My 2024 Endorsements for the OVA Board

I endorse Matt Oliver, Heidi Klyn and Jerry Gladstone for the 2024 Oakmont Village Association Board of Directors. I will explain why below. These are my personal endorsements and are not those of The Oakmont Observer, which will not have any official endorsements.

Author’s note: When I took the job of Editor of The Oakmont Observer a couple of months ago, I decided to keep OO as neutral as possible. Under my watch, OO will not endorse particular candidates and will accept responsible articles from all sides of Oakmont issues. But I most emphatically did not surrender my freedom of speech – I will express my opinion in articles written over my own name, rather than as Oakmont Observer. This is one such article.

My most deeply held value as applied to Oakmont is that decisions made by the Board on behalf of OVA should accurately reflect the will of the OVA membership, even when those decisions may not be optimal by someone’s standards. This single value is so important to me that I will never vote for any candidate who opposes it. For me, and I believe for most OVA members, this value means that we should have the right to make the final decision on big OVA investments in new facilities. A recent Nextdoor poll suggests that over 70% of OVA members agree with me.

On that basis alone, I cannot vote for Kendrick (see his response to question 5 in Candidates Night: Questions Not Asked), Harrell (see her words in responding to the first question in Candidates Night: Questions Asked and the Author’s Insights analysis that follows), or Neuman. Over a period of several years, including service on the Board, these three candidates have made it crystal clear that they do not believe in allowing the OVA membership a direct voice in OVA governance.

A secondary concern of mine is maintaining the affordability of Oakmont. I believe that each of us who chose to buy a home in Oakmont did so with the expectation that the facilities would be well maintained, but not necessarily expanded, and that our monthly dues would rise (because inflation is inescapable) but not so much that we might not be able to afford to pay them in the future. OVA dues today are over 4 times what they were two decades ago, and have increased almost four times as fast as inflation during that period (see Dues Inflation in Oakmont). While there are very good reasons for much of this increase, it does call into question whether or not Oakmont will remain affordable enough that seniors who bought a while ago will not be forced out of their homes if such dramatic increases continue. This makes it imperative that we elect directors who are not merely fiscally responsible (which absolutely every candidate will claim to be), but fiscally conservative in their management of our money.

Based on these criteria, supporting a direct membership voice in the most important OVA decisions, and fiscal conservatism, I have decided to endorse candidates Matt Oliver, Heidi Klyn and Jerry Gladstone for the OVA Board of Directors. It is time for a change in direction, and I believe that these candidates are the ones to start it.