OPINION: My Endorsements for the 2026 OVA Election

On my 2026 OVA Ballot, I will be voting in favor of both Bylaws Amendments, and I urge everyone reading this to do the same – in a very real sense, Oakmont’s future depends on it!

In the directors election, I will be voting for: Matt Oliver, Greg Darcy and Josh Axelrod. I will not be voting for Steve Spanier, Terrie Mui or Heidi Klyn.

The Bylaws Amendments and Why They Are Important

Jeff Neuman, one of our current directors and a long-time active member of the Oakmont community, made a very strong case for both Bylaws amendments in a Nextdoor post (https://nextdoor.com/p/LrSZWb_8tThg?view=detail) – please take a look. There is also an OVA video (https://oakmontvillage.com/article/video-all-about-the-bylaws-amendments-on-the-spring-2026-ballot/)in which David Simpson, the chair of the Governing Documents Committee explains in some detail the amendments. He covers, for example, the “guardrails” contained in amendment #1 to ensure that any amendments made by a Board for the purpose of legal compliance (and therefore not subject to a membership vote if amendment #1 is enacted) will amend the Bylaws only to the extent required to remedy the non-compliant provision(s).

Key points:

• The first proposed amendment allows the board to keep our Bylaws consistent with Federal, State and local laws without requiring a membership vote.
• The second proposed amendment allows us, as a community, to change our Bylaws by the vote of 55% of those voting, with a minimum of 50% of eligible voters casting ballots. If fewer than 50% (1606) of eligible voters cast ballots, the election will be invalid.
• If the second proposed amendment does NOT pass, then the current standard will remain in force – enacting an amendment requires a majority of the voting power of OVA (i.e. 1607) to vote in favor of the proposed amendment. This standard applies to this election, so each of the proposed amendments must receive 1607 votes or it will not be enacted.
• If the second proposed amendment does not pass, then any future amendment to the Bylaws will face a difficult uphill battle for enactment.

I believe that the first proposed amendment would be a good thing and deserves our votes. If we fail to enact this amendment, then at the very least, OVA will have to pay the expense for an election any time an amendment is needed to ensure compliance with changing HOA law, and having served several years on a subHOA board, I know that such changes come along almost every year.

But the second proposed amendment is critical to the future of Oakmont. Without it, any proposed governance reform (e.g. requirement for membership votes to approve large projects, change from 1 vote per 2-person household to 2 votes, etc) will face an uphill battle to get enacted. In that event, the essentials of the Bylaws will remain the same for the indefinite future, even where change is seriously needed. This means that a future Board could borrow over ten million dollars in OVA’s behalf (see FAQ: How Much Can OVA Dues Finance?), without having members vote to approve such a loan. And it means that a future Board could, using such a loan, plan and execute a major capital improvement project, also without having members vote to approve it. These actions would burden the OVA membership for many years to come.

(Note: There are people on Nextdoor who are arguing either that we don’t need a lower threshold for amending our Bylaws, or that the proposed threshold would allow some special interest minority to hijack the amendment process, to the detriment of the rest of us. I will address these claims in the Appendix.)

My bottom line is that if you believe, as I do, that democratic reform is in the best interests of Oakmont and is needed to provide an essential check on the power of the OVA Board of Directors, then you must vote in favor of the second proposed amendment.

The 2026 OVA Board of Directors Election

This year we are fortunate to have six candidates running for three available seats on the OVA Board of Directors. This allows us, the OVA membership, a better opportunity to make meaningful choices than we had in years when there were only four candidates for three seats, for example. All of the candidates deserve our gratitude for their willingness to serve on the Board of Directors. Some say that it is a thankless job, but I don’t believe that – there are rewards for serving and the gratitude of many. But it is unquestionably a challenging and time-consuming job, and one that doesn’t pay very well, i.e. nothing! Below I will provide my reasons for voting for or against each candidate.

My Criteria for Endorsement

1. Support for democratic reform of OVA governance

Many issues are of legitimate importance to OVA members in deciding who we want to represent us on the Board – several of the most important issues were explored and documented in the OVA Board Candidate Survey. But I have to admit that my endorsement depends almost entirely on a single crucial issue: does the candidate support democratic empowerment of the OVA membership with regard to the most important decisions about Oakmont’s future? If not, then I must oppose that candidate, no matter what his other qualifications may be.

