Stachurski’s back: New, improved and – gasp! – conservative
Commentary by Tom Stauss
The eleventh hour filing by former Ocean Pines Association director and president Dan Stachurski as a candidate for the OPA board of directors this summer, if nothing else, injected some drama into what otherwise would have been a listless, colorless campaign season.
His candidacy after a decent interval of non-involvement in OPA affairs – he retired from the board after six years of service in the summer of 2008 – introduces some needed clarity and energy behind what ought to be the seminal issue in these troubled economic times: Why it is, when governments everywhere else in creation are dealing with declining revenues and truly wrenching choices about which programs to cut, and which employees to lay off or which benefits to slash, the OPA is sitting on a fat pot of cash in the form of reserves and is embarking on an adventure on how best to spend it?
Which isn’t to say that Ocean Pines is not confronted with aging amenities that need attention. When has it not? No time recently, that’s for sure. Clearly, to ignore them would be to cultivate community-wide decay and decline. That’s not going to happen, especially under the tenure of General Manager Bob Thompson. Or the board of directors.
For better or for worse, the OPA has been collecting lots of dollars in the form of annual lot assessments that wind up in various reserve accounts. The idea has been to collect sufficient funds to address major amenity needs without having to resort to special assessments or borrow money.
Stachurski’s reappearance on the scene brings a whole new perspective on whether annual lot assessments are too high and whether the reserves, which realistically could reach or exceed $5 million by the end of the current fiscal year, need to be as high as they are. Stachurski’s whole campaign is based on the premise that lot assessments and reserves are higher than they need to be, and can be trimmed back without adverse effect on the OPA’s finances or ability to fix what needs fixing (or replacing) in the OPA’s inventory of aging amenities.
His message couldn’t be more clear: the OPA does not need to be spending millions of dollars on replacement amenities or collecting ever-increasing assessments from OPA members to pay for them. His is a conservative message in a recessionary time, when many Ocean Pines residents are struggling with relatively fixed incomes and shrinking retirement nest eggs. He is urging the OPA to curb its appetite for higher assessments and he’s willing to spend less to keep everything in balance. If there’s a range of options, say, to deal with the Country Club, he’s going to choose the one that costs less. If it comes to that – and he’s not saying that it will – he would prefer borrowing for major capital projects over collecting huge sums in reserves. He sees the current cache of reserve cash as a tempting target for spending: Build it and they will spend it, he seems to be saying, and he is also saying: Stop.
While it is unclear that a newly elected Stachurski would have the votes to lower the threshold, he is boldly calling for a $500,000 limit on board capital spending sans approval by property owners. The current threshold is 20 percent of the OPA revenues from annual assessments, roughly id=mce_marker.6 million in today’s dollars. As the OPA keeps raising assessments, that threshold keeps increasing as well, a perverse by-product that Stachurski’s $500,000 proposed limit would eliminate. It would take a board supermajority or a referendum to force this change in the OPA by-laws.
If Stachurski is making a conservative case for frugality, it arguably is a departure from his previous six years as a director. His previous six years occurred during particularly robust times economically, and those times are behind us.
It makes little sense all these years later to re-litigate those earlier years; decisions made them are not dispositive toward what needs to be done in the current climate.
Stachurski’s election to the board is crucial if property owners want robust debate over lot assessments and reserves in the next budget cycle. His views will no doubt clash with those of current director and OPA treasurer Pete Gomsak, probably the director most responsible for the current five-year funding plan of programmatic assessment increases, of which Fiscal Year 2012 is the third year.
Gomsak is an articulate advocate for why he believes the OPA needs to be raising assessments in the amounts it has been collecting and will continue to collect if he has his way; Stachurski has proven to be equally gifted in supporting and defending his ideas.
Property owners would benefit immeasurably from this clash of ideas should Stachurski win a seat on the board this year. Out of that clash of ideas might come a well-tempered outcome that benefits us all.
Among the other candidates running for the board, incumbent director Rick Handelman comes closest to expressing similar skepticism toward the OPA’s current fiscal path. He was the only director this past February to oppose the budget increases in lot assessments this year. He failed to persuade a single other director to his point of view, but at least he tried. He needs to be re-elected with more allies on the board if future increases are to be prevented.
As for the other candidates, it’s difficult to assess based on limited information which ones might join Handelman and Stachurski as fiscal hawks. The only female candidate, Terri Mohr, during the recent candidates forum, expressed agreement with one of Stachurski’s comments about preserving the character of Ocean Pines. That was code for opposing an expensive teardown and replacement of the Yacht Club, for those not paying attention, and maybe the Country Club as well.
Whether Mohr would become a Stachurski ally on the board is an unknown, but she seems to have a very upbeat view of Ocean Pines and has a lively personality. As a relative newcomer to Ocean Pines, she doesn’t have a track record in local politics or an agenda, and that may very well be a good thing.
Her campaign literature talks about fiscal responsibility, but that’s not exactly a bold promise. Who doesn’t support that? No one is the history of Ocean Pines has ever run on a platform of fiscal profligacy.
Director Les Purcell has been a solid if taciturn member of the board for these past three years; his campaign slogan “Less is (Still) More” seems apt.
A reliable supporter of Thompson’s early initiatives, he nonetheless seems married to the path of ever-increasing lot assessments and that seems out of synch with the tenor of the times. He’s usually part of whatever board majority emerges on any particular issue. Voting to reelect Purcell would be a safe choice.
As for the other two candidates, Bill Wentworth and Victor Taylor, the impressions of them from the candidate’s forum did not immediately make the case for why they should be elected.
Wentworth called himself a consensus-builder – a promoter of we, not I – but he couldn’t resist taking several potshots against Stachurski’s tenure as a director and he leveled some criticism of recent boards as well.
No one would ever accuse OPA boards of infallibility, of course. Wentworth seems like he’s somebody not afraid to express himself, candidly, and such candor often does not lead to consensus.
Judging by his candidate forum performance, Taylor seems to have a good sense of humor, if not necessarilya solid grasp of the issues that he would have to wrestle with as a director.
Uploaded: 7/13/2011
