(May 12, 2016) Two weeks ago, Frank Daly was the lone interested party sitting in an Ocean Pines Search Committee meeting, gathering information and considering a run for the board of directors.
A few days before the May 10 deadline to file Daly, 67, visited the Gazette office to sit down for his first official interview as a candidate, having filed his paperwork just days earlier.
Daly was born in southwest Pennsylvania and grew up in Ohio. He holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in engineering and has a master’s degree in finance and marketing. His first real job was as a mechanical engineering trainee in a Cleveland steel mill.
As his career progressed, he moved into aerospace and worked as a senior-level engineer for a company associated with Northrop Grumman. He then moved to sales and marketing, and held titles such as product manager, director of marketing, vice president of sales and division general manager.
Five years ago, he opened and his ran his own business, Jordan Frank & Associates, which recruited high-level positions in the engineering, construction, architecture and renewable energy industries.
He moved to Ocean Pines three years ago, and during the last year he has served on the comprehensive planning committee, an advisory panel to the board of directors.
Daly and his wife, a retired schoolteacher, looked at property in the Ocean City area before finally settling on Ocean Pines. Before that, they had been regular visitors in the area since moving to central Maryland in 1997.
“We were aware of Ocean Pines, but not what it consisted of. And then when we saw it we thought this was a place that would work pretty easy for us in terms of the right blend of things we like to do, it’s in the right geography for visiting our family, and it turned out to be a very pleasantly affordable situation for our retirement – and in my case with the business, semi-retirement,” he said.
Because he owns a second home in Tucson in an area managed by a homeowner’s association, Daly says he can identify with the roughly 50 percent of Ocean Pines homeowners who do not live in the area year ‘round.
He sees the Pines as “an extremely diverse community,” including people from all walks of life, ages, interests, and income levels.
“Right now, it struck me that we’re entering a particularly critical phase in terms of the community,” Daly said. “If you asked me what I wanted as a homeowner, I want to maintain the diversity, I want to maintain the social fabric, the recreational abilities, and I want to keep it affordable. And, we enjoy a tremendous amount of public safety. What more can you ask for than a safe, clean, well-maintained and affordable community?”
Daly served on an HOA board in Columbia, Maryland and said the issue of maintaining homeowner value includes taking care of some of the “pockets” of the Pines that are not well maintained.
“I read a comment the other day that said, ‘I had a lousy neighbor and the way that I cured it is I moved away.’ The cost of moving is pretty substantial. Why should a homeowner have to pay that because the person next to them doesn’t maintain their property?” Daly said.
That means streamlining the CPI violation process and working with the county to enforce code. It also means, he said, holding landlords responsible for their tenants.
Watching and attending board of directors meetings, Daly said he believes all of the current members “work extremely hard.” They also all come from a constituency they feel extreme loyalty toward, and at times, he said, that can create friction.
“The issue is how do you work with all the board members to get something done? I’m a no-nonsense kind of guy and I argue my points very hard, but I keep it at a business and professional level. When you don’t do that and you resort to any type of personal attack because you don’t agree the point of view, I think you’re out of bounds and out of order,” he said.
“I think I can work with folks and I think I can maintain my cool while trying to bring everybody together,” Daly continued. “I think we need that, and I think the people [in Ocean Pines] want to do that. I think there’s plenty of room to come together – I just think we have to do it.”
During the last several years, a significant number of board candidates have made General Manager Bob Thompson the central issue of their campaigns. Daly said he would try to avoid doing the same.
“The board, as it consists of today, is made up of folks that really like the job Bob is doing and [others] who have really criticized him severely in the past. But, they just voted 6-1 to extend his contract,” Daly said.
“In the time that I’ve been here as a homeowner I honestly can’t tell you what objectives the board has given Bob that are measurable that tell you whether or not he’s done a good job,” he continued. “If I come into the board and say, ‘Yeah, my platform is to throw the bum out’ it would be ludicrous, because I don’t know how he’s performed, and the people that do know how he’s performed that go to the closed meetings and deal with him day to day have just voted 6-1 to keep him.”
Daly said he is concerned the association does not, to his knowledge, have “a serious ongoing proactive preventative maintenance plan for buildings and facilities.”
“That’s not the current board’s fault and not Bob’s fault, when [Ocean Pines] is 40 years old and doesn’t have the basics,” he said.
Growing up in Cleveland, Daly remembers walking by Interstate 71 on the way to high school and seeing a Marriot Hotel going up.
“That hotel is, I will guarantee you, 50 years old. When I go back to Cleveland to visit my mom, I stay in that hotel. You go in that hotel and it looks immaculate – it doesn’t look like its 50 years old,” Daly said, contrasting that with the Ocean Pines Country Club. “What is the difference? I’ll bet you that Marriot has a pretty doggone good capital improvement program and maintenance program for that hotel. We should have had those programs in place a long time ago.
“That we don’t have them, I guess you could blame the board and I guess you could blame Bob, but since they haven’t been in place for 40 years, why don’t we just kind of pick up the rope and pull on it and develop what we need to move forward?”
Other issues of importance to Daly are the still-in-progress reserve study, which “has to be done right,” and a more developed capital improvement plan that includes all of Ocean Pines facilities.
“You need to get what the 8,400-plus homeowners want in terms of improvement, factor that in, and then lay out a detailed schedule with costs, are we going to build new or are we going to refurbish what we have, and say over the next five years this is what we’re planning on doing, this is how we’re planning on doing it and this is the cost,” Daly said. “I think that you have to lock that in.
