(May 7, 2015) Marty Clarke, current vice president of the Ocean Pines Association Board of Directors, has decided against running for reelection in 2015. For him to leave quietly, as those who have followed his time on the board well know, would be out of character.
Clarke, 67, was first elected to the board in Aug. 2007, serving three years. He took two years off, then ran and won again in 2012.
Born in Chevy Chase, Clarke spent most of his life on or near the beach, working odd jobs in the area during high school and college. As he tells it, “I was a bum, I was a busboy, I was a waiter, I was a bar back … I was in the resort business.”
Eventually the resort business became the real estate and construction business, and Clarke went to work for Sea Colony.
“Of course, selling Sea Colony is like saying, ‘We can go to work in bathing suits with a sandwich in our back pocket,’” he said. “Those were the days.”
In the 1970s Clarke began working for Caliban Realty in Ocean City. A decade later, he bought out the company and acquired 400 single-family homes in Ocean Pines.
While working on the acquisition, Clarke came across an arcane ordinance buried deep within the community’s bylaws.
“There was a restriction that said, in order to sell your lot, you had to first offer it to the property owner on the left, then to the property owner on the right,” Clarke said. “This was discriminatory by any measure.”
The company, with Clarke leading the effort, successfully sued Ocean Pines to remove the language.
During the 1980s and ’90s, Clarke became more involved in the community, volunteering for various committees and attending public board meetings.
“I was running my business here and raising my family here, so I started getting involved,” he said. “And sometimes you are able to catch stuff.”
One such item was an application to build a commercial marina at the swim and racquet club. It was a curious move, coming on the heels of a similar, already completed, commercial marina project at Pines Point.
Clarke got involved in the struggle to stop construction thanks to a group led by resident Charlie Herpen.
“I attended a meeting at Charlie’s house and there were a lot of known Ocean Pines names there,” Clarke said. “They’re going around and around and on and on, and when the meeting is winding down Charlie says, ‘What do you think?’ I said, ‘I think you’ve completely missed the point. The only way you’re going to stop this thing is to have a referendum, and you can’t have a referendum without a lawyer. And a lawyer costs money. Everybody at this table should either put up money or get out.’”
Herpen wrote a check and placed it in the center of the table.
“Others matched it, and 20 minutes later we had thousands of dollars and were ready for the fight,” Clarke said.
The group hired a lawyer and created a petition for a referendum to stop construction.
“We needed 800 signatures to drive a referendum,” Clarke said. “We had 1,700 when we stopped. And the board ignored us and went forward to try and get a permit. Luckily, the Department Of Natural Resources said, ‘After you get your referendum out of the way, we’ll talk.’ The whole rest of the world gets it, but our board of directors didn’t.”
A few years later, Clarke again found himself at odds with the board of directors on a major construction project. This time it was a new community center with a proposed price tag pushing $4 million.
“They just squeezed by a referendum, which was chocked full of disingenuous information and out and out misrepresentations, and when the first numbers came back, they were already $1.4 million, 34 percent, over budget,” Clarke said.
Working with a similar group that stalled the marina, this time calling themselves Stop Taxing Ocean Pines (STOP), Clarke moved to force a new referendum.
“They did everything but call my mother a crook,” he said. “They told the membership if this prevails it could cost them a half million dollars and you could lose your house.”
Clarke said the board went as far as threatening to sue him directly.
“I’m in Colorado and there is a hearing set for Friday,” Clarke said. “On Thursday, my lawyer calls me and he’s almost panicked. He says, ‘They’re going to sue you for a million dollars.’ I said, ‘Really? So?’ He says, ‘This is serious.’ I said, ‘No it isn’t. I haven’t got a million dollars.’”
During a public hearing for the referendum, a resident went after Clarke by name while lobbying passionately on behalf of the community center.
“She’s up there talking about how we need this community center and we have to have this community center and we must support this community center, and, ‘who is this Marty Clarke? He’s never at any meetings. He’s never anywhere. He’s just a negative activist.’ And the room started to chuckle because I was standing right beside her,” Clarke said. “So I introduced myself, and she said, ‘If you had any guts you would run for the board.’ I said, ‘I don’t think it’s necessary to prove what my guts are to you,’ but I ran.”
Because of STOP’s actions, a second referendum was held and the motion to build the center was stopped. Ironically, Clarke’s first action on the board was to build a new community center, for $1.7 million.
