determine if the governing documents were followed as written. That’s already been established. Governing documents require one ballot per lot, and this was not provided by the former committee. One reason why it needed to be replaced. Again, easily remedied in future elections. The Board voted to set a Dec. 1 deadline to conclude the investigation and report back its findings to the Board. Or else the Board will send out bids for an independent audit. What a waste of time and money, if that happens. It won’t. OPA President Doug Parks has already reached out to the company that conducted a financial audit a few years ago, only to discover it doesn’t do election audits of HOAs. The company is bearish on finding any company that does. Just as well. Let the committee do its job.

The Ocean Pines Progress is a journal of news and commentary published monthly throughout the year. It is circulated in Ocean Pines and Captain’s Cove, Va. 127 Nottingham Lane Ocean Pines, Md 21811 PUBLISHER-EDITOR Tom Stauss stausstom@gmail.com 443-359-7527 ADVERTISING SALES Frank Bottone frankbottone@gmail.com 410-430-3660 CONTRIBUTING WRITER Rota Knott 443-880-3953

44 Ocean Pines PROGRESS November 2022

CAPTAIN’S COVE

CURRENTS

Plaintiffs in Birckhead suit dismiss their claims Use unusual feature of Virginia law to retreat from case while reserving the right to refile at a later time

By TOM STAUSS Pubisher laintiffs in the suit alleging self-dealing and breach of fiduciary duty by CCG Note and the Captain’s Cove Golf and Yacht Club in the proposed Mariner townhome project near the back entrance to Captain’s Cove have voluntarily dismissed their claims, while reserving the right to refile in accordance with a unique Virginia law. According to CCGYC President Tim Hearn in an Oct. 19 email to the members of the Board of Directors and members of the Cove property management team, the plaintiffs, Teresa Birckhard et al, “have decided to use a one-time ‘nonsuit’ filing” to effectively suspend their suit, without prejudice, “meaning they can renew or refile the litigation within the statute of limitations at

some point in the future.” While Hearn said the dismissal was voluntarily issued by the defendants rather than through a court order. He attributed the decision to several factors, acknowledging that it was “just my opinion.” “ The community has been non-supportive of their fundraising efforts, and their attorney was not willing to continue unless they provided more payments, or commitments for future payments,” Hearn said. In addition, “their efforts and legal team have been unable to come up with any legitimate counters to the lawsuit responses filed by Inman and Strickler on behalf of CCGYC, and Pender and Coward on behalf of CCG Note, LLC. Doug Kahle’s office [plaintiffs’ attorney] has been un-

responsive as it relates to preparing documents for discovery.” Hearn also referred to a recent favorable demurrer decision in favor of CCG Note in the Richardson/BIC Construction litigation over a case which involved allegations that a home was built outside limits approved by the Environmental Control Committee. The construction company sued CCG Note on the alleged grounds that CCG Note controls the Cove association [CCGYC) through members of the Board of Directors who are investors in CCG Note. Hearn said that Judge Revel Lewis’ favorable “demurrer” decision removed CCG Notes as defendants in the case could indicate that the same Accomack County Circuit Court judge might be To Page 46

One-mile walk The One Mile Walk for a Cure of Breast Cancer on Oct. 28 started at the Town CEnter and continued along the canals in Captain’s Cove. It was the concluding event in a month-long series of activites bringing awareness to breast cancer cures and survial and memories of those lost.

