(April 2, 2015) Three simultaneous studies are underway, or soon will be, in Ocean Pines, with each playing a major role in the future of the community.
The Ocean Pines Association board of directors last Saturday provided an update on a capital improvement plan [CIP] and reserve study, and voted on a comprehensive plan.
First, Jerry Aveta and Ted Moroney presented an extensive slide show on the CIP to the dozen or so audience members in attendance.
According to Aveta, the CIP committee collected data from a 2008 OPA reserve study, a 2010 10-year plan task force, a 2011 major facilities plan task force and additional engineering reports and studies conducted between 2008 and 2014.
“We defined the first task as to find out what information was out there with regard to our facilities, what kind of engineering data [and] what kind of information that we could use to assess the condition of our facilities,” Aveta said.
So far, the study has attempted to compile and analyze data acquired about the country club, beach club, yacht club and swim and racquet club, as well as pools, parks, bridges, roads, bulkheads and computer architecture.
Some facilities, such as the racquet club, had “very little documentation,” according to Aveta. The preliminary report showed a lack of data across the board on nearly every category, save for the new yacht club that likely would not need major repairs in the immediate future.
“This whole thing is more about identifying what we don’t know,” Moroney said. “Part of what Jerry was trying to do is go through and pull everything we could find so that we can actually get a snapshot of where we are, and what we don’t know is more what we’re trying to find out.”
Aveta said the 2008 reserve study addressed many of the facilities, however it was “not comprehensive” and needed to be updated and expanded.
“Much of the data we have … is really anecdotal,” he said. “It’s good, but it doesn’t give us data in a measurable form and that’s the basis of the requirement. We’re striving for a requirements-based CIP … it cannot be anecdotal.
“We’re striving to [have] measurable data that can characterize our facilities and then build the requisite project documentation to go forward in that area,” Aveta continued.
Aveta said there was a synergy between the three studies, adding that the CIP was more operational and would be informed by the comprehensive plan on a short-term basis.
“It gives us the vision, it gives us the direction in which we can implement the CIP,” he said. “The reserve study fills in the blanks for us.”
“The whole purpose for us is to not to get to a point ever again where we end up having to replace or fix something that becomes a surprise,” Moroney said.
Moroney said more information was needed on “lifecycle and lifespan” from the reserve study, while the comprehensive plan needed to address “what we really want in Ocean Pines.”
The CIP, he suggested, would “marry” both studies, taking “what we have, what we want and melding them together to try to get to the maximum place.”
For current amenities, the CIP would act as a “planning document on maintaining,” Moroney said. For future projects the study would address community needs.
The plan could cost the community more money in maintenance in the short term, but save more money in the long term by extending the life of buildings, Moroney said.
Rather than act as a one-time report, Aveta said the CIP could be adjusted on a yearly basis.
“What we’re portraying here is a living cycle, we’re not portraying a set of documents that as soon as they’re done they get on a shelf and get dusty,” he said. “We’re describing a process that will be a continuum that will … shape the investment process in the future.”
An executive council meeting will be held on the CIP on April 23.
In the meantime, Aveta said the committee would “continue to gather any data we can get our hands on,” including input from the comprehensive planning effort. He also indicated the committee could play a role in crafting the request for proposal [RFP] for the reserve study.
“When we move forward with this, the general manager, the director of public works, everybody has got to be involved because there’s more knowledge siting down the street than what we have,” Moroney said. “We need to have everybody on board.”
Aveta said the committee would report to the board of directors through the general manager.
During the meeting, the board voted 5-1 on a motion to hire Salisbury University to assist in the comprehensive plan. Director Bill Cordwell voted against the motion.
Dr. Memo Diriker, founding director of the Business, Economic, and Community Outreach Network [BEACON] at SU, will lead the effort.
According to Diriker, the community first contacted his office more than a year ago under the direction of current parliamentarian, and former president, Tom Terry.
“The most difficult thing when you’re doing long-term planning, such as comprehensive planning, is having a good idea as to how the future is going [to effect] the various decisions you are going to make,” Diriker said. “It starts with understanding the vision, deciding on certain future scenarios and understanding how each of those scenarios in the future would yield results.”
Diriker said Fortune 500 companies have been using this type of comprehensive planning effort for more than 20 years, with advances during the last five-to-seven years bringing costs and availability down “to pretty much everybody.”
