Opinion

OPINION: What Messages Did the Landslide OVA Election Send to the Board?

By Bruce Bon / April 9, 2024 /

The 2024 OVA Board election was record-breaking. The number of ballots cast (1,916) was greater than in any Board election ever, even including the highly divisive pickleball Board election of 2017, and the voter participation was 59.4%, approximately duplicating the 2017 turn-out. Even more impressive was the margins by which the three new directors out-distanced…

2024 OVA Board Election Results

By Oakmont Observer / April 1, 2024 /

Congratulations to newly elected OVA directors Heidi Klyn, Matt Oliver and Jerry Gladstone. Today the ballots were counted and final results are in. There were 1,916 validated ballots (59.8% of the eligible Oakmont owners), easily surpassing the required quorum of 807 (25%). Vote counts: A short Board meeting was held, in which a resolution was…

Election 2024 Oakmont: My Endorsements

By Yvonne Frauenfelder / March 16, 2024 /

I will have lived soon for a quarter Century in Oakmont. For many years I wrote about our people and our village. Every April or so, elections for the OVA Board of Directors took place. I never publicized my choices for the top leadership positions in our village. I did not believe that I should…

OPINION: Who Should the OVA Board Serve?

By Bruce Bon / March 14, 2024 /

There are innumerable ways of categorizing the 4700 or so members of the Oakmont Village Association (OVA), but for the purposes of this article, I will consider just two categories: What proportion of OVA members are active? As George McKinney, a long-serving and respected member of the OVA Long Range Planning Committee, observed recently in…

‘Member/People Power’ vs. ‘Board Power’

By Don McPherson / March 13, 2024 /

In a recent Nextdoor post, Malka Osserman applied a quote from Noam Chomsky to her critique of User Groups:  “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going…

Tears and more Tears

By Yvonne Frauenfelder / March 10, 2024 /

As part of my Oakmont Forum series in the Kenwood Press, I wrote these words 20 years ago. They retain their validity to these days. Especially in view of Oakmont’s plan for the Renewal of our Downtown. While the CAC only is slated for Rehabilitation, it will have to be paid for with our moneys.…