CAPTAIN’S COVE CURRENTS

November 2022 Ocean Pines PROGRESS 45

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46 Ocean Pines PROGRESS November 2022 Suit dropped

From Page 44 included to drop CCG Note as a defendant in the Birckhead litigation as well. The decision “in the BIC claim painted a clear picture that he would not be supportive of the bogus allegations being made by Birckhead et al. against CCG Note and CCGYC, and that the Demurrer/dismissal requests were likely to be granted,” Hearn said, acknowledging that it’s always risky to predict how a judge might rule in any given case. With the “non-suit” filing by the plaintiffs’ attorney, that possibility is not moot. Among other allegations, the plaintiffs contended that the entire length of Captain’s Corridor is a private street, not be used for public use, and that CCG Note engaged in self-dealing and violated a fiduciary duty to the plaintiffs by using it to provide access to the Mariner project, the defendants responded that the plaintiffs must produce a document proving ownership of Captain’s Corridor. Hearn also said in public statements that a patch of the Captain’s Corridor adjacent to the townhome parcel is actually owned by the Mariner/Hastings family and CCG Note, not the Cove Association. The requirement to produce a document proving ownership is a requirement under Virginia precedent, Hearn said, citing CCG Note attorneys Pender and Coward. Another issue in the case related to the Cove’s water and wastewater treatment, currently managed by Aqua Virginia, a private utility firm. Birckhead and the other plaintiffs alleged that CCG Note breached its fiduciary duty to the plaintiffs by agreeing to convey rapid infiltration basins lots to the former Captain’s Cove Utility Company (which in turn conveyed the RIB property to Aqua Virginia) to be used for future RIBs for the benefit of Captain’s Cove. CCG Note in its response to the suit said that the plaintiffs had omitted key documents to support its allegations. Among the omissions is a deed in which the Cove association is said to have released and conveyed to CCG Land, a company affiliated with CCG Note, “all of the Association’s rights to use or control the property as open and/or recreational space for the benefit of the Association and/or its members.” To Page 46

CAPTAIN’S COVE CURRENTS

November 2022 Ocean Pines PROGRESS 47

48 Ocean Pines PROGRESS November 2022 Suit dropped

From Page 46 CCG Note contended that the Declaration of Restrictions applicable in Section 14, in which the RIB property is located, “expressly allows lots to be used for utility purposes.” The attorneys said that plaintiffs’ argument is “premised upon there being a restriction on the land for recreational space, and that the RIBs are exclusively for the benefit of Captain’s Cove. These allegations are contrary to the land records.” The defendants also argued that all applicable documents should be made part of the evidentiary record, in the instance of Captain’s Corridor and the RIB lots. Without such documentation, a Court is in no position to rule in favor of the plaintiffs, CCG Note attorneys said. The effective voluntary dropping of the suit leaves the Captain’s Cove association Board of Directors with a choice on how to proceed. In a statement announcing the resolution of the case, the Board noted that CCGYC had spent considerable funds and resources on defending itself. [See statement on this page.} “Generally attorney fees are “not awarded in the filing of a nonsuit. However, CCGYC may file for sanctions against these Members for having filed a frivolous lawsuit. This option will be discussed at a future Board of Directors Meeting.

CAPTAIN’S COVE CURRENTS

Board statement on Birckhead et al lawsuit Captain’s Cove Golf and Yacht Club (CCGYC) was notified by their attorneys on October 20, 2022, that a current lawsuit brought against CCGYC was ‘dismissed of action by nonsuit’. A peculiar procedural device of Civil Law in Virginia, under Section 8.01-380, allows the plaintiffs of a lawsuit to essentially withdraw their claims and preserve the right to refile the suit at a future date within certain time constraints. No reason is required in the filing of a nonsuit. CCGYC Members Teresa Birckhead, Jim Hayes, William Leslie, Barry Magrogan, Joyce Platterspiel, Linda Reece, and Tom Reidy filed suit against CCGYC and CCG Note LLC on June 21, 2022. It is ironic that one of the claims was a ‘breach of fiduciary duty’ and because of this, thousands of dollars of Members’ Dues were expended on attorney fees to counter the claims on CCGYC’s behalf. Prior to the first hearing, the suit was withdrawn. CCGYC has spent considerable funds, and resources, including time from staff, and the Board of Directors. Generally, attorney fees are not awarded in the filing of a nonsuit. However, CCGYC may file for sanctions against these Members for having filed a frivolous lawsuit. This option will be discussed at a future Board of Directors Meeting. Captain’s Cove Golf and Yacht Club (CCGYC) is a vibrant community. We encourage our members to contribute to its growth and prosperity through the strong volunteer spirit demonstrated in numerous committees and activity groups. CCGYC is committed to creating an environment of support within an association of neighbors and employees who work together to promote respect, caring, community, family, and friends. Captain’s Cove Golf and Yacht Club’s purpose is to enhance the quality of life of its members and community by maintaining communal spaces and upholding its Covenants, Declarations, and By-Laws.

