The campaign season is in full-swing in Ocean Pines and one of the platforms being touted by some candidates is to outsource administrative management and financials. One candidate also looks to outsource individual department directors as well. Last year, saw a tremendous amount of change, with almost a full sweep of high-level personnel throughout the… Read more »
Editorial
Gazette Editorial: Words cannot match veterans’ sacrifice
Thank you for your service. Our thoughts and prayers are with you. Sorry for your loss. What these expressions have in common is that they’re spoken so frequently that they no longer have any real meaning. We use them as utilities when the circumstances require us to say something, and we haven’t really thought about… Read more »
Gazette Editorial: Our letters to the editor policy during elections
With the Ocean Pines Association election underway and the candidates about to receive their instructions on what’s acceptable and what isn’t on the campaign front, it’s also time for us to reiterate our political letters to the editor policy. It is the practice of this and our other publications to publish all letters we receive… Read more »
Gazette Editorial: Berlin knows how to balance work, playday
May Day Playday, Reggae Playday — and where else in small town America do you see that, a music festival in the middle of town for no other reason than to have fun? So sure, when Ocean 98/Seacrets Irie Radio stages this event downtown in Berlin Friday, businesses will benefit from the additional exposure, as… Read more »
Bayside Gazette Editorial: Auditors, not committee will know what’s best
Citizen involvement in government is a good thing … up to a point. Too much involvement can make government unwieldy, as elected officials must listen to and consider many voices, relevant or not, before they can act. To do otherwise would offend participants and, more specifically, make the citizen participation approach to governance meaningless. This… Read more »
Gazette Editorial: Town hall was minefield
Going into a question-and-answer session with a hostile agenda, which some members of the audience did at the Ocean Pines town hall meeting last Thursday, is one of those increasingly disagreeable developments of our current democratic circumstance. Why, for instance, would anyone ask a question of the presiding person or group, when he or she… Read more »
Gazette Editorial: Town meeting tonight
The Ocean Pines Association town meeting tonight (Thursday) is an excellent idea … going into the session. Whether it will be perceived that way after it takes place remains an unknown. The success of this gathering will depend on how the audience responds to the opportunity to communicate directly with the board of directors and… Read more »
Q&A session at town hall, tonight
By Josh Davis, Associate Editor (April 19, 2018) The Ocean Pines Association will host a town hall today, Thursday, at 7 p.m. in the Assateague Room of the Community Center on 235 Ocean Parkway. The agenda includes a presentation by the Matt Ortt Companies, which have been hired to run association food and beverage operations, and… Read more »
Audit like a physical …
In some respects, a forensic audit, such as the Ocean Pines Association is about to undergo, is like an autopsy and executive physical rolled into one: the autopsy shows what went wrong, while the comprehensive physical determines whether that same thing is likely to happen again … if left untreated. But also like the executive… Read more »
OPA GM purchases do not add up
By Josh Davis, Associate Editor (April 12, 2018) The rules of depreciation and gravity are similar: what goes up must come down, which was the case with a huge surge in capital purchases in the 2016-17 business year in Ocean Pines followed by the similarly sized thud of deprecation that dwarfed the write-downs of the… Read more »