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WBAI Local Station Board
11-22-05, notes


Here are two reports on the LSB's 11-22-05 meeting, one from R. Paul Martin and the other from someone anonymous. Both were posted on listenerforums.net (issues board).

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Re: Thanks, Geronimo. Can someone give us a report? *LINK*

Posted By: R. Paul Martin Date: Tuesday, 22 November 2005, at 11:47 p.m.

Steffie wrote:

Did anyone speak about the management evaluation survey?

We only got to do that for a little bit. The Delegates' meeting set for 6:30 PM started at 7:12 PM. The LSB meeting set for 7:00 PM didn't start until 7:51 PM, and the agenda was set to adjourn at 9:30 PM. The Management Evaluation Committee only started to report at 9:25 PM.

Ayo Harrington apologized to Shawn Rhodes for not letting him observe the opening of the surveys. In the very short time for questions we found out that the committee still has the surveys, but I was unable to ask a question about their state. So I don't know if they've been opened or anything. Also, the surveys have been redone and mailed out again! These new ones are on a different color paper.

Did anyone ask "Where's Robert Knight?"

No.

Did the GM or PD attend?

No, neither one was there.

Also, the bylaws amendment approval did not pass. The Chair had originally ruled that it had, but I pointed out that the bylaws language requires that the approval pass by a majority of all delegates. It needed thirteen votes tom pass, and it only got eight.

I got a whole bunch of minutes-correcting in. One of my listeners showed up and participated in the public comment session.

The committee of the whole was not that great because the information that has been requested about the finances and fund raising are not available yet.

The Finance Committee will have a quorum of 9 members for the next three meetings, and all LSB committee meetings will require that at least one LSB member be present for a quorum to exist.

*****

Re: Thanks, Geronimo. Can someone give us a report?

Posted By: Geronimo Date: Wednesday, 23 November 2005, at 2:01 a.m.

As R. Paul said, the bylaws amendment didn't pass.

I believe an amendment was added (to something) to propose a vote of no-confidence in the Management Evaluation Committee. I forget who proposed this.

Kathy Davis's comments at the last meeting were asked to be added to the minutes (her comments were about how politics were gettin in the way of fundraising, and that fundrasing wasn't properly planned). The motion failed.

Baruti Bediako (LSB treasurer?) mentioned that he had requested memsis (sp?) reports, for each seperate fund drive, a consolidated report for all fund drives (in the past year?)

Carolyn Birden commented that Memsys (sp?) "has no memory", which R. Paul elaborated on as meaning that if the database is tampered with there is no record of the tampering, and what the original data was.

R. Paul recommended moving to upgrade the software. During a listener speak-out (I forget when this happened) Mike Beasely, who comes to most meetings, spoke out about how it was unlikely that anyone would tamper with Memsys since no-one at the station knew how to use it. (I wouldn't necessarily trust this. It reminds me of the assurances that allowing "sincerely interested" listeners, who couldn't cough up even $25.00 to express their interest, to vote, would not be abused by fake write-in votes).

Someone mentioned that Indra Hardat was thinking of putting an ad in the New Republic [ed note: actually it's the Nation], to which Cerene Roberts got all upset at the idea that any money be spent to recruit any white listeners, (my interpretation) What she actually said was that she felt that if any advertising money were available there ought to be discussion of where it goes. (my interpretation : If any money is available, it needs to be filtered through Bernard and his buddies in the "community", so that, even if it doesn't bring in any paying subscribers, some editor of some small "community" newpaper will get WBAI dough, and maybe give a little kickback to Bernard or whoever). (And this is my suspicion based on crooked Bernard behavior like asking folks to wire money directly into "charity" bank accounts over WBAI). Assigning malice to Cerene and Bernard is getting to be a habit with me, but nothing in the way they behave alleviates my fears about them. During the second listener comment segment, a fellow in a wheelchair thought that advertising in the New Republic [ed. note: again, it's the Nation, not New Republic] was bad, because Ralph Schoenman and Maya Schoen said there was a former CIA guy on the staff (as editor?) so I guess he was afraid that CIA guys would become listeners and try to invade. I got pissed at Cerene and the anti-New-Republic-advertising listener, and spoke out in favor of aiming advertising at educated listeners who might actually bring money to the station, instead of aiming it at disadvantaged communities who, strapped for cash, might not bother.

Ayo Harrington did apologize for excluding Shawn Rhodes from observing the removal of the staff surveys from their envelpes, but I wondered if they are jumping to be "fair" because they looked at the envelopes and realized that not enough of their faction voted? It might be that they are genuinely responding to Shawn's complaint about being excluded from observing the removal of the staff surveys, however. I don't really know enough about it.

Oh, listener Martin, who is always reading long missives passed to him by Cerene Roberts, read one about evil programmers abusing their free speech on the air, trying to destroy the station. Meaning R. Paul and Sidney Smith, I guess.

Corrections and attempts to dissuade me of my delusions welcome.


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