Four board members were swept in during the 2007 election, including Clarke and current OPA President Dave Stevens.
“We didn’t run as a team,” Clarke said. “I’ve said a hundred times if all seven of us are going to agree, only one of us has to go to a meeting. If you don’t have dissention you have … a puppet board.”
Clarke took two years off before running again, citing fatigue. Then, when the discussions surrounding a new yacht club began heating up, Clarke jumped back into the fray.
“We spent a fortune for an engineering study on the yacht club because certain directors just didn’t want it fixed – they wanted a new building,” Clarke said. “I followed it as close as I could not being in closed meetings because I wasn’t on the board, and I’m following the reports and they’re all good. The building had decks that were 40 years old. It was really well built.”
In June 2012, the board of directors voted unanimously to build a new yacht club, citing the belief that the community would save money in the long run with a new facility, rather than repairing the existing one.
“The fact is the promise of a new yacht club was based on disingenuous bull,” Clarke said. “I ended up back on the board because of that very reason.”
During his second term, Clarke spent most of his time in the minority, with Tom Terry as president.
“When I first got elected, Tom Terry came to me and said, basically, ‘Everything is wonderful, don’t rock the boat,’” Clarke said. “I said, ‘Quite frankly if everything was so wonderful I wouldn’t have run. I think it’s awful. We lost money for two out of the last three years.’”
The two got into an email argument over the politics of spending. During a two-year span, while Terry was president, assessments had risen nearly a million dollars, while the bottom line performance at amenities plummeted, according to Clarke.
“We got into this discussion and he said, ‘Oh, no, no. You’re including depreciation.’ I said, ‘Duh. We collect it in the dues.’ ‘Well, you can’t include depreciation.’ I said, ‘Tom, if you don’t include ice, the Titanic was a successful voyage,’” Clarke said.
The dynamic of the board changed last year when Dave Stevens and Pat Renaud were elected, with Stevens replacing Terry at the top and effectively creating a 4-3 majority with Stevens, Clarke, Renaud and Jack Collins.
Clarke was elected vice president, Renaud secretary and Collins became treasurer.
Despite the shakeup Clarke said little changed in day-to-day activity on the board.
“The first year you’re on the board and you’re hit with a budget, the budget is so screwed up,” Clarke said. “My first year I voted for it, and it was probably the only year I voted for it. It’s impossible to understand because it’s not understandable.”
That was 2012. Fast-forward to 2015, and the budget hearings went down in much the same fashion.
“I kept hearing the phrase, ‘your numbers,’’’ Clarke said. “My numbers? The numbers are from the audited statement and shy of some people’s smoke and mirror interpretations.”
During the 2015 budget hearings, Clarke zeroed in on removing the five-year funding plan, which was entering its seventh year. He also pushed to add $314,068 for road depreciation and $350,000 for golf course drainage. The changes would have dramatically lowered assessments.
This time, however, Clarke did not get his way.
“I gave my word to the new, so-called ‘majority’ if they voted for the budget, I’m not running for reelection, and I wanted to run for reelection,” Clarke said.
Despite his clear frustration, the two-time director did not rule out the possibility of running again in the future, and encouraged others to run, regardless of whether they live in the community full time.
“We are a membership of 8,452, of which half don’t live here,” Clarke said. “The problem is our board 100 percent lives here and for the most part is retired. That’s not a very good cross-section of our membership.”
While Clarke is often critical of the leadership in Ocean Pines, he does not give himself high marks either.
“I’m really disappointed in my performance,” he said. “We’re still using the same auditors. That’s okay, but we’ve not gone out in the marketplace at all. That’s a gross dereliction of our fiduciary duty. And I love Joe Moore, I think he’s probably the best lawyer in the world for what he does, but that’s another thing that ought to be bid out every three or four years.”
Clarke also has major qualms with how the community views itself, and operates based on that assumption.
“We’re a resort town,” he said. “We only operate in season – not in the offseason. Some don’t get it. If 170 people are in the yacht club on a Sunday in February that still doesn’t represent two percent of the people that are paying for that building. The numbers are clear. We’ve lost $224,964 in the last six months. You can’t make that up in volume. You’re done. You’re toast. The year is ruined.
