Process flawed
Editor,
The election process [in Ocean Pines] was a bunch of garbage. As I said in an open meeting, Joe Reynolds brings [ballot counting] up every year to get people fired up and get people to his website.
Then he doesn’t say a word about it until the next year and waits until it is too late to change the bylaw. He keeps saying things like it could “possibly” be a violation of law, even though he has checked and found out that it isn’t.
But to open it up would be a violation of our bylaws. Reynolds is always keeping on the BOD to go by the bylaws and Maryland HOA act, until this time of year when he tries to cause controversy to get in the candidates he can control. And one of those candidates, Trendic, threatened to come with a group and bust into the closed meeting.
One of the main characters to buy into the conspiracy theory was Slobodan Trendic, who was elected. His first act should be for him and Reynolds to apologize to the volunteers on the elections committee who gave many hours to make sure the election was fair and carried out according to our bylaws.
Reynolds should volunteer to be the chairman of the elections committee next year, but of course he won’t do that. He just wants to sit back and throw bombs and then laugh at the people who buy in to his garbage. He has never volunteered a minute of his time to make this community a better place, just all negative from him.
As for the election, as they say in New York and Jersey, it is what it is. The voters have decided to give full control back to Marty Clarke, Dave Stevens and Joe Reynolds. Obviously, we have short memories, because the last time these guys were in charge, two years ago with Stevens as president, the BOD’s major achievement was changing trash companies to save 38 cents.
Oh yeah, we spent $50,000 on the BEACON study that has been stopped and a reserve study that has stalled because it didn’t say what Stevens and Clarke wanted it to say and some members of the board didn’t want to work on it pending the election to see if they got a more favorable board to them, which will promote doing nothing but cutting assessments and not tending to our rotting amenities. Stevens will probably be president again.
And of course we brought in a golf management company on false pretenses and having done zero background on them. We were getting ready to make money at the golf course, but this new company has lost members, a lot of revenue and seems to care less about the residents and more about outside play, completely contrary to what they said to get them here. We are paying them $75,000 a year for nothing that we couldn’t do ourselves! The two previous times Stevens has been president have been some of the worst years as far as getting absolutely nothing done.
As far as the candidates, Pat Supik will be excellent. Supik has been a very good chairperson of the budget and finance committee and has a lot of common sense. It is all about the welfare of the community with her.
Mr. Trendic is a different story. Interacting with him for the last several years, it is clear to me that he knows nothing other than what Clarke and Reynolds tell him. In my opinion, his low moral character was on display after his drunk driving arrest last year, where he blamed everything but himself for his episode that could have easily killed a resident or himself. I have zero confidence this director will add anything of positive value to the community and I hold Reynolds personally responsible for this guy being elected with his (Reynolds’) garbage with the vote counting debacle.
I can only hope Mr. Hill decides to check on some information he has been given by others including current members and former members before he makes any decisions that could adversely affect the community for years, like getting rid of the general manager. We just had the best year financially we have ever had and the general manager negotiated a deal with Sandpiper Energy that will bring this community around $400,000.
When Stevens and Clarke were negotiating that deal they were going to bring us around $10,000 and the deal broke down because Clarke insisted on getting a franchise fee because he insisted everyone around us was getting one.
Of course he was wrong and we waited another year before an agreement was reached. There is a reason Reynolds is pushing for an immediate dismissal of the general manager, because he is afraid that someone like Hill, with a business background, might get in and see that this is actually a corporation with a lot of moving parts and run very well by the general manager. Reynolds is afraid Hill might get accurate information which will contradict what he has been told.
I personally believe Hill and Thompson would make a great business team and would actually be able to get positive things done for the community if it were only given a chance.
Bill Cordwell
Ocean Pines
Editor,
The election process [in Ocean Pines] was a bunch of garbage. As I said in an open meeting, Joe Reynolds brings [ballot counting] up every year to get people fired up and get people to his website.
Then he doesn’t say a word about it until the next year and waits until it is too late to change the bylaw. He keeps saying things like it could “possibly” be a violation of law, even though he has checked and found out that it isn’t.
But to open it up would be a violation of our bylaws. Reynolds is always keeping on the BOD to go by the bylaws and Maryland HOA act, until this time of year when he tries to cause controversy to get in the candidates he can control. And one of those candidates, Trendic, threatened to come with a group and bust into the closed meeting.
