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Opinion ...................... Pages
COMMENTARY Election snafu was easily avoidable
All of the recent sound and fury over this summer’s Board election could have been avoided so easily, had the Elections Committee read and carefully implemented Board Resolution M-06, Attachment A, with regard to the way ballots are to be distributed to eligible Ocean Pines Association members.
One sensed something was off -- portents of a pending catastrophe perhaps? -- when the chair of the Elections Committee at the annual meeting of OPA members in August failed to give the usual detailed summary of election results. She confined her “report” such as it was to naming the candidates who won, with no vote totals or supplemental information such as total ballots sent in and counted, disqualified ballots, or a breakdown on the number of ballots cast electronically or by slow mail.
The omissions were glaring. Detailed information on the election has been routinely provided by her predecessors during the annual meeting. There was no explanation for the omissions. The committee chair doesn’t return reporter’s phone calls, apparently.
Not until Sept. 9 or thereabouts was a more detailed report posted on the OPA Website, with no announcement by the committee that the report was available for review. That’s when a discrepancy was uncovered by an alert OPA member with advanced skill in arithmetic. He posted it on the Ocean Pines Forum Website, and it was off to the races with days and days of digital discourse.
The committee chair also had acted somewhat cavalierly and -- let’s not sugarcoat it -- oddly on the actual day of the vote count, declining to tell candidates and others in the room at the conclusion of the count what the results were.
Interested parties were told to await the OPA press release, which to his credit, Marketing and Public Relations Director Josh Davis sent out soon after the committee ended its labors for the day.
The problem with this summer’s election, detailed elsewhere in this edition of the Progress, has much to do with the committee’s failure to implement Board Resolution M-06, particularly Attachment A.
Attachment A to Board Resolution M-06 deals with voting procedures in Board elections and referendums.
Paragraph 2 of the attachment references voting by mail.
Subsection (a) of Paragraph 2 says “Only a single voting package is sent for each lot or unit eligible to vote. This applies to all joint owners of a lot or unit, including co-tenants, joint tenants by the entireties.”
There is no section referencing voting electronically in Attachment A, an oversight that needs to be remedied before next year’s election. This Board and any future Board needs to take care that changes in procedures are reflected in governing documents.
Note there is a clear instruction in Paragraph 2 to send a voting package to each lot or unit or lot eligible to vote.
By all accounts, this was NOT DONE in this summer’s election, and true in recent summers as well.
Those who’ve been in Ocean Pines for some time remember when ballots were mailed to each lot owned. Owners of multiple lots received multiple ballots.
To avoid a repeat of this year’s snafu, the OPA should return to a practice that worked so well over the years: Send a separate ballot to each and every lot in Ocean Pines.
The OPA will also need to develop a comparable approach for those who vote electronically. Even ballots voted electronically and presumably weighted when the holder of an access code owns multiple lots might not have been properly counted by the vendor. There’s no evidence proving that, but still.
If there is an exclusive code sent for each lot owned by multiple lot owners, there would be less room for error and more reason to feel confident in reported election results.
Also of relevance is Paragraph 6(b) of Attachment A as follows:
“The Committee chairperson shall be responsible for delivering to the [mailing] Contractor the information necessary to mail voting packages to eligible members ... The information [necessary to mail voting packages to eligible members] shall be in a form that supports the mailing of Ballots to a member who owns multiple properties. The Committee shall retain a copy of the mailing information delivered to the Contractor.”
Were this summer’s election materials in a form that supports the mailing of ballots to a member who owns multiple properties? There’s some indication that this “form” was deficient, contributing to the discrepancy in vote counts.
As the committee is obligated to retain a copy of the mailing information delivered to the contractor, it should be made public immediately on the OPA Web site. Then OPA members can assess for themselves whether the mailing of ballots to owners of multiple properties was adequately supported.