“People vote with their wallets,” Clarke continued. “You lose $225,000 over six months and people are clearly telling you what they think of your product. The same can be said about all amenities.”
Clarke, 67, was first elected to the board in Aug. 2007, serving three years. He took two years off, then ran and won again in 2012.
Born in Chevy Chase, Clarke spent most of his life on or near the beach, working odd jobs in the area during high school and college. As he tells it, “I was a bum, I was a busboy, I was a waiter, I was a bar back … I was in the resort business.”
Eventually the resort business became the real estate and construction business, and Clarke went to work for Sea Colony.
“Of course, selling Sea Colony is like saying, ‘We can go to work in bathing suits with a sandwich in our back pocket,’” he said. “Those were the days.”
In the 1970s Clarke began working for Caliban Realty in Ocean City. A decade later, he bought out the company and acquired 400 single-family homes in Ocean Pines.
While working on the acquisition, Clarke came across an arcane ordinance buried deep within the community’s bylaws.
“There was a restriction that said, in order to sell your lot, you had to first offer it to the property owner on the left, then to the property owner on the right,” Clarke said. “This was discriminatory by any measure.”
The company, with Clarke leading the effort, successfully sued Ocean Pines to remove the language.
During the 1980s and ’90s, Clarke became more involved in the community, volunteering for various committees and attending public board meetings.
“I was running my business here and raising my family here, so I started getting involved,” he said. “And sometimes you are able to catch stuff.”
One such item was an application to build a commercial marina at the swim and racquet club. It was a curious move, coming on the heels of a similar, already completed, commercial marina project at Pines Point.
Clarke got involved in the struggle to stop construction thanks to a group led by resident Charlie Herpen.
“I attended a meeting at Charlie’s house and there were a lot of known Ocean Pines names there,” Clarke said. “They’re going around and around and on and on, and when the meeting is winding down Charlie says, ‘What do you think?’ I said, ‘I think you’ve completely missed the point. The only way you’re going to stop this thing is to have a referendum, and you can’t have a referendum without a lawyer. And a lawyer costs money. Everybody at this table should either put up money or get out.’”
Herpen wrote a check and placed it in the center of the table.
“Others matched it, and 20 minutes later we had thousands of dollars and were ready for the fight,” Clarke said.
The group hired a lawyer and created a petition for a referendum to stop construction.
“We needed 800 signatures to drive a referendum,” Clarke said. “We had 1,700 when we stopped. And the board ignored us and went forward to try and get a permit. Luckily, the Department Of Natural Resources said, ‘After you get your referendum out of the way, we’ll talk.’ The whole rest of the world gets it, but our board of directors didn’t.”
A few years later, Clarke again found himself at odds with the board of directors on a major construction project. This time it was a new community center with a proposed price tag pushing $4 million.
“They just squeezed by a referendum, which was chocked full of disingenuous information and out and out misrepresentations, and when the first numbers came back, they were already $1.4 million, 34 percent, over budget,” Clarke said.
Working with a similar group that stalled the marina, this time calling themselves Stop Taxing Ocean Pines (STOP), Clarke moved to force a new referendum.
“They did everything but call my mother a crook,” he said. “They told the membership if this prevails it could cost them a half million dollars and you could lose your house.”
Clarke said the board went as far as threatening to sue him directly.
“I’m in Colorado and there is a hearing set for Friday,” Clarke said. “On Thursday, my lawyer calls me and he’s almost panicked. He says, ‘They’re going to sue you for a million dollars.’ I said, ‘Really? So?’ He says, ‘This is serious.’ I said, ‘No it isn’t. I haven’t got a million dollars.’”
During a public hearing for the referendum, a resident went after Clarke by name while lobbying passionately on behalf of the community center.
“She’s up there talking about how we need this community center and we have to have this community center and we must support this community center, and, ‘who is this Marty Clarke? He’s never at any meetings. He’s never anywhere. He’s just a negative activist.’ And the room started to chuckle because I was standing right beside her,” Clarke said. “So I introduced myself, and she said, ‘If you had any guts you would run for the board.’ I said, ‘I don’t think it’s necessary to prove what my guts are to you,’ but I ran.”
Because of STOP’s actions, a second referendum was held and the motion to build the center was stopped. Ironically, Clarke’s first action on the board was to build a new community center, for $1.7 million.
