One must assume Ocean Pines Association board member Frank Daly has the best interests of property owners at heart when he proposes a system that would allow the Board of Directors to impose fines on association members, but his reasoning is seriously flawed.

In a long, page-filling missive published in the Ocean Pines Progress and on OceanPinesForum.com, Daly fails to make a viable case for giving board members the authority to fine association members. Daly admits the board has tools to enforce the Declarations of Restrictions when it comes to home maintenance related violations. Any six board members have the authority to direct public works or outside contractors to go on your property, fix any violations, and send you a bill. Incredibly, Daly says he finds such powerful and unbridled board authority to be "cumbersome, weak, ineffective and costly."

However, Daly's concerns go beyond maintenance. He seems obsessed with the fact that OPA needs a court order to remove personal property from a lot.... things like unregistered or junk vehicles.

Daly says it can take six months to remove a junk vehicle and cost from $5,000 to $50,000 with a typical cost of $12,000 to $18,000. This is absurd. Daly is either uninformed or using fear mongering in an attempt to gain support for his proposed changes to the Declaration of Restrictions.

A major problem in the OPA, especially in the last couple of years, is there is no institutional knowledge left at the top management level.

With even a modicum of research, Daly would have found the quotes he claims came from OPA's new attorney over near Washington, D.C. for obtaining a court order are ridiculous compared to past costs when OPA had local counsel. With regard to having junk vehicles or other personal property removed from individual lots, the attorney fee to file the paperwork in court was $195, a part of the retainer arrangement with prior local counsel. Daly would also have discovered that not one of those filings for a court order was ever contested in court by the lot owner. In other words, the court agreed with OPA and granted the junk vehicle or other removal order with no owner contesting.

There were cases where an owner did not obey the court order and OPA had to go to court to have the owner found in contempt. In those cases, the court apparently makes the owner pay OPA's attorney fees.

It is extremely disappointing when board members fail to do even elementary research prior to initiating something as dramatic as a referendum to change the Declaration of Restrictions and using scare tactics like OPA possibly paying $50,000 for attorney fees to remove a single junk vehicle to support the change. OPA has full records on our books for every case where a vehicle or other personal property was removed over the last few decades. It is likely the cost rarely, if ever, went over $1,000 or so.

OPA's cost of legal services has gone through the roof since a board a few years ago hired a firm across the bridge, a fact pointed out on a number of occasions at board meetings by John Viola, OPA Treasurer and General Manager. It is time to bring back local legal representation or hire a full-time attorney. Last year the OPA paid about $150,000 for legal services for across-the-bridge representation..... more money than Worcester County pays for its full-time attorney.

The final ridiculous aspect of Daly's proposed changes to the Declaration of Restrictions is that the worst offenders, those properties Daly says are the only target of his proposal, will not be impacted because those worst offenders are typically association members who do not pay assessments. Does anyone think association members years behind in paying their assessment, with an underwater mortgage, and no money are going to suddenly start paying fines or OPA court costs?

Give Daly and future board members the authority to fine and it will surely morph over time into much, much more than the issuance of fines for only the non-paying worst offenders. In a few years, the board will be issuing fines for everything as a matter of course. It is the nature of bureaucracy, and OPA is no exception to the natural tendency of a bureaucracy.

Fortunately, the current board put a brake on Daly's proposal until a new board is elected. Based on candidate responses to the issue during the recent Candidates Forum, Daly may not have the necessary support among board members for a referendum after the election. We can only hope.

What the Board of Directors should do is not mess around with a referendum to change the Declarations of Restrictions, but enforce the current restrictions with the perfectly adequate tools the board already possesses. The problem is not the language of the existing Restrictions; the problem is the abject failure of boards over time to enforce the current Restrictions in a reasonable manner.

Frank Daly did point out one area of agreement with your correspondent - The existence of properties in terrible condition over years "is a total failure of leadership at both the management and board level."