The predictive accuracy of his model, Diriker said, was 87-92 percent, with the variance depending on how far projections reached into the future.
A grant from SU will cover half of the $33,000 price tag of the study thanks to an agreement allowing Diriker to use the data as a “learning tool” for graduate students, he said.
The comprehensive plan will be developed in two stages, with each stage costing Ocean Pines $8,250. Follow-up work would be billed on an hourly basis.
Board Vice President Marty Clarke praised the work the university did on a demographic study conducted during the 1980s, but hinted he was leaning towards voting against the new study.
“It’s not in the budget,” he said. “It’s not in last year’s budget. I really can’t support the motion just based on that.”
Clarke suggested taking a portion of the $50,000 allocated in the fiscal year 2016 budget for a reserve study to pay for the comprehensive plan.
“I don’t believe it’s possible to spend $34,500 on a reserve study,” he said. “I would not be opposed if there is a consensus that we take $16,500 away from a reserve study. Then I could probably support this.”
Cordwell balked at the notion of undermining the reserve study financially and worried that conducting several studies at once would counteract each other.
“My recommendation would be to do them simultaneously so they can benefit from cross-fertilization,” Diriker said.
Diriker also told the board that BEACON had done “more than 40 of these [studies] during the past few years,” including work for at least two states and a $400 million dollar cargo complex based at John F. Kennedy International Airport.
“We have gathered a little bit of expertise in how to tweak it so that the right questions go in and build enough flexibility so that you get the right kinds of answers,” Diriker said. “Any time you reduce uncertainty … your ability to make better decisions is going to be enhanced. It doesn’t make decisions for you.”
Former board member Jeff Knepper claimed responsibility for study’s absence in the previous budget.
“The reason study wasn’t in last year’s budget is because I was the liaison and I screwed up,” he said. “I had just joined the board. We were just doing budgets. I wasn’t bright enough to know that I needed to put it in. That’s how it didn’t get in last year. This year, you’re on your own.”
Steve Cohen, chairman of a committee that had previously worked on developing a similar plan, stressed the importance of hiring Diriker.
“We’ve been working on this for four or five years,” he said. “We don’t have the expertise to do what we need to do, getting information. Dr. Drinker has all this database, all this information, how many people live here, how many renters here, who uses diapers, the whole thing that we don’t have access to. We really can’t do our job, we can’t go any further without this information.”
Cohen called the move an investment for the future.
“Eight thousand dollars for the next 10-15 years is peanuts, and it gives us direction of where we want to go, what we want to do,” he said.
The comprehensive committee, Cohen said, would work with Diriker, have monthly meetings and determine who the stakeholders are.
“Everybody has an interest, everybody has politics, everybody has their own agenda, but through his expertise he’ll be able to filter through it and develop a scenario,” he said.
Terry, meanwhile, compared the three studies to three legs of a stool.
“You just heard from the chair that … without this tool, without the guidance of an independent voice to work through the politics [the study would not be complete],” he said. “You can’t just do a reserve study with what you’ve already got. You also need to know what you might need to build. Without that third leg coming-out of the comprehensive plan you won’t know that.”
Following the meeting Board President Dave Stevens said next step for the CIP would be the executive council meeting on April 23.
“It will basically be the same presentation, but with a little more emphasis on, ‘okay, what are we really looking for in terms of the support groups, in terms of the working groups,’” he said.
The reserve study, he said, is in the hands of General Manager Bob Thompson.
“We need to get an RFP together to send out,” he said. “I’ve already been contacted by at least one reserve company, and I know another one that’s doing reserves in The Park, which we’ve never had any problem with them here.”
Stevens said the company that performed the previous reserve study in Ocean Pines was also under consideration.
“There’s at least three, so it’s not going to be real hard to find [a company],” he said. “What we do have to do in the RFP is focus the reserve as such that we’re not paying for things we really don’t need, and that’s just basically saying, ‘here’s where we stand on the yacht club and so forth.’ So there’s work to be done, but at least I think we more or less know what it is and can get the volunteers to do it.”
Stevens admitted he still had problems with the comprehensive plan, but said he “got a better feeling from [Diriker] than I had had before.”
