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Pines Executive Council meeting sparsely attended

(April 28, 2016) With just three of 12 Ocean Pines advisory committees sending representatives to the twice-yearly meeting of the executive council, the business portion of the session did not last long, roughly 20 minutes.
Public comments, however, doubled that runtime and focused on communication issues between the board of directors and its advisory groups.
Apparently there was some confusion about the meeting time and date, which had been on the board calendar for at least a week. The agenda, however, was only published on the day of the session.
Executive council meetings are meant to provide updates from each committee to the president of the board. With Pat Renaud unavailable, Board Vice President Cheryl Jacobs ran the executive council and gave a short summary of recent work done by the communications committee, to which she is the board liaison.
Also attending were Director Tom Terry, the chairpersons of the racquet sports and recreation and parks committees, and Gary Miller from the clubs committee.
Racquet Sports Chair John McNult said his committee was almost exclusively focused on the Manklin Meadows improvements.
Timothy McMullen, chair of the recreation and parks group, spoke about the need for bike trails and a new gym floor in the community center, and gave an overview of summer camp offerings. He also said the committee “strongly” supported the vote to build new restrooms at White Horse Park, approved last month.
Miller said things were slowly improving at the association’s yacht club, and gave an overview of committee requests that were – and were not – included in the fiscal year 2017 budget. The country club, he added, could use a good “deep cleaning.”
Speaking on behalf of communications, Jacobs said Ocean Pines would hold a workshop on June 2. She also said informative committee orientation meetings were in the “draft stage,” she said.
Joe Reynolds, a resident and creator of the Ocean Pines Forum, kicked off public comments by suggesting committee chairs attend the monthly board of directors meetings.
“It’s different attending a meeting than it is watching it on video,” he said. “When you want to get something done [don’t] just send an email or a letter … put together a package of some kind, in writing, specifically what you want to see happen. And you ask the president of the board, and he will give you the opportunity, no question, that you want to make a presentation at a public board meeting.”
McNult said the working relationship between the various committees and the board was nonexistent.
“There is room for us to improve how the advisory boards work with the entire board of directors,” he said. “I’m not sure I agree with doing it during a public board of directors meeting, as Joe suggested.”
Instead, McNult said the board could hold quarterly meetings with the committees so, “the entire board of directors knows, first hand, what’s going on with that particular advisory board.”
“We need to change or improve the relationship between the advisory committees and the board of directors, which, I think is right now, today, is pretty much broke. I don’t think it’s getting the job done,” he said.
McNult said his group has a better working relationship with General Manager Bob Thompson than it does with the board.
“We work with Bob Thompson and we work with his staff … much more frequently than we ever worked with the board of directors. That’s how we get things done,” he said. “If we didn’t do that, we wouldn’t get anything done.
“Even though it’s not the way the advisory is supposed to function, it is the de facto way we function,” he added. “We ought to either make that the norm, or find a way to better work with the board of directors.”
From his perspective, McMullen said advisory boards have a good relationship with the board, including with Jacobs, who also liaises with that committee.
Miller, however, said he never heard anything back from the board after the clubs committee turned in its annual report last year. He asked if the board reviewed those reports. Jacobs, who is in the first year of her first term as a director, said she could not answer, but is working to address some of the apparent issues.
“One of the things that the communications committee is working on is trying to do a better job of making the committees understand what they can and how to communicate better about their projects with the board,” she said. “Sometimes the chairpersons don’t really understand exactly what their function is.”
Terry said it was by design that committees interacted directly with the various department heads in Ocean Pines, rather than the board itself. Many of those department heads attend advisory meetings.
“Having a direct connection to the staff person who is charge of that part of Ocean Pines I think is something we need to maintain, and I think is very valuable,” he said.
Terry said the committees used to give quarterly or monthly reports to the board of its activities, and encouraged the groups to get back to that.
“That is very helpful,” he said. “When something critical is happening, you get on the [meeting] agenda – much to the chagrin of some – you get in there and make a presentation directly to the board on an issue you’re faced with, and your liaison’s got to be the person who sets that up.”
John O’Connor, from the budget and finance committee, was a late arrival to the meeting. He said had only just heard the executive council was occurring, and could not speak on behalf of the others in the committee.
Still, he wondered why more committee members and chairs were not present.
“I think it’s important that you have this kind of meeting,” he said. “I don’t know why all the committee chairmen aren’t here. There should have been enough notice for all of them, and they should have either scheduled or had someone else come and participate in it … so that you could get all together at one time.
“My concern right now is that table is not full of a lot of people, and it should be full,” he said.