Four board members were swept in during the 2007 election, including Clarke and current OPA President Dave Stevens.
“We didn’t run as a team,” Clarke said. “I’ve said a hundred times if all seven of us are going to agree, only one of us has to go to a meeting. If you don’t have dissention you have … a puppet board.”
Clarke took two years off before running again, citing fatigue. Then, when the discussions surrounding a new yacht club began heating up, Clarke jumped back into the fray.
“We spent a fortune for an engineering study on the yacht club because certain directors just didn’t want it fixed – they wanted a new building,” Clarke said. “I followed it as close as I could not being in closed meetings because I wasn’t on the board, and I’m following the reports and they’re all good. The building had decks that were 40 years old. It was really well built.”
In June 2012, the board of directors voted unanimously to build a new yacht club, citing the belief that the community would save money in the long run with a new facility, rather than repairing the existing one.
“The fact is the promise of a new yacht club was based on disingenuous bull,” Clarke said. “I ended up back on the board because of that very reason.”
During his second term, Clarke spent most of his time in the minority, with Tom Terry as president.
“When I first got elected, Tom Terry came to me and said, basically, ‘Everything is wonderful, don’t rock the boat,’” Clarke said. “I said, ‘Quite frankly if everything was so wonderful I wouldn’t have run. I think it’s awful. We lost money for two out of the last three years.’”
The two got into an email argument over the politics of spending. During a two-year span, while Terry was president, assessments had risen nearly a million dollars, while the bottom line performance at amenities plummeted, according to Clarke.
“We got into this discussion and he said, ‘Oh, no, no. You’re including depreciation.’ I said, ‘Duh. We collect it in the dues.’ ‘Well, you can’t include depreciation.’ I said, ‘Tom, if you don’t include ice, the Titanic was a successful voyage,’” Clarke said.
The dynamic of the board changed last year when Dave Stevens and Pat Renaud were elected, with Stevens replacing Terry at the top and effectively creating a 4-3 majority with Stevens, Clarke, Renaud and Jack Collins.
Clarke was elected vice president, Renaud secretary and Collins became treasurer.
Despite the shakeup Clarke said little changed in day-to-day activity on the board.
“The first year you’re on the board and you’re hit with a budget, the budget is so screwed up,” Clarke said. “My first year I voted for it, and it was probably the only year I voted for it. It’s impossible to understand because it’s not understandable.”
That was 2012. Fast-forward to 2015, and the budget hearings went down in much the same fashion.
“I kept hearing the phrase, ‘your numbers,’’’ Clarke said. “My numbers? The numbers are from the audited statement and shy of some people’s smoke and mirror interpretations.”
During the 2015 budget hearings, Clarke zeroed in on removing the five-year funding plan, which was entering its seventh year. He also pushed to add $314,068 for road depreciation and $350,000 for golf course drainage. The changes would have dramatically lowered assessments.
This time, however, Clarke did not get his way.
“I gave my word to the new, so-called ‘majority’ if they voted for the budget, I’m not running for reelection, and I wanted to run for reelection,” Clarke said.
Despite his clear frustration, the two-time director did not rule out the possibility of running again in the future, and encouraged others to run, regardless of whether they live in the community full time.
“We are a membership of 8,452, of which half don’t live here,” Clarke said. “The problem is our board 100 percent lives here and for the most part is retired. That’s not a very good cross-section of our membership.”
While Clarke is often critical of the leadership in Ocean Pines, he does not give himself high marks either.
“I’m really disappointed in my performance,” he said. “We’re still using the same auditors. That’s okay, but we’ve not gone out in the marketplace at all. That’s a gross dereliction of our fiduciary duty. And I love Joe Moore, I think he’s probably the best lawyer in the world for what he does, but that’s another thing that ought to be bid out every three or four years.”
Clarke also has major qualms with how the community views itself, and operates based on that assumption.
“We’re a resort town,” he said. “We only operate in season – not in the offseason. Some don’t get it. If 170 people are in the yacht club on a Sunday in February that still doesn’t represent two percent of the people that are paying for that building. The numbers are clear. We’ve lost $224,964 in the last six months. You can’t make that up in volume. You’re done. You’re toast. The year is ruined.
“People vote with their wallets,” Clarke continued. “You lose $225,000 over six months and people are clearly telling you what they think of your product. The same can be said about all amenities.”