Make no mistake about this: listening to what OVA members have to say is not, in any way, equivalent to allowing OVA members the power to control the decision. For those who claim that fiduciary duty forbids the Board from giving such power to the membership, I make the following claim:

• A capital improvement project cannot be “in the best interests of Oakmont” if the OVA membership does not approve of it and have the authority to veto it.

I do not believe that an OVA director would ever be found to have violated his fiduciary duty by following the will of the OVA membership, as expressed in a fair election to decide an issue. I also note that the Regulations Of The Real Estate Commissioner [1] requires the governing documents of new HOA developments to include a provision for a membership vote on capital improvements “in excess of 5% of the budgeted gross expenses of the Association for that fiscal year.”

Steve Spanier is the poster child for someone who otherwise I would vote for, but who fails this crucial test (and decisively) – no matter how qualified he may be in other respects, his firm opposition to allowing a capital improvement election to override the decision of the Board disqualifies him from ever getting my support.

Frankly, I resent those candidates and directors who say, in effect, “I am open to listen to what you have to say, but under my watch, no matter how large or important the decision under consideration, unless I am forced by state law to allow it, you will never have a seat at the decision-making table — that is for directors only.” This election season, candidates who say that include Spanier, Mui and Klyn. No matter what their other positive attributes and historical contributions to Oakmont, I can’t get around that elitist and anti-democratic doctrine.

2. Support for real transparency in OVA governance

Note: This only comes into play if a candidate passes my first criteria, above.

Every candidate will express his support for transparency, so we need to look deeper. One insight might be whether or not he would support creation of an OVA Policy on Transparency, as identified in the OO Candidate Survey. Another insight, for those who have served on the Board in the past, and especially for current (Matt Oliver) or past (Heidi Klyn, Steve Spanier) presidents of the Board, is whether or not the Board discussed issues not authorized by law within Executive Sessions. While we cannot know with precision what was discussed within such sessions, since they are by definition closed, we can surmise that such things as strategy for presenting something to the membership have been discussed. I maintain that any discussion about changes to the OVA governing documents should be done in open meetings, including those in which a lawyer is involved, because attorney client privilege should be waived by the Board if the subject of the discussion is not one of the five specific topics which must be limited to Executive Sessions [2].

3. Other criteria

If a candidate meets both of the above criteria, then other issues, such as those identified in the OO Candidate Survey, will be considered:

• Affordability – Does the candidate’s attitude toward spending our dues money match my own? Is the candidate willing to burden the OVA membership with long-term debt in order to create more or better facilities? How does he/she weigh perceived needs for facilities vs control of dues inflation?
• Vision of future Oakmont – Does the candidate’s vision match my own? Does he/she want Oakmont to expand and modernize facilities, to compete with the Del Webb’s of the world and to maximize real estate values, financed by loans or dues increases? Or does he/she want to minimize dues increases by fully maintaining current facilities, but avoiding major new capital investments? Is he/she frugal, seeking to maximize benefits per dollar spent?
• Knowledge of Oakmont’s history and culture, and volunteer hours devoted to making Oakmont a better place to live.
• Knowledge and Expertise that might be applied to the job of OVA director – Does the candidate have particular expertise that will allow him to better serve Oakmont?
• Others: golf club planning, emergency preparation and evacuation, fire safety, use of surveys to aid faithful representation of OVA membership views by the Board, etc.

OVA Board Candidates Selected by Above Criteria

In choosing which candidates to endorse, my most important criteria are the first two described above, support for democratic reform of OVA governance, and support for real transparency in OVA governance. Assertions made in following paragraphs are my personal opinions

If, like me, your most important criteria is allowing OVA members a direct vote on the most important OVA decisions, then Darcy, Oliver and Axelrod are your candidates, as evidenced by their statements at Candidates Night and in Meet&Greet meetings, and their responses to the Oakmont Observer OVA Board Candidate Survey.

