Regarding the June 24th Board Meeting

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Regarding the June 24th Board Meeting

There's recently been an unprecedented amount of time set aside for public (member) input regarding the staff policy issues, beginning with multiple hours of a special meeting May 4th, and the replacement of an entire regular board meeting agenda on June 3rd with public comments.   It's crucial to the existence of KBOO as a non-profit that the board meets and takes care of it's business, otherwise the radio station everyone cares about will suffer.

 
I'm going to suggest that people remember that at a board meeting, only board members can make motions, debate those motions, and vote.  I've already sent my concerns to Board President Conser that the last meeting failed to conduct business, and that without returning to a ten minute public input format, governance at KBOO will have ground to a halt.
 
Please choose motions to ask board members to introduce wisely.  If more public input is desired, then ask for a motion to schedule another informational meeting.  Frankly, in my observation the on-line debate has surpassed any public meeting for it's variety and passion and I don't see another long meeting serving any purpose.  But please let the board do it's business without interruption.  Things that don't get on the agenda for one night might get deferred.  Let the board make these decisions without mob rule.
 
Please also make a recording of the meeting, and have it on the KBOO website asap.  It's easy, just put a recorder on auto-gain, mp3 64kbs and put it in the middle of the table.  This way if people want to spin who said what, there's a record.
 
Battle lines clearly are being drawn for the argument about Thom Hartmann, about access vs underdog and the like.  Who knew what a simple blog post at KBOO could spark?  The upcoming board elections will be pivotal, let's have those conversations over the summer and see what happens in the fall.
 
In the meanwhile ... there are many special events planned at KBOO that need to be a success including remote broadcasts and other things including fund-raising that I'm told will be announced soon.  Let's make sure KBOO survives till the fall elections and then we'll see where to go from there.
 
Ed Kraus

Comments

Submitted by Ed Kraus on Sat, 06/22/2013 - 8:41am

<P>Facts are that we don't have to do all three hours to get the show on air.&nbsp; We can do one, two, or three hours as we please.&nbsp; We also don't have to air live, so we can tape delay.&nbsp; Possible solutions without eliminating local produced content are</P>
<P>1)&nbsp; Eliminate repeat of Democracy Now in the 4pm strip - run one hour of Hartmann.&nbsp; This would then feed listeners nicely into the evening news at 5pm.</P>
<P>2)&nbsp; Do the same as 1) but instead move repeat of DN to the 7pm strip, eliminate Hard Knock.</P>
<P>3)&nbsp; Drop repeat of DN and HN, Run two hours of Hartmann from 4pm to 6pm, shift the evening news and other content block back one hour to begin at 6pm.</P>
<P>Run Hartmann with promotion through the fall membership drive, and see how well it does.&nbsp; Re-evaluate towards the end of the year.&nbsp;</P>
<P>People, it's not that hard to try, and it's not rocket science.&nbsp; And we don't have to dump local programming to bring new listeners and members to KBOO.</P>

Submitted by Etsi Yona Saman... on Tue, 06/25/2013 - 7:53pm

<p>I do hope that someome says something about thereporting of local Native news on KBOO. They are oneof the few in the state that did have Native programing. Too bad.</p>

Alicia Olson's picture

Submitted by Alicia Olson on Wed, 07/10/2013 - 7:06pm

<p>I think what caused all the <span class="st"><em>broo</em>-<em>ha-ha</em></span> about the proposed program change was that the survey itself just had a Yes/No answer and there was no preface, no introductionm written into the Survey Monkey survey. &nbsp; There was no entry for open-ends.&nbsp; I didn't take the survey because I could not answer either way.&nbsp; My answer would have been conditional with a yes vote, as yours.</p><h1 id="watch-headline-title" class="yt"><span id="eow-title" class="watch-title yt-uix-expander-head" title="Africa's Cowboy Capitalists (Part 1/3)" dir="ltr">&nbsp;</span></h1><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>

Jim Thompson's picture

Submitted by Jim Thompson on Sun, 07/14/2013 - 9:19pm

<p>Alicia raises good points about the Thom Hartmann survey.</p><p>I would also raise a point about the validity of the survey. The survey as presented was most insecure. For example, I voted twice. TWICE! It appears that the survey software only relied on cookies, there was no voter validation beyond that. All one would have to do was clear cookies and vote again. And again.</p><p>The 67 percent that Lynn brags about is highly questionable.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>jim</p>