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Board hires CohnReznick to conduct forensic audit of missing financial data Lawsuit against Troon remains on hold pending results of the audit

By TOM STAUSS Publisher he Board of Directors met in closed session Oct. 10 to review three proposals for a forensic audit of Captain’s Cove finances for the first six months of the 2021-22 fiscal year, in which the Cove’s former management company, Troon Golf, did not produce monthly financial reports. The Board emerged briefly after the closed session to announce that the national accounting firm CohnReznick had been hired to conduct the audit of financial results during those six months. Cove President Tim Hearn has said that up to $1 million is unaccounted for during those six months, and that he’s hopeful a forensic deep dive into financial statements for those six months

will produce clarity about those unaccounted for dollars. He later said that CohnReznick will construct financial statements for those six months, which then can be combined with statements done inhouse for April through September that will provide a complete picture of Cove finances for the year. During the Members Forum segment of the Oct. 10 Board of Directors meeting, Hearn said the auditor to be hired would be independent of the Cove association. “We’re evaluating three different auditors, as part of the Troon law suit,” he said, meeting in executive session to keep deliberations confidential. “We don’t want it [deliberations] to be discoverable [as part of the Troon lawsuit],” he said.

Hearn told the Cove Currents that CohnReznick will be paid anywhere from $200 to $600 per hour depending on who is performing certain tasks. “We won’t know how much it will cost until they’ve been in there [on the job] for about two weeks,” Hearn said, estimating a range of cost from $5,000 to $10,000 per month “depending how cooperative Troon is.” The fees are included as part of a $75,000 proposed expense item for the Troon litigation in the 2022-23 budget. Hearn said the auditors will conduct the audit on the premises of Troon Golf offices in Reston, Va. Documents to be examined include general ledges, bank reconciliations, balance sheets and income statements. With the understanding and expectation that Troon will be fully cooperative during the audit, Hearn said that it won’t be necessary to obtain bank statements directly from the bank used by Troon during the period when it managed Cove finances. The Troon lawsuit remains on hold pending results of the audit.Hearn has said that if the audit proceeds and he hopes and missing funds are accounted for, the suit can be settled without the need for court intervention.

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Cove Board approves construction consultant Gillis-Gilkerson confirmed as ‘cradle to grave’ overseer of capital projects

By TOM STAUSS Publisher s expected, the Board of Directors in a meeting Oct. 10 unanimously approved the Salisbury construction management firm, Gillis-Gilkerson, as the Captain’s Cove association’s new construction management consultant. The firm’s duties will include helping the Cove obtain bids for current and future capital improvement projects and overseeing construction projects once they are under way. Cove association president Tim Hearn said the management contract will award the company four percent of the construction cost of the projects it oversees. Four percent is well below industry standards in the Baltimore area for similar services. Hearn said that the contract will be written in such a way that if the arrangement with Gillis-Gilkerson doesn’t work as expected, the Cove reserves the right to terminate the contract. As he has said previously, Hearn attributed the need to hire a construction consultant on continuing struggles to obtain bidders for various capital improvements. Hearn said efforts were made to contact potential consultants in the Virginia Beach and Norfolk area, but all were deterred by tolls on the Chesapeake Bay bridge tunnel and the long distance to Captain’s Cove. Hearn said that Gillis-Gilkerson does $30 million to $40 million a year in construction contracts, has extensive construction management experience, can assist with construction drawings while overseeing construction. The company would not bid on projects which they would oversee, Hearn said. This provision is clearly designed to avoid the actual or appearance of conflict or interest when contracts are awarded. “We don’t have construction management expertise in-house,” Hearn said, adding that Senior General Manager Colby Phillips and Director of Operations John Costello both have project management expertise,