If your most important criteria is transparency of OVA governance, then Axelrod, Darcy and Spanier are your candidates, based on their statements and records. In spite of his complete antipathy to allowing OVA members a direct vote on major decisions, I have to give credit to Steve Spanier for his past efforts to increase transparency in OVA governance. And I have to give Matt Oliver poor marks for transparency, because of his repeated and consistent use of closed door meetings when, in my opinion, confidentiality was not supported by the Open Meetings Act, and for his vetoing of the plan by the GDC (and voted unanimously by them) to have their open meetings recorded and available to all OVA members.

If your most important criteria is affordability, i.e. controlling OVA spending to keep dues increases in check, then Darcy and Oliver are your candidates. With the other candidates, it is either unclear how they might vote on major expenditures (Axelrod, Mui) or it is fairly clear from past performance that they will favor substantial capital improvement projects (Klyn, Spanier).

If your most important criteria is expanding OVA facilities to support current and future demands, and to maximize real estate values, then, in my opinion, Spanier, Klyn and Mui are your best bets. Spanier is a realtor and his past alliances with those whose efforts led to the “Walk in the Park” plan for the central area indicate that he is likely to support such efforts if elected to the Board. Klyn has been hoping for many years for a major expansion of Berger. And Mui is reported to be coached in her campaign by some whose spending philosophy was soundly defeated in the 2024 Board election.

If your most important criteria is knowledge of Oakmont and/or history of volunteer work in Oakmont, then Spanier, Klyn, Oliver, and Axelrod alll have substantial volunteer experience and knowledge of recent Oakmont history.

If your most important criteria is a good resume prior to coming to Oakmont, then all of our candidates have substantial experience to contribute. Perhaps the weakest in this regard is Klyn, but she has years of experience on OVA Boards not shared by Darcy, Axelrod and Mui.

Endorsed OVA Board Candidates

As identified above, my most important criteria for selecting candidates to vote for are their policies toward amending our Bylaws to require membership votes on large projects, and toward transparency of OVA governance, so that OVA members will understand where governance decisions are coming from. In fact, I cannot endorse or vote for any candidate who fails my first criteria. This makes it simple, because it means that I cannot endorse or vote for Spanier, Mui or Klyn.

Matt Oliver: I disagree strongly with Oliver’s handling of transparency during his tenure as Board president, and he confirmed his view of transparency (no policy needed) in his response to that topic in the Oakmont Observer OVA Board Candidate Survey. But he is in favor of some sort of amendment to require membership votes on large projects, although he seems to have some reservations which he has not expressed clearly. He has also pushed the GDC to make forward progress in a task that has been avoided by OVA Boards for decades. He has a sensible approach to improvement of our facilities, and has led OVA toward common sense improvements of the central pool and Berger.

Greg Darcy: Darcy is relatively new to Oakmont and, not having retired, has (somewhat obviously) spent relatively little time learning about Oakmont and how things are done here. Nevertheless, he has valuable business experience to bring to the table, and his positions on the key issues of seeking more democratic governance and operating with maximum legal transparency are congruent with my own. I believe, if elected, that he would support the fiscal responsibility efforts of Oliver and Williams.

Josh Axelrod: Axelrod ran for the Board in 2024 but was defeated then. Since then he has served on the LRPC and the GDC. In addition to his statements at Candidates Night and in the Oakmont Observer OVA Board Candidate Survey, I have observed his performance in GDC meetings, and I believe him to have common sense, as well as expertise to bring to the job. While I wish that he had expressed support for a Bylaws amendment to require membership votes on larger projects, he has at least expressed that he would support putting such an amendment to a vote of the membership. Relative to affordability, he is largely an unknown, but has expressed that OVA needs “to strike a balance that works for all members” when it comes to facilities improvements.

Endorsements Recap

Bylaws amendments:

1. Allows the board to keep our Bylaws consistent with Federal, State and local laws without requiring a membership vote.
   I urge you to vote in favor or this amendment.
2. Enables us, as a community, to change our Bylaws by a vote.
   I very strongly urge you to vote in favor of this amendment.

OVA Board candidates – I urge you to vote for:

• Matt Oliver
• Greg Darcy
• Josh Axelrod

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References

[1] Regulations Of The Real Estate Commissioner Title 10 Chapter 6 Article 1 2792.21,
text with hi-lited relevant paragraphs Similar provisions are in many California HOA Bylaws, including those of Oakmont’s Orchards sub-HOA.

