By Morgan Pilz, Staff Writer

Shawn Kotwica

(May 30, 2019) Shawn Kotwica, 38, says he wants to join the Ocean Pines Board of Directors in order to bring more transparency and help oversee the important projects taking place in the community.

Originally from Pennsylvania, Kotwica studied criminology at the University of Pennsylvania. He first visited Ocean Pines during his college years and then worked in the restaurant industry for 13 years. He decided to go into real estate four years ago and currently works for Coldwell Banker.

Although Kotwica has lived in Ocean Pines, he is not a current resident and instead lives in Oyster Harbor in West Ocean City. But because he owns properties in Ocean Pines, which makes him as a member of the community association, he is qualified to seek office on the association board.

“It seems that the general public is unaware of a lot that’s going on within the Pines,” Kotwica said. “Then when it does come up, it is not clarified that things are going on. It’s partly because some of the people just don’t show up for some of the meetings, but those who are unaware end up having the loudest voices.”

Other issues he wants to tackle are storm drainage in the community and infrastructure.

“The drainage issue is one of the broadest aspects that most people speak of,” Kotwica said. “You can’t drive down a certain streets or ditches aren’t cleaned out … I understand everybody’s busy, but the public works department is quite busy trying to keep up with things in general.

“But if there was a structured plan on how to go from section to section throughout, I think that we could have a schedule where people can see when they’re going to be taken care of,” he continued.

Being one of the youngest candidates to run, Kotwica believes he can bring a different perspective to the board.

“I see there are a lot of first-time home buyers here that are in my age group that feel different about the community than some of the people that have been here for 30, 40 even 50 years now,” Kotwica said. “Those people who have been here for 25-30 years may look at this community differently than the future of this community, which is the newer generations that are moving into here currently.”

Looking at some of the projects the current board has undertaken, like the police and administration building expansion or the new clubhouse, he believes these expenses are necessary to move forward as a community.

“You hit some road bumps, you’d get over that and you move forward and progress. You don’t want to be stagnant and never changing,” Kotwica said. “We have all the amenities; we need to try to get the infrastructure back to where it needs to be to be very appealing and doing things such as repairing the beach club. We need to have those amenities to make people happy to be here.”

However, he understands the pressure the board of directors faces and is looking forward to taking on that challenge.

“They’re trying to do their job,” Kotwica said. “I understand that it’s a very complicated job to do … to manage a community of 8,452 homes. You’re not going to make everyone happy. So I’m looking at it from objective standpoint.”