a different skill set than what Gillis-Gilkerson offers. Hearn cited a backlog of projects that he believes the company will be able to expedite, initially by encouraging subcontractors to bid on projects which they might otherwise ignore. Backlogs include Marina Club roof repair, the mail pavilion relocation project, the dumpster pad, road work, and some Town Center projects, he said. That latter category includes a new pool pump house, restrooms and cart barn, all of which together exceed $1 million in estimated cost. “We’re entering a treacherous position if we don’t get started on these projects,” Hearn said, citing the Marina Club roof project as crucial. “We’d have to shut down the Marina Club if we can’t get moving on it,” he said.. Costello said during the meeting that while the Cove is in receipt of a bid on the roof project, he’s not ready to recommend it because of the bidder’s relative lack of experience. Earlier, the bidder whom the Cove was prepared to offer a contract withdrew from the project,. Hearn said an advantage of hiring Gillis-Gilkerson is that the company’s project manager lives in Pocomoke. Hearn also said that the firm’s owner, Dwight Miller, has been on site twice, indicating interest in Captain’s Cove. Director Mark Majerus said he had gotten a “warm, fuzzy feeling” about the company after a visit by the company’s “local rep.” Director Roger Holland said he had read through the management contract and concluded that the language in it is “industry standard,” and that the four percent fee is “a very favorable rate.” He said a contract in the Baltimore area with which he is familiar carried a seven percent rate. Cove resident Michelle Mathews-Kalinock asked why the Board was voting to hire a consultant at four percent when a group of Cove residents could perform a similar service as volunteers.

Hearn said that volunteers who might attempt the work wouldn’t be covered by insurance, also suggesting that volunteers wouldn’t have the same expertise as Gillis-Gilkerson in construction oversight. “GG will do it cradle to grave,” he said. “No one on staff has the time to oversee construction.” Costello said a key service the company will provide is bid solicitation, adding that he had sent out 26 bid packages out to potential bidders in recent months, only receiving three actual bids in response. Some bids received don’t necessarily meet the standards needed for approval.

“I’m hesitant to pull the trigger on the [Marina Club] roof contract because of inexperience,” he said. “We just haven’t gotten a lot of bids.” With decades of experinece working with sub-contactors, the hope is that Gillis-Gilkerson will be able tp deliver many more bidders who are well-qualified than has been customary in recent years. Cove resident Teresa Birckhead expressed support for the contract, saying that Cove residents won’t necessarily understand the details of construction management and that “four percent is a good rate.” She said the company is large enough to handle details ranging from bid solicitation to construction oversight. “We’ll save money by doing something like this,” she said. The vote was 6-0 in favor of Hearn’s motion approving Gillis-Gilkerson as the Cove’s construction consultant, subject to a legal review of the contract.

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Breast Cancer Awareness Month

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Accounts receivable work group group reviews Section 3 lots with unpaid dues

Cove continues with aggressive collections effort

he Board of Directors and property management team members attending an Accounts Receivable work session Oct. 24 reviewed a second batch of properties whose owners are more than 90 days late in paying their annual dues. There were about 45 properties identified that will receive a request for payment in a newly drafted 90day reminder letter from General Manager Justin Wilder. This is a follow-up from about 65 properties that were reviewed in September, part of a new process in which properties that owe more

than $1400 are identified and targeted for collections. The reviews do not include properties already turned over for additional collections effort by Pender and Coward, the Cove’s attorneys. The batch of properties reviewed during the Oct. 24 meeting were concentrated in Section 3, with some located on Captain’s Corridor. Under the new procedure, property owners who don’t respond to the letter asking for payment will be turned over to Pender and Coward, the Cove association’s Virginia Beach-based law firm, for more enforcement action ending in a foreclo-