“I’m hoping that’s fine and that it will work,” he said. “It’s certainly worth trying. We were going no place with it for four years.”
The Ocean Pines Association board of directors last Saturday provided an update on a capital improvement plan [CIP] and reserve study, and voted on a comprehensive plan.
First, Jerry Aveta and Ted Moroney presented an extensive slide show on the CIP to the dozen or so audience members in attendance.
According to Aveta, the CIP committee collected data from a 2008 OPA reserve study, a 2010 10-year plan task force, a 2011 major facilities plan task force and additional engineering reports and studies conducted between 2008 and 2014.
“We defined the first task as to find out what information was out there with regard to our facilities, what kind of engineering data [and] what kind of information that we could use to assess the condition of our facilities,” Aveta said.
So far, the study has attempted to compile and analyze data acquired about the country club, beach club, yacht club and swim and racquet club, as well as pools, parks, bridges, roads, bulkheads and computer architecture.
Some facilities, such as the racquet club, had “very little documentation,” according to Aveta. The preliminary report showed a lack of data across the board on nearly every category, save for the new yacht club that likely would not need major repairs in the immediate future.
“This whole thing is more about identifying what we don’t know,” Moroney said. “Part of what Jerry was trying to do is go through and pull everything we could find so that we can actually get a snapshot of where we are, and what we don’t know is more what we’re trying to find out.”
Aveta said the 2008 reserve study addressed many of the facilities, however it was “not comprehensive” and needed to be updated and expanded.
“Much of the data we have … is really anecdotal,” he said. “It’s good, but it doesn’t give us data in a measurable form and that’s the basis of the requirement. We’re striving for a requirements-based CIP … it cannot be anecdotal.
“We’re striving to [have] measurable data that can characterize our facilities and then build the requisite project documentation to go forward in that area,” Aveta continued.
Aveta said there was a synergy between the three studies, adding that the CIP was more operational and would be informed by the comprehensive plan on a short-term basis.
“It gives us the vision, it gives us the direction in which we can implement the CIP,” he said. “The reserve study fills in the blanks for us.”
“The whole purpose for us is to not to get to a point ever again where we end up having to replace or fix something that becomes a surprise,” Moroney said.
Moroney said more information was needed on “lifecycle and lifespan” from the reserve study, while the comprehensive plan needed to address “what we really want in Ocean Pines.”
The CIP, he suggested, would “marry” both studies, taking “what we have, what we want and melding them together to try to get to the maximum place.”
For current amenities, the CIP would act as a “planning document on maintaining,” Moroney said. For future projects the study would address community needs.
The plan could cost the community more money in maintenance in the short term, but save more money in the long term by extending the life of buildings, Moroney said.
Rather than act as a one-time report, Aveta said the CIP could be adjusted on a yearly basis.
“What we’re portraying here is a living cycle, we’re not portraying a set of documents that as soon as they’re done they get on a shelf and get dusty,” he said. “We’re describing a process that will be a continuum that will … shape the investment process in the future.”
An executive council meeting will be held on the CIP on April 23.
In the meantime, Aveta said the committee would “continue to gather any data we can get our hands on,” including input from the comprehensive planning effort. He also indicated the committee could play a role in crafting the request for proposal [RFP] for the reserve study.
“When we move forward with this, the general manager, the director of public works, everybody has got to be involved because there’s more knowledge siting down the street than what we have,” Moroney said. “We need to have everybody on board.”
Aveta said the committee would report to the board of directors through the general manager.
During the meeting, the board voted 5-1 on a motion to hire Salisbury University to assist in the comprehensive plan. Director Bill Cordwell voted against the motion.
Dr. Memo Diriker, founding director of the Business, Economic, and Community Outreach Network [BEACON] at SU, will lead the effort.
According to Diriker, the community first contacted his office more than a year ago under the direction of current parliamentarian, and former president, Tom Terry.
“The most difficult thing when you’re doing long-term planning, such as comprehensive planning, is having a good idea as to how the future is going [to effect] the various decisions you are going to make,” Diriker said. “It starts with understanding the vision, deciding on certain future scenarios and understanding how each of those scenarios in the future would yield results.”
Diriker said Fortune 500 companies have been using this type of comprehensive planning effort for more than 20 years, with advances during the last five-to-seven years bringing costs and availability down “to pretty much everybody.”
