The Assessment Voting Results
Bethany Beach, Delaware: Eighty eight (88) members of the Middlesex Beach community reportedly voted against the FYE2024 Budget, e.g., The Assessment, whereas sixty five (65) members voted for the Assessment.
For presumably the first time in the history of the homeowners association a proposed budget failed.
A visibly shaken, community president, Paul Bradley, announced that the board will revert to the FYE2023 budget, that was approved on May 7, 2022.
"You will all be getting invoices [in the mail]." Bradley announced.
The assessment per residential property owner will be US$3,075.00.
The FYE2023 budget sets aside 100,000.00 dollars towards the ongoing drainage ditch work. Ironically, the budget gives the board the latitude to spend an additional 100,000.00 dollars towards the contentious project. Notwithstanding an annual inflation rate of 8% the proverbial saying, heads I win, tails you lose applies.
Joe Woolman, who voted against the FYE2024 budget, said that a number of recipients on the e-mail chain that he had participated on watched the YouTube video embedded in the article, Interview With Environmental Consultant, Bill Graves. Woolman urged the recipients on the e-mail chain to watch the video. "That really helped [our cause]", Woolman said.
Former community president, Geoff Sella, who also voted against the FYE2024 budget, said that this group of board members "aren't listening". Sella later corrected himself, saying that they are in fact listening and aware of the growing dissent, they just want to do things their way.
The vote clearly hinged on the contentious line item, involving the ongoing drainage ditch project. The FYE2024 budget sets aside an additional 120,000.00 (or 500.00 dollars per residential property owner or thereabouts) towards the ongoing project.
A recent opinion survey proctored between April 11, 2023 and April 22, 2023 found that 83.9% of respondents said they want the board to put a hold on further drainage ditch work. Only 6.5% of respondents said they want the board to move ahead with the project. 9.7% of respondents said that they were not sure and needed more information. The survey has a 17% margin of error at a 95% confidence level.
Paul Bradley, Ron Thomas, Jerry Kafka, and Nora Alter, who all voted in favor of perpetuating the contentious drainage ditch project using the current approach, are reaching the end of their respective two-year terms on the board. Each one is up for re-election in September, 2023.