One of the main characters to buy into the conspiracy theory was Slobodan Trendic, who was elected. His first act should be for him and Reynolds to apologize to the volunteers on the elections committee who gave many hours to make sure the election was fair and carried out according to our bylaws.
Reynolds should volunteer to be the chairman of the elections committee next year, but of course he won’t do that. He just wants to sit back and throw bombs and then laugh at the people who buy in to his garbage. He has never volunteered a minute of his time to make this community a better place, just all negative from him.
As for the election, as they say in New York and Jersey, it is what it is. The voters have decided to give full control back to Marty Clarke, Dave Stevens and Joe Reynolds. Obviously, we have short memories, because the last time these guys were in charge, two years ago with Stevens as president, the BOD’s major achievement was changing trash companies to save 38 cents.
Oh yeah, we spent $50,000 on the BEACON study that has been stopped and a reserve study that has stalled because it didn’t say what Stevens and Clarke wanted it to say and some members of the board didn’t want to work on it pending the election to see if they got a more favorable board to them, which will promote doing nothing but cutting assessments and not tending to our rotting amenities. Stevens will probably be president again.
And of course we brought in a golf management company on false pretenses and having done zero background on them. We were getting ready to make money at the golf course, but this new company has lost members, a lot of revenue and seems to care less about the residents and more about outside play, completely contrary to what they said to get them here. We are paying them $75,000 a year for nothing that we couldn’t do ourselves! The two previous times Stevens has been president have been some of the worst years as far as getting absolutely nothing done.
As far as the candidates, Pat Supik will be excellent. Supik has been a very good chairperson of the budget and finance committee and has a lot of common sense. It is all about the welfare of the community with her.
Mr. Trendic is a different story. Interacting with him for the last several years, it is clear to me that he knows nothing other than what Clarke and Reynolds tell him. In my opinion, his low moral character was on display after his drunk driving arrest last year, where he blamed everything but himself for his episode that could have easily killed a resident or himself. I have zero confidence this director will add anything of positive value to the community and I hold Reynolds personally responsible for this guy being elected with his (Reynolds’) garbage with the vote counting debacle.
I can only hope Mr. Hill decides to check on some information he has been given by others including current members and former members before he makes any decisions that could adversely affect the community for years, like getting rid of the general manager. We just had the best year financially we have ever had and the general manager negotiated a deal with Sandpiper Energy that will bring this community around $400,000.
When Stevens and Clarke were negotiating that deal they were going to bring us around $10,000 and the deal broke down because Clarke insisted on getting a franchise fee because he insisted everyone around us was getting one.
Of course he was wrong and we waited another year before an agreement was reached. There is a reason Reynolds is pushing for an immediate dismissal of the general manager, because he is afraid that someone like Hill, with a business background, might get in and see that this is actually a corporation with a lot of moving parts and run very well by the general manager. Reynolds is afraid Hill might get accurate information which will contradict what he has been told.
I personally believe Hill and Thompson would make a great business team and would actually be able to get positive things done for the community if it were only given a chance.
Bill Cordwell
Ocean Pines
Defending Clinton
Editor,
Unlike Steven Lind, who can find nothing of worth concerning Hillary Rodham Clinton’s long and distinguished record of service to this country, I am a proud and longtime follower and backer of Secretary Clinton and her lifelong fight for human rights and civil rights.
From the time she graduated Yale Law School in the 1970’s and chose to work for the Children’s Defense Fund (in lieu of a lucrative Wall Street law firm position), Hillary Rodham Clinton fought for the rights of disabled children who were being denied admittance to public schools; fought for the rights of juveniles who were being incarcerated in adult prisons; and dragged her then fiancée, Bill Clinton, down south to register disenfranchised minorities for the right to vote.
As First Lady of Arkansas, she chaired the Arkansas Educational Standards Committee and fought for families and children once again by improving Arkansas’ failing schools, and as First Lady of the United States, when she failed to bring about healthcare for all ("HillaryCare"), she worked with congress and helped Senator Ted Kennedy pass legislation that brought about healthcare for eight million American children (CHIP).
