By Morgan Pilz, Staff Writer

Greg Turner

(May 30, 2019) Having received more than 700 votes during the last Ocean Pines Association Board of Directors election last year, resident Greg Turner, 60, believes people agree with his message that the board needs more accountability.

Turner, who grew up in Greenbelt in Prince George’s County, moved to Ocean Pines as a teenager in 1978. He believes it’s a beautiful community that has some issues he wants to help fix.

Turner served with the Ocean Pines Fire Department for two decades, including three years as fire chief, has worked in construction for 35 years and currently runs Turner Electrical & Construction.

His decision to run again is rooted in a newspaper article he read last year.

“It started last year and the big thing, as I was reading the paper, I saw [the board] was missing $1 million,” Turner said. “It just seemed to be no big thing … they just misplaced $1 million, and their answer to losing $1 million was just raise your rates. Thirty-five bucks here, $35 bucks there, who cares? Well, I do … I’m not made of money.”

Turner also said “people that work here” should be held accountable, and that many things have been “done two or three times.”

“We’re getting ready to build a country club,” Turner said. “The country club sat there unused for the last eight-nine years. The golf pro there takes people upstairs and teaches them putting on the carpet. That’s the most use the building gets. So now we’re tearing a building down that they’re saying leaks and all this other stuff … And nobody cared.

“Then they spent a couple hundred thousand dollars on remodeling the building,” he continued. “They took all the siding off and put vinyl siding on it, put a new roof on and all this other fancy stuff. The building still leaks. So now their answer was, instead of making the contractor fix his problem, is to tear the building down and rebuild the building.”

Turner said if he was elected, he would try to avoid spending money if it isn’t necessary.

“The nickels and dimes are just ridiculously spent and nobody seems to care,” he said. “Some of these people seem to get into office and they just have a big pile of money and they don’t know what to do with it, instead of just leaving it alone. If you don’t have to spend it, don’t spend it.”

Turner also believes residents should have a right to referendum if a project costs more than $1 million to complete.

“If you’re spending more than a reasonable amount of money on something, like $1 million plus, people in the community need to know what you’re spending it on,” Turner said. “You need to show them, tell them and then let them tell you ‘yay’ or ‘nay’ if that’s okay to spend.”