[SCCC] Fwd: [NCCC] 1/19 BOD Meeting
Jim Neiger
n6tj at sbcglobal.net
Sat Jan 6 12:00:46 EST 2018
-------- 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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