By Jack Chavez, Staff Writer

Screenshot Bayside Gazette from a December 2021 committee meeting
Ocean Pines Bylaws and Resolutions Committee members, clockwise from left, Jim Trummel, Steve Jacobs, Lora Pangratz, Director Colette Horn and Bob Hillegass.

The Ocean Pines Bylaws and Resolutions Advisory Committee continued sifting through its backlog of resolutions to recommend for review during its June 10 meeting.

Committee Chairman Jim Trummel said on Monday that the committee continued and finished the work they were doing in May in identifying what resolutions needed work.

“Over several months the routine review of resolutions had fallen behind [due to the pandemic],” Trummel said.

The committee keeps a spreadsheet of the resolutions — title, number, various comments, last revision and last review — on hand. Most resolutions are recommended to be reviewed in one- or two-year intervals, but most are two years.

“When we did pick up meetings now over a year ago, we spent a significant amount of time on reviewing proposals to amend the bylaws,” Trummel said. “We’d fallen considerably behind. Our agenda is a catch-up on where we were. We continued that Friday. We had several resolutions that we needed to update their status and what I’m doing now is preparing information to go out to request review where appropriate for various resolutions.”

There were a couple of items other than simple review requests. The committee discussed resolution M-09, which establishes a search committee.

“It’s more than the committee itself, it’s the process. We’re going to be sending out a request for a review of that with specific provisions within the resolution that we are pointing out that have been affected or potentially affected by the recent resolution referendum,” Trummel said.

The committee also discussed the currently undefined term “standalone” as it pertains to the number of required return ballots and standalone ballots.

“Should we be conserving some kind of definition and if so where would it be documented?” Trummel said.

Though they got through their backlog, there is still review work to be done, he added.

“We’ve made our own review and developed action to be taken by whomever it is who needs to do a review and send that information out. In that regard, the committee so to speak is up to date but it doesn’t mean all the resolutions that need to be reviewed in detail — that that has been done. We have simply sent out requests for review,” Trummel said.

There’s still the matter of looking through the current book of resolutions — which dates to 2008 — and identifying what’s out of date, what has no reason for existence anymore, what can be combined and consolidated, among other possible actions.

“We can’t let this happen again. Because of the pandemic and other priorities of business over the last year or year plus, we have fallen behind in trying to make sure we maintain our required schedule of review,” Trummel said.

The committee will next meet on July 15. Trummel said an agenda has not been determined for the meeting yet.

This story appears in the print version of the Bayside Gazette on June 16, 2022.