The predictive accuracy of his model, Diriker said, was 87-92 percent, with the variance depending on how far projections reached into the future.
A grant from SU will cover half of the $33,000 price tag of the study thanks to an agreement allowing Diriker to use the data as a “learning tool” for graduate students, he said.
The comprehensive plan will be developed in two stages, with each stage costing Ocean Pines $8,250. Follow-up work would be billed on an hourly basis.
Board Vice President Marty Clarke praised the work the university did on a demographic study conducted during the 1980s, but hinted he was leaning towards voting against the new study.
“It’s not in the budget,” he said. “It’s not in last year’s budget. I really can’t support the motion just based on that.”
Clarke suggested taking a portion of the $50,000 allocated in the fiscal year 2016 budget for a reserve study to pay for the comprehensive plan.
“I don’t believe it’s possible to spend $34,500 on a reserve study,” he said. “I would not be opposed if there is a consensus that we take $16,500 away from a reserve study. Then I could probably support this.”
Cordwell balked at the notion of undermining the reserve study financially and worried that conducting several studies at once would counteract each other.
“My recommendation would be to do them simultaneously so they can benefit from cross-fertilization,” Diriker said.
Diriker also told the board that BEACON had done “more than 40 of these [studies] during the past few years,” including work for at least two states and a $400 million dollar cargo complex based at John F. Kennedy International Airport.
“We have gathered a little bit of expertise in how to tweak it so that the right questions go in and build enough flexibility so that you get the right kinds of answers,” Diriker said. “Any time you reduce uncertainty … your ability to make better decisions is going to be enhanced. It doesn’t make decisions for you.”
Former board member Jeff Knepper claimed responsibility for study’s absence in the previous budget.
“The reason study wasn’t in last year’s budget is because I was the liaison and I screwed up,” he said. “I had just joined the board. We were just doing budgets. I wasn’t bright enough to know that I needed to put it in. That’s how it didn’t get in last year. This year, you’re on your own.”
Steve Cohen, chairman of a committee that had previously worked on developing a similar plan, stressed the importance of hiring Diriker.
“We’ve been working on this for four or five years,” he said. “We don’t have the expertise to do what we need to do, getting information. Dr. Drinker has all this database, all this information, how many people live here, how many renters here, who uses diapers, the whole thing that we don’t have access to. We really can’t do our job, we can’t go any further without this information.”
Cohen called the move an investment for the future.
“Eight thousand dollars for the next 10-15 years is peanuts, and it gives us direction of where we want to go, what we want to do,” he said.
The comprehensive committee, Cohen said, would work with Diriker, have monthly meetings and determine who the stakeholders are.
“Everybody has an interest, everybody has politics, everybody has their own agenda, but through his expertise he’ll be able to filter through it and develop a scenario,” he said.
Terry, meanwhile, compared the three studies to three legs of a stool.
“You just heard from the chair that … without this tool, without the guidance of an independent voice to work through the politics [the study would not be complete],” he said. “You can’t just do a reserve study with what you’ve already got. You also need to know what you might need to build. Without that third leg coming-out of the comprehensive plan you won’t know that.”
Following the meeting Board President Dave Stevens said next step for the CIP would be the executive council meeting on April 23.
“It will basically be the same presentation, but with a little more emphasis on, ‘okay, what are we really looking for in terms of the support groups, in terms of the working groups,’” he said.
The reserve study, he said, is in the hands of General Manager Bob Thompson.
“We need to get an RFP together to send out,” he said. “I’ve already been contacted by at least one reserve company, and I know another one that’s doing reserves in The Park, which we’ve never had any problem with them here.”
Stevens said the company that performed the previous reserve study in Ocean Pines was also under consideration.
“There’s at least three, so it’s not going to be real hard to find [a company],” he said. “What we do have to do in the RFP is focus the reserve as such that we’re not paying for things we really don’t need, and that’s just basically saying, ‘here’s where we stand on the yacht club and so forth.’ So there’s work to be done, but at least I think we more or less know what it is and can get the volunteers to do it.”
Stevens admitted he still had problems with the comprehensive plan, but said he “got a better feeling from [Diriker] than I had had before.”
“I’m hoping that’s fine and that it will work,” he said. “It’s certainly worth trying. We were going no place with it for four years.”