sure sale. Another batch of properties, this time mostly buildable lots in Section 4, will be reviewed in the next Accounts Receivable work group meeting. Cove President Tim Hearn said the goal is to review and turn over about 500 delinquent lots to Pender and Coward for further action in six months, a much more aggressive pursuit of unpaid dues that has occurred for some time. Hearn said the Cove has not always been aggressive in collecting past dues on lots that are also in arrears in the payment of county prop-

erty taxes. He said the county adds $1500 in lien and administrative fees on such lots, which has been a disincentive for the Cove to take collection action because the county’s claim on funds raised in a county tax sale takes precedence over unpaid property association dues. Hearn said a possible workaround has been identified by an expert he has consulted. If CCGYC goes to court and obtains a court order, Hearn said the CCGYC may not have to “accept the [county’s] lien and administrative fees” when it acquires title to a property sold in a Cove foreclosure auction. That in turn makes it more likely there will be financial advantage to CCGYC to pursue certain accounts that otherwise might not be worth the effort.

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Light up the Cove! This Holiday Season!

LETS BRIGHTEN UP CAPTAIN'S COVE COMMUNITY THIS HOLIDAY SEASON! WE WILL HAVE A FIRST, SECOND AND THIRD PLACE WINNER OF A CAPTAIN'S COVE FOOD AND BEVERAGE GIFT CARD CHOSEN AND ANNOUNCED BY DECEMBER 20TH A LIST OF HOMES WILL BE SHARED FOR ALL TO GO SEE AND SUBMIT THEIR VOTES. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO PARTICIPATE, PLEASE REGISTER YOUR HOME AND ADDRESS BY DECEMBER 3RD TO THE MARINA CLUB FRONT DESK. SIGN UP SHEET OR EMAIL TO MARINACLUB@CAPTSCOVE.COM

LIGHTS MAY BE UP FROM NOVEMBER 21ST THROUGH JANUARY 29TH 2023

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Rainfall only solution to Lake Ernie water woes Severe drought conditions in Accomack County primary factor in receding water levels, Majerus says By TOM STAUSS Publisher here is no single solution for the Captain’s Cove property owners association to restore water levels in Lake Ernie, Board of Directors member Mark Majerus said in a detailed presentation at an Oct. 18 working group meeting. Much of his presentation was based on a recently completed engineering study of Lake Ernie completed by Vista Engineering. Severe drought conditions in Accomack County makes the task of dealing with Lake Ernie particularly challenging. This past August was the 12th driest on record in the past 128 years, he said. The heavy rainfall brought to Lake Ernie by Hurricane Ian, reduced to tropical storm status by the time it reached the mid-Atlantic, only raised the water level by three inches in September, Majerus said, with no loss of those three inches in October. “Rain is the only solution to filling the lake,” he said, and that depends on Mother Nature. Much of the rainfall that did occur this past summer in Accomack County bypassed Captain’s Cove, he said. He presented information that suggests Lake Ernie water levels are low primarily because of the severe drought, The condition of a dam that was designed more than 50 years ago to control water outflow might also be a contributing factor, he said. He presented graphs that showed a similar drought condition affecting Lake Ernie 20 years ago, as well as other stormwater retention ponds in the community. This past April, a very slow trickle at the downside of a spillway was detected. Majerus concluded that the trickle, which was compared to a small garden hose leak, was losing water at a rate of two gallons a minute, equivalent to a million gallons per year. That’s one third of Lake Ernie’s capacity, with additional water loss likely through evaporation. Majerus said the plan is for the Maintenance Staff to “terminate” the underground drain where the leak was discovered this past April, remove a concrete block that doesn’t seem to have any purpose, crush aging, non-functioning pipes that are part of the water outflow system, and pack the area with clay to prevent any additional leakage. He outlined other elements of a solution path, including verification that a nearby fire hydrant is operational, monitoring and recording of rainfall and lake levels, and suggesting that neighboring properties trim trees at the waterline and in the dam area. Majerus said the solution path includes investigation of a sleeved standpipe that is part of the

