Board of Directors hopes to have community-made creations in for next cycle

By Jack Chavez, Staff Writer

(Dec. 1, 2022) The Ocean Pines Association is looking into plans to have a new protocol for election signs in the future.

At the regular board meeting on Nov. 19, director Steve Jacobs talked about the plan coming from the Communications Committee, for which he is the board liaison.

“(They’ve) raised a desire … to spend a small number of funds to have new ‘vote’ signs available at the time we go to elections,” Jacobs said. “I think we’ve used (previous signs) at least twice; they were date-specific and might have even had some additional information on them. After the first election, they had to be recollected and modified so that the new date could be put on them. They’re sort of past their life use.”

Jacobs added that the committee is asking for generic voting signs to work with and to have the ability to purchase additional signs.

“There’s a discussion about trying to establish some sort of contest for a design of the sign and (we could) probably even reach out to the schools to see if they could have the kids get involved and come up with something,” Jacobs said.

OPA President Doug Parks asserted that this is more of a community-involvement activity than it is public outreach and Jacobs agreed.

The next move in the process will be having Ocean Pines General Manager John Viola take a look at the project to see if there is anything they haven’t yet considered. The Communications Committee will also come up with estimated expenses, which Jacobs again stressed is not expected to be a large number.

It might be a while until there is an update for the board, however, as the Communications Committee is not scheduled to meet again in 2022.