Language in Paragraph 6(b) refers to the “mailing of ballots” -- plural -- to a member who owns multiple ballots, not the single ballot mailed to these members this year.
The cover letter to the membership in the election materials this summer encouraged owners of multiple properties to vote electronically, leaving unsaid how their ballots would be counted if they opted instead for paper ballots. When OPA member Marlene Ott complained that she had not received ballots for each of the lots she owns, she was told to obtain multiple ballots from the committee or the OPA Administration.
What about all those other owners of multiple properties who did not receive ballots for each of the properties they own?
Discrepancies in vote counts that have been at issue in the latter part of September might suggest their weighted paper ballots were not counted properly.
The Sept. 30 recount of ballots by the committee produced unexpectes results, a dramatic reduction in the number of tallied up votes. Earlier discrepancies were reconciled. The three winning candidates were confirmed, albeit with changed vote totals.
According to an informed source who’s done some checking, no owner of multiple properties remembers receiving an outer envelope containing a paper ballot that designated the number of ballots to which that owner was entitled.
Nor was there any indication on the single ballot received that the ballot was entitled to be voted consistent with the number of lots owned.
While there’s no evidence to suggest these defects in the election process were the result of malign motives by the committee, non-adherence to and omissions in Attachment A were at the root of this summer’s election snafu.
Steps to safeguard the voting interests of owners of multiple properties were not taken.
Although an unkown number of owners did not have all of the votes to which they were entitled counted, any calls to invalidate or decertify the election and holding a new one absent a Court order should be rejected.
Board candidate Amy Peck, who came within 15 votes of winning a Board seat according to new Sept. 30 totals, perhaps has the best case to make for a mishandled election.
To her credit, she has no interest in taking the matter to court.
Other than taking remedial steps to update and clarify Attachment A of Board Resolution M-06, the less involvement of the Board in this snafu going forward the better. There is no authority in the OPA’s governing documents for a new election after it’s been duly certified, either one called by the Board or the Elections Committee.
A recent on-line post by former By-laws and Resolutions member and chair Jim Trummel suggests he believes otherwise, should the committee be unable to reconcile conflicting numbers, but his conclusion is not based on any explicit language in the governing documents.
As those conflicts have been reconciled, there is no immediate need to consider the implications of Trummel’s views.
Perhaps Attachment A (and governing documents) could be amended to specify conditions under which a certified election could be decertified, who would make that determination, and remedies, including a new election, could be auu
Naming the skatepark after Gavin Knupp
At the Sept. 24 monthly meeting of the Board of Directors, the mother of the late Gavin Knupp appealed to Ocean Pines elected leaders to name Ocean Pines’ skatepark in White Horse Park after her son.
It was a heartfelt appeal, a follow-up on an earlier meeting with OPA President Doug Parks and others.
Parks says she told the mother of the 14-year-old victim of a hit-andrun this past June that the Board would carefully consider her request.
The OPA doesn’t really have any published criteria for such appeals, and actually there is relatively little naming of OPA amenities or administrative facilities after Ocean Pines residents.
There are two within the confi nes of Ocean Pines, and one other on county-owned property administrative offi ces.
Perhaps there should be a published criteria, but the lack thereof should not work against the campaign to name the skateboard park after Gavin.
Parks says she told Tiffany Knupp that evidence of volunteer service work at Gavin’s school or elsewhere would make it easier for the Board to say yes to the request, and according to Parks she understands and will be working to supply the requested information.
But as Parks acknowledges, a 14-year-old with a passion for outdoor sports may not have had a track record of selfl ess community service as, say, the late Anna Foultz, whose Star Charities was a fi xture in Ocean Pines’s non-profi t environment for many years before her passing in 2019.
Foultz had the former Marlin Room in the Community Center named after her, whereas the late Phyllis East, a long-time executive secretary for the OPA whose career spanned a series of general managers without her staying power, has a room in the Community Hall named after her as well.