dam system to determine whether it’s still operational. In addition, he said there are concerns that the design of the system poses safety concerns, which seemed to suggest that the Cove might be better off eliminating it completely. Under current drought conditions especially the outflow system

is not working at all, Majerus said. The current spillway design does not meet current guidelines, he added. “It may need to be updated. I am not saying it needs to be eliminated completely. With the current drought conditions, it not easy to verify it is working correctly,” he said. Majerus said that Vista determined that the lake, which is the largest of several stormwater retention ponds in Captain’s Cove, covers 2.6 acres. One acre-foot of water equivalent to 272,000 gallons of water, and Lake Ernie is reportedly is four feet lower than normal. He said that 10.4 acre-feet of water would be required to refill those four feet. That’s 2.8 million gallons of water, equivalent to 14 water tower loads of water or 300 to 500 18-wheeler tanker truck loads of water.

Vista Engineer’s conceptual diagram of Lake Ernie’s water outflow system.

Oct. 24 Maintenance staff to plug leak in Lake Ernie water control system By TOM STAUSS Publisher n a follow-up to the recent working group meeting on Lake Ernie, Senior General Manager Colby Phillips said the maintenance staff under Director of Operations John Costello would be deployed shortly to fix a possible slow leak in the water control system. Given current drought conditions in Captain’s Cove and Accomack County, much of the water control system is on dry land, but the possible slow leak was identified this past April and eventually Mother Nature could return to more rainfall During the Oct. 24 managers’ meeting, Phillips said the Cove has only received 30 inches of rainfall to date this year, and the ponds on the golf course and elsewhere in the Cove are very low, she said. In other topics covered during the Oct. 24 meeting, Phillips announced that: • Contractors will be returning to shave the speed bumps on Captain’s Corridor at Blackbeard and Scimitar roads. • The Welcome Packet distributed to new property owners in Captain’s Cove has been updated and should be available at the annual meeting. • As a result of amped up collection efforts by Cove management and Pender and Coward, $243,379 in delinquent dues were collected from January through September this year. The next meeting of the Accounts Receivable working group is scheduled for Nov. 15, with a focus on unpaid dues owed by property owners in Section 4. From Page 57

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Colby Phillips awarded Kurtz kindness award

November 2022 Ocean Pines PROGRESS 57

Receives three separate nominations

ong-time Ocean Pines residents Jackie and Ron Kurtz have awarded one of two 2022 kindness awards to Colby Phillips, a Berlin resident who is the Senior General Manager of the Captain’s Cove property owners association and a former senior department head in the Ocean Pines Association. The award is part of the “Matt’s kindness Ripples On” campaign and Website maintained by the Kurtz family in memory of their son Matt, who died in 2017 at age 32. The Matt’s Kindness Ripples On” Website and non-profit group was organized shortly thereafter, to honor his optimism and compassion for others. The Kurtzes have had a home in Ocean Pines for more than 20 years, having lived in the community for the past 13 years. “It started as a tribute to our son, Matt, who died by suicide,” Jackie Kurtz said in an October, 2021, article written by Ocean Pines Association Marketing and Public Relations Director Josh Davis. “But the true cause of his death was mental illness.”