Submitted by Rabia Yeaman on Mon, 07/15/2013 - 12:49pm

<p>It's true, both Yes and No folks sometimes (not that much) voted more than once. Even with the duplicates removed from both groups, the final results still reflected a 65/35 % for Thom Hartmann on KBOO. So it's true the software was kind of sucky because it implied it didn't allow dups, which it did as you say, however, even with the dups, the results were still essentially the same.</p><p>Both "sides" had cheaters. Some duplicates could have been from public use computers (like at KBOO), some from multiple family or household members sharing the same computer. The dups were not removed from the final results so as not to invalidate legitimate sharing, but as you said, you cheated, er, voted twice, because you could.</p><p>Still didn't really effect results.</p>

Submitted by Ed Kraus on Mon, 07/15/2013 - 4:16pm

<P>As of today July 15th Blue Oregon is reporting that over 4800 persons have signed their petition asking for KBOO to put Hartmann on the air.&nbsp; That's ten times the number of people who voted in the last board election, and nearly the number who currently are members.</P>
<P>Let's see if the new board with it's newly appointed members has the guts to try something new and actually listen to what potential new members would like to hear.</P>

Submitted by Ed Kraus on Sat, 07/20/2013 - 8:46am

<P>It would be responsibile if the board of directors would notify the membership what happened at the board meeting on July 15th, 2013.&nbsp; I'm looking forward to reading the wording of such a notice.</P>
<P>It also would be nice if the page on the website that says <STRONG>Board Of Directors </STRONG>could someday be updated to say something other than in red bold type "The next KBOO Board of Directors meeting is June 29, 2013 at 6 pm."&nbsp; (Ironically, this meeting was held I believe on June 24th).&nbsp; Having contradictory information about meeting notice might have explained how the&nbsp;emergency meeting of July 15th&nbsp;was so lightly attended, when issues of lasting importance to KBOO were decided.&nbsp;</P>
<P>It would also be useful if the "seventy page policy manual" that KBOO now has gone back to was available for people to download and study.&nbsp; The new board policy manual that has been put in abeyance is all I can find, let's put the old one also on the website so everyone can understand what the operating rules and procedures now are.&nbsp; Please especially clarify the part about human relations and employment policies.</P>
<P>It also would be good for the corporation if meeting minutes of the Governance committee or Governance/Personell committee, or whatever version(s) exists or have existed now be made public by posting on the website, as the proceedings of these meetings are public meetings, and&nbsp;are relevant and important for the members to be informed about.&nbsp; And if we could have all of the board of director meeting minutes that have been approved by the board posted in a easy to find manner, that would be&nbsp;helpful.</P>
<P>Oh, and one more thing.&nbsp; It would be very useful to the membership if a list was posted of all the names of people who submitted an application to be a candidate for the board of directors for the upcoming election.&nbsp; You can explain of course the process by which the nominating committee is proceeding to vet each candidate, who is on the committee, and how things proceed from here.&nbsp; All in the name of serving the members, and in the name of transparency of course.</P>

Submitted by Ed Kraus on Tue, 07/23/2013 - 9:06am

<P>I was contacted by Board Member Mark Sherman, regarding my post asking for specific responsible actions from KBOO.&nbsp;</P>
<P>I can report today that partial progress has been made.&nbsp; Board of Director meeting minutes that have been formally approved by the board are now posted, and the big red type announcement of the next board meeting is updated.&nbsp; Thank you.&nbsp; And notice was posted of the removal of a Director at the July 15th meeting, and of the change in board policy manual.&nbsp; However, this is incomplete as I will detail below.</P>
<P>There is no mention of the change in duties and authority of the Executive Director.&nbsp; Members and Volunteers might want to know who is currently empowered to make decisions on behalf of KBOO.</P>
<P>It is inadequate to say no electronic version of the old policy manual is available.&nbsp; Scan the document and put the scan on the website as a pdf.&nbsp; It's impossible for members to understand what is being argued about by the board without access to the core documents themselves.</P>
<P>There are no minutes posted at all that I can find for the Personell Committee, the Governance Committee, or any of the variations thereof.&nbsp; The bylaws Article VIII section 9 require that all committee meetings are public meetings, and minutes will be made available.&nbsp; The website is the best place to make minutes available.&nbsp; The only committees posting minutes (and only sometimes) are Program and Finance.&nbsp; As a director was removed for doing harm to the corporation by disclosing information,&nbsp;information that the removed director insists was public already due to it being discussed in a public meeting of the Governance committee, minutes of the committee meetings are indeed relevant.</P>
<P>And nowhere is information regarding the composition of the nominating committee, election date, who has filed papers to run for the board, etc.&nbsp;posted.&nbsp; Since the Nominating Committee consists of directors, and&nbsp;directors serving on the board have been openly in conflict with people who have announced they are running, this lack of transparency could suggest some sort of improper actions behind closed doors.&nbsp; For that reason the entire nomination process should be open and transparent, from disclosing the entire list of people who submitted applications, through giving responsibility for tallying votes both mailed and at the membership meeting to a completely independent auditor.&nbsp;</P>
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