Mark Mitchell

By Josh Davis, Associate Editor

(May 17, 2018) Candidate Mark Mitchell, 66, a Baltimore native, hopes to bring management experience and fiscal responsibility to the Ocean Pines Association Board of Directors.

Now retired, he worked in the product service division of Sears, Roebuck and Company for 25 years, ending as the district operating manager for central Maryland and the Eastern Shore, and parts of southern Pennsylvania. Mitchell also worked in the communications division of Comcast, ending his career as regional manager of network operations in White Marsh and Millersville, Maryland.

Initially only a part-time resident, purchasing a summer home in 2011 and moving there three years later, Mitchell said at first he wasn’t much invested in community governance.

“Our time was spent cutting grass and doing laundry and going to the beach,” he said. “I didn’t pay attention to local politics. I don’t even think for a while we realized just how large and complex the Ocean Pines Association was – it’s more of a city than a homeowner’s association.”

When a relative, described as “a natural cynic,” moved to Ocean Pines, Mitchell said he “started reading local papers, including the Bayside Gazette, and became aware of Joe Reynold’s Forum.”

“Some of the stuff that’s been going on for the last couple of years is rather concerning,” he said. “Now that I’ve been retired for a few years, I felt like I needed a little bit of a purpose and I could probably use my experience to maybe have some influence over this board.

“It seems like there’s a few more fiscally responsible people coming on board with a focus on controlling the dollar – and that’s how I feel,” he continued. “You can’t spend money you don’t have and you can’t spend it on foolish things. I see a lot of those things going on in the Pines.”

Mitchell said he decided to run this year because his health had improved. He retired in 2014 for medical reasons and that year had a series of major operations, including open-heart surgery and a lung transplant.

“I went through a number of years where, physically, I wasn’t in very good shape,” he said. “Not that I’m an athlete or anything now, but at least I can get around and I have my faculties. That’s when I thought maybe I could get back involved in something.

“My health’s not an issue,” Mitchell continued. “It would only be an issue if I had to work again and do any heavy lifting … I don’t believe it would impair my ability to sit on the board at all.”

He said part of his rehabilitation was “doing a lot of walking.” Anecdotally, Mitchell said he often walked his dog around the south entrance lake and noticed “this nice, brand new Ford Explorer” with an Ocean Pines Aquatics sticker, parked near the sports core pool.

“Said to myself, why does the Ocean Pines Aquatics need a $40,000-plus vehicle?” he said, adding the police department also purchased similar vehicles. “Couldn’t a Ford Escape do just as effective a job as the Explorer, for $10,000 to $12,000 cheaper a pop? Things like that just jump out at you.

“Then, you start reading about the fiascos at the yacht club and the stuff that’s being going on at the club at the golf course, and it just flabbergasts me that people continue to spend good money after bad on these things and still don’t get the results that they’re looking for,” Mitchell added.

From the outside, Mitchell said it seems like the board “has been a rubber-stamp organization” for the general manager and department heads.

“The positions that I held with Sears and Comcast both were positions in which I managed a lot of people,” Mitchell said. “In both cases I had a lot of budgetary responsibilities preparing those budgets and living within those budgets, and so I’m familiar with a lot of those things.

“I think I can bring that expertise to the table with the board,” he continued. “I certainly know I’d ask a lot of questions about why we’re spending money on this, that and the other thing, and I think that’s precisely what they need.”