By Greg Ellison

Staff Writer

(Aug. 15, 2019) Former member of the Ocean Pines Association Board of Directors Slobodan Trendic presented a pair of petitions during the OPA homeowners annual meeting on Saturday that call for referendums on issues related to spending more than $3 million on improvement projects.

Trendic, who resigned from the board in April as a protest of the board’s decisions, said the first petition was to reduce board spending authority to $1 million, and the second called for a homeowners vote on whether to approve a clubhouse project.

Trendic stepped down from his Board post after abstaining from a vote on April 6 to approve expansions of the police and administration building, as well as the golf clubhouse and cart barn.
On Saturday, Trendic said since that time he has formed a grassroots advocacy group, START, which stands for strategic planning, transparency, accountability, respect and trust.

“START and the team worked very hard on these two petition drives,” he said. “The petitions were designed not to favor one or the other, but really to ask the board to conduct a referendum on those two questions as yes or no answers.”

In total, Trendic said 880 signatures were collected for the first petition, with 810 collected for the second.

On Saturday, Trendic presented the petition paperwork to Association Secretary Colette Horn for validation.

On Wednesday, Horn issued a statement confirming the validation process is underway with no further comments from the board.