She was a popular, beloved, grandmotherly fi xture, but with all due respect didn’t have the charitable resume of an Anna Foultz.
Phyllis East had the room named after her because of years of loyal, professional service to the OPA.
The OPA at the annual meeting of property owners bestows an a volunteer of the year award named after Sam Wilkinson, an Ocean Pines teenager who died decades ago in a tragic boating accident.
Not too many present-day Ocean Pines residents and elected leaders can recall the outpouring of community support for the family who had lost a beloved son.
Simply put, they weren’t around back then, and so Sam Wilkinson is a person who gets a mention once a year in a kind of memory void. The focus as it should be is on the volunteer being honored.
If the Board is looking for a precedent in its decision whether to name the skatepark after Gavin, then Sam Wilkinson is it.
There’s another building in Ocean Pines that’s named after a former resident and volunteer, and that’s the Ernie Armstrong administrative building on the site of the county-operated Ocean Pines wastewater treatment plant.
He was an original member and the fi rst chairman of the water and wastewater advisory board created by the county after the water and wastewater system went from private to public ownership.
There’s a sign in front of the building that honors his volunteer service.
That’s it -- only three buildings or parts of buildings named after an Ocean Pines resident who passed, not much to go on.
There’s a mounted plaque in the Yacht Club citing those involved in its construction some years ago, but there’s never been any effort to name the Yacht Club after a single individual.
If it turns out that Gavin did not have an extensive record of volunteer service, that is hardly a disqualifi er given his age.
What may be far more relevant is the creation of a foundation in his name.
According to Tiffany Knupp, Gavin’s mom, the foundation will be raising money that in turn will be donated to worthy local causes, including improvements to the skatepark -- such as improved lighting and seating -- that Gavin would have appreciated.
Of course those improvements need to be worked out in close association with the OPA and its Parks and Recreation Department in particular, but Tiffany Knupp seems sincere in her desire to do something practical and lasting to honor the memory of her late son.
This should be an easy decision for the Board to make. It would be a kind gesture and should help the family heal.
Justice for Gavin has not been swift, but a simple gesture such as naming a skatepark after him should happen much quicker.
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
Editorial
From Page 43 thorized. Not this year, of course; that ship has sailed.
There would probably have to be amendments to by-laws and other governing documents as well, as Board resolutions by their very nature are low on the governance totem pole in Ocean Pines.
Until then, without explicit authority, the Board’s hands are tied were there any credible calls for a new election. Boards fi nd themselves in trouble when they deviate from explicit language in the governing documents.
In some recent exchange of emails among the directors, Former OPA president and current director Colette Horn seemed to get it, having learned from bruising experience in the Slobodan Trendic, Rick Farr and (soon to be delivered) Tom Janasek litigation. She advised against any involvement by the Board in pressuring the Elections Committee from conducting a hand recount of ballots.
Even so, there’s little to be gained by quibbling with actions on the margins taken thus far by the Board or OPA President Doug Parks -- it was a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. Parks issued a press release indicating that the Board had instructed the Elections Committee to conduct a hand count of the ballots, action conducted on Sept. 30.
Apparently six of the seven directors supported the Board call for a recount, with Horn in principled opposition.
It would have been better had that action been taken in public, at a special meeting, as two newly elected directors, Monica Rakowski and Stuart Lakernick, suggested. Technically, the Board can vote by email only if all seven directors agree to do it that way.
Going forward, the Board should refrain from issuing any more instructions to the Elections Committee about the 2022 election, if indeed they were instructions and not mere suggestions. Now that the election is over, there should be no danger of that.
When it comes to M-06, though, the Board is well within its authority to insist that it be followed to the letter. If Addendum A lacks clarity, then amend it so it does. Next summer, one ballot should be sent to every lot of record in Ocean Pines.~ Tom Stauss 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
ADVERTISING SALES Frank Bottone frankbottone@gmail.com 410-430-3660
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Rota Knott 443-880-3953
