By Charles Layton
In July, Paul Dunlap became president of the Ocean Grove Home
Owners Association and launched a new style of leadership.
One of his most remarked-on innovations has been the ecumenical
invocations that now begin the group’s monthly meetings.
In the past, meetings nearly always opened with a standard protestant
prayer, but lately the Home Owners have heard a Jewish prayer
in Hebrew, an invocation adapted from Quaker tradition and a prayer
that mentioned Vishnu and Allah. (Jesus Christ still gets referenced
on a regular basis as well, but just not every time.)
In a town that began as a homogeneous Methodist settlement but
whose makeup is now more diverse, Dunlap says he wants to send
a message of inclusion. However, his notion of inclusion goes
beyond the opening prayer. He seeks to broaden the organization’s
frame of reference in more important ways.
He and I both became officers of the Home Owners this year (I
am its new treasurer), and we both share similar ideas about where
it needs to go. But since Dunlap, as president, is in the driver’s
seat, I sat down with him recently over cups of hot coffee and
asked him to elaborate on his vision for the future.
His approach to civic leadership is colored by his experience
in Manhattan, where he and his wife, Anne Gunderson, lived for
nearly 20 years. They used to go to Cape May in summers, he said,
but in 1997 they started looking for somewhere closer and stumbled
upon Ocean Grove. They liked the architecture, started checking
out the inns and soon just fell in love with the place. Their
jobs – as consultant/trainers in communications –
didn’t tie them to any particular locality, so in January
of 1998 they closed on a house less than a block from the ocean.
In Manhattan, Dunlap had co-founded the Upper Manhattan Valley
Community Association in an effort to confront problems in his
neighborhood, which was at 109th St. and Central Park West.
“We
got a bad influx of drug dealing,” Dunlap says. “We
had an abandoned building that a drug gang had set up a crack
house in. So they were cooking and making and selling out of this
building. We also had difficulty with not enough street lights,
which exacerbated the other problem. And we had a pretty non-responsive
police department.”
The new organization sought support from other local groups, and
in time, he says, “good things started to happen.”
Now, as president of the Home Owners Association, Dunlap wants
to reach out in a similar way to a variety of organizations.
One of the first groups he approached was the Ocean Grove Area
Chamber of Commerce, whose relationship with the Home Owners had
been frosty for several years. The two groups had clashed over
a proposal by the Chamber to expand the commercial area along
Main Avenue. The Home Owners strenuously opposed any such expansion,
and the ensuing struggle left hurt feelings on both sides. (In
the end, the Chamber’s proposed zoning change was not adopted.)
By the time Dunlap became Home Owners president, the leadership
of the Chamber had also changed. Dunlap decided to extend a hand
of friendship to that body’s new president, Valerie Hegarty.
“I just went and knocked on her door,” he says. “I
introduced myself, and her first response to me was, ‘Oh,
I’ve been wanting to talk to you.’ ” He attended
one of the Chamber’s meetings and made his pitch for better
relations. Soon thereafter, Hegarty joined the Home Owners Association.
Dunlap introduced her at the next meeting and made another public
pitch for détente.
Dunlap says he hopes to have similar meetings of the mind with
the Camp Meeting Association, Ocean Grove United, the Historical
Society and any other groups he can think of. “The idea
that I really want to work on is, we’re neighbors first,”
he says. “I like that phrase. We’re not going to agree
on everything, but we all have common interests, and if we can
start identifying those common interests, things will evolve naturally.”
Dunlap’s desire for broader alliances is partly based on
a fear that Ocean Grove’s political clout weakens as more
homes are bought by part-time residents who do not vote here.
“If you look at the last couple of elections, and you look
at the number of votes that came out of Ocean Grove, it’s
declining,” he says. “And the Home Owners Association,
I believe, is only as powerful as the number of votes we can influence.”
The argument, then, is that when an issue arises around which
several local groups can unite to speak as one, our voice can
be stronger than when we speak alone. Developing more mutual trust
is an important first step. But the real work lies in identifying
our common interests. That way, when the moment for action comes,
we’ll be ready.
This principle also applies more broadly. Dunlap wants to establish
ties with neighborhood groups outside Ocean Grove, such as the
Old Corlies Avenue Preservation Alliance, the Shark River Hills
Home Owners and a new group that has just sprung up in Bradley
Park.
“I know there are some folks outside Ocean Grove that look
upon Ocean Grove as kind of uppity, spoiled, and they think we
get everything we want. That’s not the reality but that’s
the perception,” he says. “That’s another reason
why I think we have to reach outside the gates.”
At the end of our conversation, with the coffee growing cold,
I asked Dunlap how he’d like the Home Owners Association
to be when his time as president ends.
“I would be thrilled to walk away from an organization that
is still talking to every other organization in town,” he
said. “And that what Ocean Grove is to most people who live
here remains – that it’s quaint, it’s manageable,
it’s not overdeveloped, it has still a very diverse population
of religions and beliefs and orientations.
“If it remains like that and doesn’t get too overdeveloped,”
he said, “I’d be happy.”
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