Introduction

My friends and neighbors, my name is Gregory Pichler of the MXB Wire. These are my Election 2025 predictions.

I happen to have a copy of my ballot that I received from the property management firm and apparently as I understand there are four, two-year terms available on the board and the balance of a two-year term of a board member, who is no longer serving on the board.

Everyone on the ballot is effectively certain to be elected. The only suspense is who will come in last and take the balance of the two-year term, abandoned by Kerry Hall's absence.

The candidates are Margie Cyr, Don Deraska, Steve Larsen, Kate Mounteer, and Jim Silberman. Margie Cyr is a proverbial life'er, who evidentally intends to remain on the board for years. Cyr is an incumbent candidate.

Margie Cyr was first elected to the board in 2014. In 2014 she ran for an open, two-year term in an uncontested election.

Don Deraska is a former board member, who took time away from the community last year.

Steve Larsen is also a former board member. The board elected Steve Larsen to back fill the open board position available on the death of Kerry Hall.

Kate Mounteer earned a seat on the board in 2023. Mounteer is an incumbent candidate.

I am not familiar with Jim Silberman. Jim Silberman has never served on the board as far as I am aware. Jim Silberman is from Laurel, Maryland. Silberman is a first time candidate. He will be a member of the board in some fashion after the election, scheduled for Saturday, August 30, 2025.

The one thing I do know about Jim Silberman is his name is not Joe Raskaukas. Had Silberman's name been Joe Raskaukas, there would have been a sixth candidate vying for a position on the board and not five. The people, who wield power, in the community would have seen to it that someone, other than Joe Raskaukas would be available to run for the last position on the board. The person would have been someone the people, who wield power, can trust and feel comfortable working with.

As there is no sixth candidate, I presume that the people, who wield power, are aware of who Jim Silberman is and are comfortable with him as a member of board.

My predictions as to who will win

I predict Steve Larsen will receive the most votes, followed by Margie Cyr, who will come in second, followed by Kate Mounteer, who will come in third in the tally, followed by Don Deraska, who will take the last two-year term. Silberman will get the one year remaining on the balance of the two-year term.

The reason I believe that Steve Larsen will receive the most votes of the field is due to the fact that Cyr hand picked Larsen as her successor in 2020, when she influenced the board to elect him as Vice President.

If history is any lesson, Cyr will also presumably receive an estimated thirty to sixty votes from proxy ballots as Cyr is Vice President, Cyr has allies on the board, namely David Wiecking and Paul Bradley, and presumably has (or collectively with the coorperation of Wiecking, and Bradley has) access to board-designated, proxy ballots to overvote at her (or their) discretion.

I predict that Kate Mounteer will finish third in the voting. Whereas Cyr had terrible approval numbers from the survey conducted in 2023, Kate Mounteer received very positive approval numbers on the survey. In fact Kate Mounteer garnered one of the highest numbers on the survey. Mounteer was not an officer at the time of the survey. Still Mounteer received high approval numbers. People in the community clearly like Kate.

I predict Don Deraska will finish fourth in the voting. Don Deraska had an absence of negative approval numbers. No one disapproved of the job Deraska was doing. I predict Deraska will win the fourth, open two-year term on the board.

The people, who wield power, obviously do not object to Jim Silberman. So, I predict he will take the balance of the two-year term vacated by Kerry Hall.

It appears that barring a last minute, miracle write-in vote David Wiecking will no longer be community president. I predict that Steve Larsen, the man who was behind the proposed 8% rental tax in 2018 through 2020, will replace Wiecking as community president. Larsen was Margie Cyr's hand picked successor in 2020. In 2020 the year Cyr was elected president, she influenced the board to install Larsen as vice president in lieu of Ellen Throop.

My prediction as to who the board will elect as community president

I believe the broad will elect Steve Larsen as community president.

On the event Steve Larsen is elected community president, Marty Shecter will have a prominent role on the board. Marty Shecter is already a prominent fixture on the board, even though Shecter is not a board member. Marty Shecter and Steve Larsen are together a tandem. In 2018 then board members Steve Larsen and Marty Shecter worked to advance a convenant change to introduce an unlawful, 8% rental tax on the community as a means of creating alternative revenue streams. One of the alternative revenue streams now under consideration is a one hundred dollar rental fee.

Shecter has been active in advancing the prospect of the association charging a rental fee towards the rental property to owners for a number of months.

To put this into perspective a number of home owners associations do charge rental fees in the scenario where the association provides a rental-specific service. For example, Sea Colony charges seventy-five dollars (or thereabouts) to furnish tenants with a parking pass in the form of a laminated card, allowing the tenant access to the parking facilities. The laminated card indicates the identification of the pass as well as the week the pass is valid for. In exchange for the rental fee, the association furnishes the tenant with the aforementioned laminated card, allowing the tenant access to the parking facilities at Sea Colony.

Larsen and Shecter reportedly intend to charge the owners of vacation rental properties a fee and treat the fee as an income stream. They want to collect the fees, but they do not appreciate the need to provide a service in return (or if they do understand their obligations, they intend to ignore them). Given that revenue stream, they can then lower their contribution to the overall expense of operating the community. They may start at a one hundred dollar rental fee. Later they may escalate the fee to two hundred dollars. They may calculate that it is very unlikely that the community of vacation rental property owners will pony up a 10,000.00 dollar retainer for a law firm to pursue the matter in Chancery Court. Who knows whether the community of vacation rental property owners will find a one hundred dollar rental fee as material? The community of vacation rental property owners may or may not regard the fee as material. Larsen has in the past suggested that vacation rental property owners can simply add the fee towards the price of the rental on services like Vacation Rental By Owner (VRBO). The VRBO service does allow vacation rental property owners the ability to add fees at the owner's discretion.

The motivation behind the one hundred dollar rental fee is clearly self interest.

For example, Larsen and Shecter have been involved in formulating annual budgets for years. In 2019 or thereabouts, Larsen and Shecter set out over 100,000.00 dollars of community monies to escavate both Bridge Road and Bayberry Road. They and the board proceeded excavating both streets without an engineering plan. Larsen, who owns the property at 6 Bridge Road, and Shecter, who owns the property at 19 Bayberry Road, simply want to relieve drainage issues that had been adversely effecting their respective properties. So, in effect they took care of their respective properties using community monies.

Typically, according to Environment Consultant, Bill Graves, if you were to solve drainage issues you would first complete an engineering plan. Once the engineering plan is complete you would reportedly start with the road at the lowest elevation and work upwards to the roads at the highest elevation. [1] Bridge Road and Bayberry Road are separated by a road in between. Is it coincidental that the board approved the escavation of Bridge Road and Bayberry Road, the roads where the two board members own property on? I don't think so. This is how these people, Larsen and Shecter, operate. It is all about self interest. At least the optics would lead one to reasonably conclude that.

References