[2] Explanation of the California Open Meeting Act and its application to Executive Sessions.

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Appendix – Answering Bylaws Amendment Naysayers’ Claims

Claim: We don’t need any lower threshold for amending the Bylaws than the one that has been in place since Oakmont originated in the 1960’s.

Some people posting on Nextdoor adamantly assert that no threshold less than the current “majority of voting power of OVA” standard for amending our Bylaws should be considered. But let’s examine a hypothetical future Bylaws election:

• Based on today’s Oakmont, there are 3,212 homes, so the current voting power of OVA is 3,212. A majority of this figure it 1,607 or more.
• Voter participation has varied between 37.7% (2009) and 60.7% (2025), with participation over 50% achieved in only 5 of the past 17 directors elections.
• Assume that in this hypothetical election, the same percentage of ballots were returned as in the highest participation OVA directors election, i.e. 60.7% = 1,950.
• Assume further that the percentage of ballots returned that were in favor of the hypothetical amendment was 72.8%, the same margin of victory as achieved in the singular “golf course purchase” election in 2019.
• The result would be only 1,419 votes in favor of the hypothetical Bylaws amendment. This overwhelming landslide (i.e. 72.8%) in favor of the amendment would fail to enact the amendment by 188 votes!
• In order for this hypothetical amendment to pass, assuming the same 72.8% level of consensus, 2,207 ballots would have to be cast, for a voter participation of 68.7%. Admittedly this is less than the 84% turnout of the 2019 “golf course purchase” election, but how realistic is it to expect this level of turnout for any Bylaws amendment ballot?

Claim: The proposed threshold would allow some special interest minority to hijack the amendment process.

The proposed amendment would, hypothetically, allow a minority of just 27.5% of the voting power of OVA (55% supermajority of a 50% quorum). The fear is that some future Board may take advantage of the “low” threshold for amending the Bylaws, passing some amendment that is not in the best interests of Oakmont. It is difficult for me to come up with a hypothetical that would match this fear, but I’ll try:

The XYZ Club has grown so much in popularity that their Berger events are oversubscribed and they have to turn people away. With over 900 members, they can, with no help from non-members, meet the 27.5% of OVA Voting Power minimum requirement for amending our Bylaws. They initiate, through a sympathetic Board elected with their support, an amendment which would allow the Board, for Berger only, to pursue a 50% footprint expansion of Berger using long-term loans and 19% dues increases over several years. (Ignore feasibility issues, since this is only a hypothetical example.) The amendment passes, and the Board executes the plan, resulting in a major increase of dues, although spread over 3 or 4 years.

Why this wouldn’t happen – either of the following would block it:

• Even if the Board was sympathetic and inclined to put this amendment on the ballot, they would surely ask OVA lawyers to review it for legality, and the lawyers would recognize it as a special interest amendment and advise that it would violate their fiduciary duty to act on behalf of all of the OVA membership to put it to a vote.
• Even if the Board decided to forge ahead, various watchdog members of OVA, who make it their business to follow what the Board is doing, would surely notice and would mount a campaign to defeat the amendment. As we all know, when pocketbook issues galvanize the OVA membership, we get organized, even if only temporarily! The XYZ Club may be able to turn out 900 votes for the amendment (unlikely, they would surely have dissenters), but the opposition would only need around 750 votes to cause the amendment to fail to meet the 55% supermajority requirement.

Claim: To allow anything less than a majority of all Oakmont owners to amend our Bylaws violates democratic values.

While it is difficult to argue about what one’s values should be, since everyone has a different set of values, the arguments presented above clearly show that some compromises must be made between ideal values and the real world, where half the owners in Oakmont either can’t or choose not to vote on most issues. Surely it is at least as undemocratic for the inaction of these owners to hold all progress hostage, as it is for a 55% supermajority of a 50% quorum to be able to enact changes!

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Author’s note: When I took the job of Editor of The Oakmont Observer in 2024, 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 year will be my third year of publishing my personal endorsements in OO, and I encourage anyone in Oakmont who would like to make their positions known to submit an article telling us how you will vote and why. If the article doesn’t violate my editorial standards (no name-calling, etc), then I will publish it, regardless of who you endorse or oppose.