Roads surfacing From Page 57

• Vista Engineering is drafting engineering plans and topography schematics for resurfacing roads and surfacing unfinished roads in Section 3 identified as Tier One in the roads study. Once completed, expected sometime this month, the project will be bid out for pricing and presented to the Board of Directors for funding approval. The project includes surfacing the unfinished sections of Deck Court, John Silver, Mutiny Drive, and the northwest side of High Seas. A section of Crows Next may be in wetlands and won’t be surfaced, and lots 1506A through 1513A will be recommended for inclusion in the wetlands bank. Seaview Street is a Tier One road but won’t be included in the project because permits are pending with the Army Corps of Engineers, usually a protracted process. • Broadband questions should be forwarded to Joe Richardson, project manager for Charter/ Spectrum at 757-710-6418 or joe.richardson@ charter.com, and Maria Stevens, customer point of contact for Eastern Shore of Viginia Broadband Authority at 757-414-0304 or mstevens@ esvba.com. Water quality or other water emergencies should be addressed to dstewart@aquaamerica. com or phoned in at 877-987-2782. • The last two breast cancer awareness month events were scheduled for Oct. 24 and Oct. 28. Also at the meeting, Costello announced that more bids will be coming in soon for the Marina Club roof project and the mailbox pavilion project.

Despite those challenges, “Matt was just a super smart, really humble person who greeted everyone he met with a non-judgmental heart. He was just a person who practiced everyday acts of kindness as a way of life,” she said. Kurtz said the family was overwhelmed with stories of their son’s charitable deeds following his passing. “So many people told us that he changed their lives with his kindness,” she said. “So we decided to do this Website and blog, with the mission to keep Matt’s kindness going. Really, the mission is to make our world better, one kindness at a time. The non-profit has given out roughly $6,000 in kindness grants and awards since 2019. “We use the award to recognize people who make kindness a way of life, just like Matt did,” she said. “Part of it is, there are so many kind and compassionate people out there, but all the attention is given to people who behave badly. We want to change the focus and share with the world these inspirational people. As an award recipient, Phillips is being given a certificate of appreciation and $250, which Kurtz said she hopes Phillips will spend on herself. “Kind people tend to give so much to other and neglect themselves,” she said. Phillips was nominated for the award by three separate individuals, which is unusual. Her nominations were submitted by residents Katie Conforti, Neil Gottesman, and Amy Hasson.

Colby Phillips

Conforti in her nomination said that “Colby is one of the most selfless people I have ever met. She is constantly spreading and encouraging kindness not only through her social media, but through her actions in the community, from helping organize events for victims of tragedy to just recently planning a Christmas celebration for a young man suffering from stage 4 cancer. “She also sends thousands of letters from Santa to children and adults every Christmas sharing more goodness. I just feel she would be an amazing recipient of this award. Thank you,” Conforti said. Gottesman said Phillips “always helps others from those that have lost their homes to fire to her annual Christmas cards from Santa to the children and on and on. She is an inspiration of what love of others is all about.” Hasson said that Phillips “never stops giving. She collects food and clothes for families having From Page 59

Annual meeting set Nov. 12 at Chincoteague Center

The annual meeting of Captain’s Cove Golf and Yacht Club is set for Saturday, Nov. 12, at the Chincoteague Center beginning at 10 a.m., with election results for the Board of Directors to be announced. A members forum is also part of the agenda. The meeting is in-person only Following the annual meeting, the new Board is likely to select officers for the coming year and vote on the 2022-13 Captain’s Cove budget.

Hearn, Wilder respond to member questions

Captain’s Cove association members posed a number of questions during the Member Forum segment of the Oct. 10 Board of Directors meeting, with Cove association President Tim Hearn and General Manager Justin Wilder offering answers. Among the topics covered: • In response to a question about why Cove association members don’t vote on capital improvement projects, Wilder said that Cove by-laws give the Board of Directors “broad authority” to handle maintenance of Cove assets as representatives of the membership. • Wilder said that governing documents do not include a cap on how much annual dues may be raised in any year. • In response to a question about whether the Cove reserve study’s capital replacement list takes into account inflation, Hearn said the asset list is a five-year projection and that over that five-year period, the Cove will be collecting in funded depreciation “well beyond what what will be needed” to voer asset replacement.

