Clarke bought the issue to the public eye at yesterday's board meeting. At the conclusion of the meeting a motion was made to go into private session for consultation with legal counsel." Normally the vote to do so is perfunctory and the board moves to closed session. Yesterday Dave Stevens or Marty Clarke insisted on discussion before the vote.

That's when Clarke told the assemblage that OPA's president Tom Terry had informed him the closed session was to address Code of Ethics violations against him. Clarke asked that any such accusations be made in public. After some discussion, OPA attorney Joe Moore said he would not provide legal advice to the board in a public session. Dave Stevens then said he would go along with the private session so long as the discussion was generic in nature and did not address any specific charges against Clarke. Board members agreed and moved to closed session. It is likely the board reneged on that agreement and actually discussed Clarke.

There are any number of absurdities involved in this inquisition. First off, Clarke was told he was to be charged with violation of OPA POLICY RESOLUTION 1-05-40, a Code of Conduct for OPA Board Members.

This policy was passed by the board back on 12/21/2005.

See video below:

Code of Conduct OPA Board passes code of conduct; Janet Kelley's request to table denied. 12/21/2005.

However, it would appear Tom Terry as president, as well as the individual or individuals charging Clarke with violation of the Code of Conduct were not aware the board subsequently voted to dump the Code of Conduct. Interesting, the vote to dump the code in 2007 was during a meeting where the chairman of the meeting was Dan Stachurski (now on the board again), and the motion to dump the code was made by Ray Unger(now on the board again).

See video below of vote to dump the Code of Conduct.

Code of Conduct Dumped Video coverage of OPA board meeting. Unger motion to dump Code of Conduct passes unanimously 5/16/2007.

The party or parties responsible for this fiasco may never be known.  Clarke was not even told the specific charges nor who was making them. After the meeting one board member indicated he was upset because Clarke had told a local paper he was upset because it took OPA didn't send out information about mandatory evacuation of Ocean Pines until about three hours after the National Weather Service announced it.

Other complaints apparently stem from Clarke's revelations in the Ocean Pines Progress about the secret board offers to by the Pine Shore Golf property at a price just under an amount that would trigger a referendum. Board offers were reportedly in the range of $1.4 million.

Interesting, all this land purchase business was discussed publicly at the board meeting yesterday, but that's for another post.

Finally, there is no way the board is going to remove Clarke. A board member even acknowledged this after the meeting, suggesting the charges were more or less intended to rein in Clarke rather than to remove him.