As America’s First Lady, also, she flew to Beijing to confront the Chinese government with a speech that contained the now highly touted phrase: "Women’s rights are human rights and human rights are women’s rights." A speech that, at the time, many in the U.S. government wished she would not have had the courage to give. And all of this before the age of 50 … And yes! She did stand by then President Clinton when he failed to live up to his marital vows. Don’t we normally perceive that to be an amazingly courageous and forgiving act of love?
Following her time as First Lady of the United States, she ran for congress and became a highly popular two-term Senator from New York. She was a beacon of hope to the many New York families devastated by the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center; and worked tirelessly with then Mayor Rudy Guiliani to ensure continuing healthcare for the heroic 9/11 First Responders who, to this day, face debilitating illnesses related to their work at Ground Zero.
Following her unsuccessful run for President in 2008, she was tapped, by her former rival, President Barack Obama, to be Secretary of State. She served for four difficult years, while the world grappled with the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attack, the merger of al Qaeda and ISIL (which preceded Obama’s presidency), Iraq’s Shia President Maliki’s and U.S. President George Bush’s agreement for American forces to leave Iraq by a specified date, and the never-ending war in Afghanistan as well as newly emerging democratic and volatile political movements in the Middle East and elsewhere.
She was with President Obama when he gave the order for our Navy Seals to kill or capture Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. She traveled to over 100 countries, met with dignitaries of those countries, brought about a cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinians and oversaw humanitarian aid to the people of the Gaza strip. She brought Iran to the bargaining table and laid the foundation for a nuclear nonproliferation treaty with Iran … a successful step towards world peace.
Mr. Lind seems to take issue with HRC’s time as Secretary of State … stating falsely that, "she lied to the families of the four fallen Benghazi diplomats." A favorite right-wing conspiracy theory that Sean Hannity, Drudge and even some of our Republican congressmen have attempted to propagate. Those same Republican congressmen have held costly and time-consuming investigations (ad nauseum) that have unearthed nothing of a nefarious nature. Secretary Clinton, President Barack Obama, Ambassador Susan Rice as well as independent investigators have all concluded that the attack on our American Consulate in Benghazi, Lybia was the result of both a highly inflammatory video and a spontaneous attack.
And contrary to a popular right-wing falsehood, Secretary Clinton never said in those hearings: "What difference does it make that … four people are dead?" Rather, she very clearly stated, after 12 hours of grueling testimony: "What difference does it make whether it was a video or a spontaneous demonstration, four people are dead!"
I know because, as a political junkie, I sat through those hours of testimony. And whom am I going to believe: you or my lying eyes? When, in the 1980’s, 240 of our brave marines died in a terrorist explosion in Lebanon, did anyone haul then President Ronald Reagan before congressional hearing after hearing to lay blame at his feet? And as for this so-called Hillary Clinton private server (Colin Powell used one too!), e-mail "scandal," Mr. Lind solely drags out an excerpt from Trey Gowdy’s interrogation of FBI Director James Comey.
Very skimpy testimony, Mr. Lind, that would not pass muster in any court of law. Once again, political junkie that I am, I sat through all of the testimony: Director Comey very clearly goes on to state: "In our system of law, there’s a thing called ‘mens rea’ (What were you thinking?) As to how that applies to the Clinton case, I see evidence of great carelessness, but I do not see that evidence is sufficient to establish that Secretary Clinton or those with whom she was corresponding knew when they did it they were doing something against the law."
On the other hand, Comey goes on to discuss the difference between HRC’s case and General David Petraeus’ case: "In my mind the Petraeus case illustrates perfectly the kind of cases the Department of Justice is willing to prosecute. General Petraeus had vast quantities of classified information (Hillary Clinton had three and two were improperly marked classified (c) (State Dept. spokesman Kirby); General Petraeus shared it with someone (his biographer) who wasn’t supposed to see it; General Petraeus kept the information hidden under the insulation in his attic; and finally, he lied to the FBI about it."
I would suggest to Mr. Lind and to others who have bought into the alternative "right-wing conspiracy" universe that Sean Hannity, Matthew Drudge, Adam Jones, and yes, Presidential candidate Donald Trump find so fascinating, that there is another universe … one where facts are abundant, truth wins out and "hope springs eternal."
Caroline Furnari
Ocean Pines