“The whole idea is moving forward,” Daly said. “You want to know, from a stability standpoint, what it’s going to cost you to run the association and what you’re going to get from that.”
A few days before the May 10 deadline to file Daly, 67, visited the Gazette office to sit down for his first official interview as a candidate, having filed his paperwork just days earlier.
Daly was born in southwest Pennsylvania and grew up in Ohio. He holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in engineering and has a master’s degree in finance and marketing. His first real job was as a mechanical engineering trainee in a Cleveland steel mill.
As his career progressed, he moved into aerospace and worked as a senior-level engineer for a company associated with Northrop Grumman. He then moved to sales and marketing, and held titles such as product manager, director of marketing, vice president of sales and division general manager.
Five years ago, he opened and his ran his own business, Jordan Frank & Associates, which recruited high-level positions in the engineering, construction, architecture and renewable energy industries.
He moved to Ocean Pines three years ago, and during the last year he has served on the comprehensive planning committee, an advisory panel to the board of directors.
Daly and his wife, a retired schoolteacher, looked at property in the Ocean City area before finally settling on Ocean Pines. Before that, they had been regular visitors in the area since moving to central Maryland in 1997.
“We were aware of Ocean Pines, but not what it consisted of. And then when we saw it we thought this was a place that would work pretty easy for us in terms of the right blend of things we like to do, it’s in the right geography for visiting our family, and it turned out to be a very pleasantly affordable situation for our retirement – and in my case with the business, semi-retirement,” he said.
Because he owns a second home in Tucson in an area managed by a homeowner’s association, Daly says he can identify with the roughly 50 percent of Ocean Pines homeowners who do not live in the area year ‘round.
He sees the Pines as “an extremely diverse community,” including people from all walks of life, ages, interests, and income levels.
“Right now, it struck me that we’re entering a particularly critical phase in terms of the community,” Daly said. “If you asked me what I wanted as a homeowner, I want to maintain the diversity, I want to maintain the social fabric, the recreational abilities, and I want to keep it affordable. And, we enjoy a tremendous amount of public safety. What more can you ask for than a safe, clean, well-maintained and affordable community?”
Daly served on an HOA board in Columbia, Maryland and said the issue of maintaining homeowner value includes taking care of some of the “pockets” of the Pines that are not well maintained.
“I read a comment the other day that said, ‘I had a lousy neighbor and the way that I cured it is I moved away.’ The cost of moving is pretty substantial. Why should a homeowner have to pay that because the person next to them doesn’t maintain their property?” Daly said.
That means streamlining the CPI violation process and working with the county to enforce code. It also means, he said, holding landlords responsible for their tenants.
Watching and attending board of directors meetings, Daly said he believes all of the current members “work extremely hard.” They also all come from a constituency they feel extreme loyalty toward, and at times, he said, that can create friction.
“The issue is how do you work with all the board members to get something done? I’m a no-nonsense kind of guy and I argue my points very hard, but I keep it at a business and professional level. When you don’t do that and you resort to any type of personal attack because you don’t agree the point of view, I think you’re out of bounds and out of order,” he said.
“I think I can work with folks and I think I can maintain my cool while trying to bring everybody together,” Daly continued. “I think we need that, and I think the people [in Ocean Pines] want to do that. I think there’s plenty of room to come together – I just think we have to do it.”
During the last several years, a significant number of board candidates have made General Manager Bob Thompson the central issue of their campaigns. Daly said he would try to avoid doing the same.
“The board, as it consists of today, is made up of folks that really like the job Bob is doing and [others] who have really criticized him severely in the past. But, they just voted 6-1 to extend his contract,” Daly said.
“In the time that I’ve been here as a homeowner I honestly can’t tell you what objectives the board has given Bob that are measurable that tell you whether or not he’s done a good job,” he continued. “If I come into the board and say, ‘Yeah, my platform is to throw the bum out’ it would be ludicrous, because I don’t know how he’s performed, and the people that do know how he’s performed that go to the closed meetings and deal with him day to day have just voted 6-1 to keep him.”
Daly said he is concerned the association does not, to his knowledge, have “a serious ongoing proactive preventative maintenance plan for buildings and facilities.”
“That’s not the current board’s fault and not Bob’s fault, when [Ocean Pines] is 40 years old and doesn’t have the basics,” he said.
Growing up in Cleveland, Daly remembers walking by Interstate 71 on the way to high school and seeing a Marriot Hotel going up.
“That hotel is, I will guarantee you, 50 years old. When I go back to Cleveland to visit my mom, I stay in that hotel. You go in that hotel and it looks immaculate – it doesn’t look like its 50 years old,” Daly said, contrasting that with the Ocean Pines Country Club. “What is the difference? I’ll bet you that Marriot has a pretty doggone good capital improvement program and maintenance program for that hotel. We should have had those programs in place a long time ago.
“That we don’t have them, I guess you could blame the board and I guess you could blame Bob, but since they haven’t been in place for 40 years, why don’t we just kind of pick up the rope and pull on it and develop what we need to move forward?”
Other issues of importance to Daly are the still-in-progress reserve study, which “has to be done right,” and a more developed capital improvement plan that includes all of Ocean Pines facilities.
“You need to get what the 8,400-plus homeowners want in terms of improvement, factor that in, and then lay out a detailed schedule with costs, are we going to build new or are we going to refurbish what we have, and say over the next five years this is what we’re planning on doing, this is how we’re planning on doing it and this is the cost,” Daly said. “I think that you have to lock that in.
“The whole idea is moving forward,” Daly said. “You want to know, from a stability standpoint, what it’s going to cost you to run the association and what you’re going to get from that.”