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Berlin, Ocean Pines News Worcester County Bayside Gazette Logo Berlin, Ocean Pines News Worcester County Bayside Gazette

410-723-6397

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

OP Board should check gaming revenue accuracy
Editor,
I would like to express my thanks and appreciation to all members of the (Ocean Pines) Board (of Directors) for your service to our community.  
I’m sure you all have agendas for continuing to make Ocean Pines a great place to live, but I would like to offer a few ideas for your consideration, particularly in the area of increasing our revenues.
You are probably aware of the legislation extending gambling in the Maryland casinos to include table games. The legislation distributes 80 percent the table game revenue to the Casino Operators and 20 percent to the State Education Fund.  However, a little known provision in the legislation changes the distribution in 2017 to 15 percent to the State Education Fund and five percent to local jurisdictions. That can all change with a stroke of the pen between now and 2017.
So I ask the Board to monitor the issue to ensure Ocean Pines continues to get their fair share of the revenue and to ensure the revenue continues to be distributed directly to us and is not distributed through the county as was originally proposed for slots revenue distribution.  
When the Ocean Club next door to our Beach Club closed it resulted in a void in available alcoholic beverage service for the beach goers in the area.  By not modifying our Beach Club liquor license to an unlimited license to take advantage of that void and to enable us to serve alcoholic beverages not only to OPA members and their guests, but all adult beach goers, I believe our Association has allowed tens of thousands of dollars to slip through our fingers.
Now is the time to modify our liquor license to increase Beach Club revenue because currently there is no nearby competition on our side of the street that can object to our license application. That situation can change at any time. For example, our next-door neighboring condo has restaurant space for sale or lease.  That restaurant will surely have a license to serve alcoholic beverages.  I also believe that we should endeavor to protect our interests. If the licensing authority was to discover that one of our employees served alcoholic beverages to someone other than an association members or guest of a member, even inadvertently, at the very least we would be subjected to fines and it would jeopardize our current liquor license as well.
Ocean Pines being Ocean Downs’ close neighbor puts us in a unique position to jointly promote our facilities. The owner of Ocean Downs also owns Delaware Park and a nearby golf course. Delaware Park offers casino, golf, restaurant and hotel packages. Ocean Downs only has a casino and Ocean Pines has the rest, golf, restaurants, swimming, tennis, and even rentals. We should be partnering with Ocean Downs for our mutual benefit. This is an opportunity for new revenue and we should expedite that before other facilities and/or municipalities beat us to it.
For the past two or three years OPA has requested a recreation grant from the county. That’s something we richly deserve with all of the facilities we make available to the general public. I hope the Board will continue to pursue a recreation grants in the next budget period, and going forward as well.
Some would say that the fees the general public contributes to our amenities subsidizes our Association, while others would say that the Associations assessments are subsidizing our amenities for the general public. Either way you want to look at it, I think it is only fair that the general public’s fees should represent our actual cost of their participation in each specific amenity. It appears to me that the general public now pays a very nominal fee, slightly higher than our Association member’s fees. With that in mind, I suggest we study our amenities and develop an allocation of the actual individual’s operating cost for all of our amenities. That would also be valuable information to have for controlling costs and developing all fees.
Norman Katz
Ocean Pines