JOSH DAVIS/BAYSIDE GAZETTE
Ocean Pines General Manager John Bailey last Thursday discusses a reserve study meeting scheduled for later this month.

By Josh Davis, Associate Editor

(June 7, 2018) “This will be an open meeting for everybody’s brother – and we’ll publicize the heck out of it,” Ocean Pines Association General Manager John Bailey said last Thursday, as he described a newly scheduled session about the long-dormant reserve study.

The association in 2015 approved a $31,800 contract with the Richmond, Virginia firm Design Management Associate and held meetings with company President Doug Green in 2016.

However, the study was never finalized despite the efforts of several boards and multiple advisory committees on the subject.

Bailey, during a budget and finance committee meeting last Thursday, said the purpose of the meeting was “to finalize the reserve study number and figure out those three questions – what percentage do we want to fund the reserves, what do we want to maintain as a minimum balance in there, and what’s the inflation factor we want to utilize as we adjust it every year.”

“Between completing the reserve study and the bulkhead reserves and the road reserves and feeding all that into the next budget process … getting all four or five of those elements together at one time – that’s going to be huge,” Bailey said. “And then people can really see where we’re spending the money and why we need to have these plans in place before we start spending the money.”

He said homeowners regularly see figures of the millions in reserve accounts and ask “why don’t we spend that on X, Y and Z?”

“There’s a reason why we don’t, and having a bunch of folks in that room going through that process and learning what that reserve fund is for and how it impacts the assessment and contribution to reserves across the board – that’s going to be a tremendous asset to the community in everybody’s education of how this all works,” Bailey said.

Budget and Finance Committee Chairman John Viola agreed on the importance of the meeting and said his group would form a “sub-team” to be there. Members of the board of directors are also expected to attend, along with Doug Green.

Asked by Viola why the process has taken so long, Bailey admitted that he didn’t know what transpired before he was hired last September. He did say, however, that the data became outdated and had to be completely scrubbed and then plugged back into the DMA computer model.

“The beauty of the DMA system is updates are easy,” Bailey said. “But, again, we’ve never had those three questions answered by the community.

“I’m stressing the importance for the general membership to understand how all these big pieces fit together and I don’t think, historically, we’ve done that,” he continued. “Why did it take so long? For a variety of factors, but the point is we’re getting down to it now.”

Bylaws and Resolutions Committee Chairman Marty Clarke, a former board member, said the reserve study was not Ocean Pines’ first.

“We did two – in 2003 and 2009. We used to do it the right way. It’s been since then we’ve done it the wrong way,” Clarke said. “For this thing to sit on a desk since 2016 is embarrassing to me as a homeowner.

“I just don’t like to hear how bad it used to be – the worst it’s ever been is right now,” he added.

Clarke asked, somewhat sarcastically, if it were a foregone conclusion the study would determine “we need $10 million in the bank?”

“The study is going to help us determine what percentage we want to fund it at [and] what minimum balance we want to do,” Bailey said. “If that means we don’t need whatever number we have, then that means we’ve got something to utilize in other ways – and there’s plenty of stuff around here that we need to do.”

“Perfect!” Clarke said. “I just want to make sure it’s not a predetermined outcome – like the one in 2016 was.”

The meeting was scheduled for Friday, June 22 at 9 a.m. in the Assateague Room of the community center on 235 Ocean Parkway.