[SCCC] Fwd: [NCCC] 1/19 BOD Meeting

[Jim Neiger]

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: 	[NCCC] 1/19 BOD Meeting
Date: 	Wed, 3 Jan 2018 00:53:08 +0000
From: 	Roger Cooper <rogern3rc at gmail.com>
To: 	w3tom at arrl.org, w9xa at arrl.org, ka0ldg at arrl.org, k5uz at arrl.org, 
wa8efk at arrl.org, n2ybb at arrl.org, k0das at arrl.org, k1ki at arrl.org, 
k7cex at arrl.org, w6rgg at arrl.org, N2ZZ at arrl.org, wy7fd at arrl.org, 
gsarratt at arrl.org, n6aa at arrl.org, k5rav at arrl.org, k6jat at arrl.org, 
ny2rf at arrl.org, NCCC Main Reflector <nccc at contesting.com>



To All


Another very active ham put together some very cogent comments  which I 
agree with totally  and are included below:

73  Roger N3RC Life Member 60 years licensed


Happy new year to all of you.  I hope Santa brought you lots of yagis 
and amplifier tubes.

Our hobby is a great escape for all of us.  Ham radio is one of the 
places we go to get away from the real world from time to time, to enjoy 
contests and meet and greet our friends.  I can’t imagine what I would 
be doing if I weren’t a ham and a contester.

But every now and then the real world intrudes even into our hobby.  I 
am afraid this is such a time.

To be blunt, things are not good with the ARRL, the organization that 
represents us.  Most of you know that with the retirement of long time 
CEO K1ZZ (another contester) the BoD brought in an individual who 
appears to have experience as an executive of non-profit organizations, 
but who has little connection with the hobby we love.  Many of us who 
met NY2RF were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt – there were 
many things about the League that could probably use an experienced 
executive to attend to.  But in the short time he has been CEO, a number 
of actions have revealed a stunning insensitivity, arrogance and even 
incompetence.  These include:

·The decision to significantly increase the price of the outgoing QSL 
service,

·The aborted, costly, and ultimately dysfunctional effort to pass 
legislation in Congress to limit the ability of home-owner associations 
to limit amateur radio antennas,

·The inability of the League to mount an effective emergency response to 
the power outages and hurricane destruction in Puerto Rico (beyond 
headline chasing),

·The upheaval at NTS, the national traffic system that many of us 
participated in many years ago, that has resulted in the forced 
retirement of the leadership that kept this legacy system running for 
decades with the benign neglect of the ARRL.

None of these things merit this message to all of you.  They are 
annoying and disturbing, but don’t rise to the level of this intrusion 
into your holiday celebrations.

This does.

The ARRL BoD, who appointed this new CEO, are on the cusp of passing a 
number of major changes to its ByLaws which will make the ARRL even more 
undemocratic, insulated, and aloof from the membership than it already is.

Consider that under the _existing_ ByLaws (as modified last year to 
adopt the Code of Conduct), the ARRL BoD has already:

·Censured its longest tenured Director for events that allegedly took 
place at the Visalia DX Convention last spring that were directly 
contradicted by highly respected witnesses who submitted written, public 
versions of the events there that rendered the charges false (the BoD’s 
version is supported by testimony that is secret and anonymous);

·Intervened in the Director election process repeatedly to disqualify 
candidates (see K3RF QRZ page, go to www.arrlse.org 
<http://www.arrlse.org/>) and declare victors with no votes tallied;

There will be a vote at the January BoD meeting on sweeping new changes 
to the ByLaws that will drastically change the committees, procedures, 
powers, and representativeness of the Bod.  This is in only 20 days!

It is absolutely vital that we derail this process by voicing our 
opinions right now.

The changes would:

·Grant full voting rights to ARRL officers, including the President and 
the various Vice Presidents, who have not been elected by the ARRL 
membership but nonetheless will have votes equal to the Directors who 
have been elected;

·Change the recall process for ARRL Directors to present issues to 
recall to the ARRL voting membership only if the three-member Ethics 
committee agrees that the reasons for the recall are valid (consider 
that our own Director, K7CEX, who I have never QSOd in almost 50 years 
of hamming and after 750,000 QSOs, is on this sub-committee).

·Gives the BoD the power to kick Directors off the Board, and to suspend 
membership of individuals in the ARRL (including Life Members).

·Restricts the evidence that can be presented to the BoD to appeal a 
decision by the Ethics committee that effectively precludes the person 
harmed by the decision to present evidence on their own behalf.

The vote in January on these ByLaw changes requires a 2/3 vote.  That 
mean we need at least six people to oppose them.

We need to make it VERY CLEAR to our director that this needs to stop 
now.  The train is really rolling down the track very fast.  If we don’t 
wake up and realize what is happening, we will witness a complete 
takeover of the governance of what is supposedly a membership 
organization (even if the current CEO thinks we’re stupid for thinking 
that ARRL should be about the members).  The ByLaws motions should be 
indefinitely tabled.

These issues have been aired at most of the major contest clubs.  
Important donors are changing their plans.  Key staff (such as NN1N and 
KX9X) have left the ARRL.  Respected volunteers like K3ZO (QSL bureau 
volunteer since the 1970s) have quit.

If this cannot be stopped now, the job gets harder, but it can still be 
done. It begins with a new crop of directors who understand that ham 
radio has a lot bigger issues to solve than the power machinations that 
appear to have occupied the leadership.

What to do?  Write an email to your didrector to tell him that we are 
going to hold him accountable for his actions, and the actions of his 
fellow directors.  Don’t buy the message (which apparently has been 
centrally crafted for all directors to use) that these are just changes 
to either (i) comply with laws, or (ii) make the organization work more 
effectively.  Most insidious of all is the claim that the changes really 
aren’t important, or even changes at all.  We can read – see the 
red-lined changes.  See the attached -- look at all the red!!

Thanks for taking the time to read this.  Obviously, what you do is a 
personal decision, but I hope that you will take the time to find out 
what’s going on.  We need the ARRL to represent us going forward, and 
this nonsense needs to stop.

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