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‘Balls and Claws’ event raises $5,000

STEM Centers in Accomack and Northampton counties to benefit

he Captain’s Cove Golf and Yacht Club, community members, and sponsors came together on Aug. 19 for a day of golf, steamed crabs, and raising money for the Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation’s (CRSF) STEM initiative in Accomack and Northampton Counties. The event raised $5,000. The Balls and Claws event began with 18-holes of golf, playing what is known as a “Superintendent’s Revenge Tournament.” The tournament style challenges golfers with hidden obstacles placed strategically throughout the course. Designated holes become more like a game of “Mouse Trap” than a golf tournament. The stylized tournament and golf in general, give less than subtle nods to the fundamentals of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM), an integral part of the CRSF programs. Cole Scott, golf course manager at Captain’s Cove commented, “I have three children who are benefiting from these centers. The ability to help my own children, as well as so many others, through the game I love, is quite special. It was fun keeping these golfers on their toes with the obstacles and challenging their thinking.” Golf balls were not the only balls flying during the event, but also at

the Town Center Green, during the highly anticipated Dunk Tank. For a $5 donation, guests could throw balls with a chance to dunk Colby Phillips, senior general manager; John Costello, director of operations; Shanon Clark, food and beverage manager, and Jim Hayes, a long-time community member. The Greenbackville Fire Department donated its time and resources to the event by filling the 350-gallon tank with water from its fire truck. In the afternoon, participants traded in their clubs for mallets to begin the “Claws” portion of the event. The Eastern Shore feast featured nine bushels of local steamed blue crabs, fresh corn, and watermelon. Community members gathered

Kindness award

From Page 57 hard luck, writes a daily uplifting blog to support and encourage positive outlook for women and others and always has a smile and a hug. Over Christmas she writes letters from Santa for hundreds of area children; you just need to give her their names to be added to the list. “When last year, a member of Colby’s water aerobics class lost her battle with depression and took her own life, Colby immediately launched a support group for area residents battling depression. Colby Phillips is a loving, selfless, faith-filled and awesome friend and neighbor who is truly deserving of this award.” Captain’s Cove association president Tim Hearn congratulated Phillips on the award. “Richley deserved,” he said in email to Board colleagues.

Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Captain’s Cove observed a month of activities in October bringing awareness to breast cancer cures and survival, while remembering those who have been lost to to this dread disease. Pictured are some of the special events held during the month, with the final event a one-mile walk starting at the Town Center.

to enjoy the summer meal while bidding on silent auction items. The sports-themed items included a Cal Ripken Jr. signed Jersey, a Kenny Pickett signed helmet and a Collin Morikawa signed British Open flag. “The community of Captain’s Cove Golf and Yacht Club has a culture of giving,” said Julia Knopf, community event and marketing manager. “Our members have embraced the Ripken Foundation STEM centers because they directly affect the children in the community and across the shore. These centers are engaging students and opening paths for them in growing industries. The Captain’s Cove community sees the importance and wants to continue supporting this initiative.” Captain’s Cove Golf and Yacht

Club’s involvement with the CSRF STEM initiative began in 2021 thanks to Robert Smith, a local realtor with Monument Sotheby’s International Realty, and his Co-Chair John P. Custis, Esq. for the initiative on the Shore. In March of 2022, CRSF celebrated opening the first centers on the shore at Captain’s Cove Golf & Yacht Club. The event marked the community’s involvement and included a $10,000 donation from individual members of the Captain’s Cove Board of Directors. The fundraising for CSRF is just beginning and since the event, the community, and golfers, have continued to raise funds for the initiative. The second annual Balls and Claws tournament has already been set for Saturday, Aug. 12, 2023.

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Larry Parks, first place, trunk decoration

Kelly and Drew Snyder, second place for golf cart

Trunk or Treat & More

Captain’s Cove residents enjoyed Halloween on Saturday, Oct. 29, at Cove Commons, featuring a parade of golf carts, a parade of dogs, a costume parade, face painting, bounce houses, scavenger hunt, and trunk or treating. Prizes were awarded for best costumes and best “trunk.”

Abrielle Ferreira, second place, costume

Parker Thomas, third place, costume

Jasai Johnson has his face painted

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