Glorious Leader misrepresents Financial problems AGAIN, Comrade Per Fagereng Demands User's Identity.

The fireworks continue to fly at Willamette Week!  Glorious Leaders continues to misrepresent Financial Woes! 

But first a reminder of Monday maybe Special Membership Meeting that doesn't appear to be advertized! 

This month there's not one, but TWO meetings:

Public Notice
KBOO Board of Directors Meetings for July 2013 Monday, July 15th, 2013, 6pm
Monday, July 29th, 2013, 6pm
20 SE 8th Avenue, Portland, OR

Why Glorious Leader predicted this!
http://savekboofromsavekboo.blogspot.com/2013/07/gorious-leader-predicts-special.html

IT IS NOT TOO LATE
We, as members, are not left without recourse. Some are now organizing aSpecial General Membership meeting (probably in July), which would have the power to rescind the terrifically expensive anti-union push, and restore transparency and participation to KBOO.  (Watch this space for details!)  We may have to move quickly on this; once the programming is gutted, the audience changes and members will leave en masse, in disgust.

If Monday is a Special Membership Meeting, we sure hope KBOO is informing members by email and on it's website!  Wouldn't want any accusations of dishonest shenanigans to get started!

This is slightly irregular and with talks about a "coup" in the air, we thought this should be spammed like all get out.  Tell your friends and fellow KBOO members!

To continue...

The Inner Party's position at Willamette Week takes a beating as it becomes clear Per Fagereng has no idea what he's talking about unless it involves cows:
 http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-20884-kboo_coup.html

7pfagereng7 

 

How does a Community Advisory Board get chosen? Pacifica Radio has elected boards. Competing CABs get voted in and out, and Pacifica is in worse shape than KBOO.
If not elected, how does a CAB get selected? Does the KBOO Board pick the leaders of a community? Or does it leave the job to an outside group? Communities have their factions. How do we choose among them?
And what is a "community"? These days we think of ethnic, racial, religious or gender groups. What about class, as in working class? That cuts across all other groups. What about a community of like-minded people? I consider myself a guy who hates war, especially warmongers in suits, and wants to know what's behind the corporate poopaganda. That's my community.
As to other public radio stations, OPB added a day to its recent pledge drive and All Classical kept its drive going on and on. OPB gets about the same portion of its budget from members as does KBOO.
Per Fagereng

Ed in Portland

Hello Per, who is a long-time programmer at KBOO.
These are the same questions you asked at meetings a week ago. Putting doubt into the minds of people that there could be a fair process, or that a truly representative CAB could be formed, might just keep people from trying in the first place.
But since you keep asking questions, I'll give three answers.
1) Any CAB is advisory only, KBOO would not be obligated to act on any recommendations (so what's so frightening about that?) In fact if you were strategizing how to keep control, you'd stand back and let KBOO form a CAB. Having a CAB can give any org cover that it's listening to public input, even if it ignores the input. I've served on CABs before in local government and have seen first hand how little power they actually have in comparison to staff.
2) CAB members are usually appointed. Usually invited by management and/or staff. It's not rocket science, and if KBOO wants advice how to do this there must be hundreds of examples from other non-profits in Portland to look to. Easy. Would any CAB be perfectly representative? Of course not. But over time members would come and go and over time the net effect would be more balanced and better than not having a CAB at all. There must be hundreds of people reading this who have served on CABs before and are wondering how this even could be an issue at KBOO!
3) Staff at the recent Program Committee meeting also tried to argue that the volunteer programmers provide sufficient feedback from their communities, so KBOO doesn't need a CAB. That's really inadequate and self-serving. That's saying that the people who are already being served (get their stuff on air) fully represent the communities of their political or ethnic background. Circular logic, it's saying for example we have some African American programmers, so we don't need to ask the African American community if we're serving their needs. I reject that as inadequate, and it also doesn't inform KBOO which communities or viewpoints we are missing completely.
What's so frightening about more feedback loops? What's so frightening about occasional input from people who don't choose to volunteer their time doing the actual radio themselves? What's so threatening about shining some light into the black hole of KBOO's governance and programming decisions?
Ed Kraus
PS ... for those still reading these comments, if you want to read a blog post from a bit earlier in this conversation, you can find it at www.kboo.fm/content/kbooatacro...

Boo Boo  • 13 hours ago

My Goodness, Per. For someone as educated as you and having been in community radio for so long, you sure should know about CABs, or at least know how to get the info. From the CPB website, http://www.cpb.org/stations/ce...
Composition of Community Advisory Boards
The station may exercise a reasonable degree of discretion in selecting advisory board members. The board should be reasonably representative of the diverse needs and interests of the communities served by the station. No individual representative of any particular group has a legal right to membership on an advisory board. Nor does the law empower any person, court, or government agency to require a station take or refrain from taking any action with respect to a station's programming or policies. The composition of the community advisory board must reflect its independent role, and may not include members of the station staff or governing body in anything other than an ex officio or administrative capacity.

To which Per replied with typical Party reasoned discourse:

7pfagereng7 • 

Who are you?

Notice the lack of response!  Comrade Per has got them stumped for sure this time!  THE INNER PARTY IS WINNING THIS WAR, COMRADES!

And over at Indymedia, where comrade bees have suddenly become lax in their duties,  Glorious Leader returns!  Though we are grateful for her leadership in this time of crisis, she seems confused about whether the crisis is real or not:

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2013/07/423996.shtml

July 19th: one day allotted to repair damage from anti-KBOO efforts.

author: Theresa Mitchell

The long-term plan to downsize and corporatize KBOO includes the production of an artificial cash crisis, smears and vilification of the Board President, an attempt to fire the entire staff, and now: feeble, intended-to-fail fund raising. Yet the resistance is making gains.

and

KBOO is suffering a cash crisis, in large part, because the 2012 Winter membership drive was cancelled by the new, brilliant and innovative management. We lost somewhere between fifty and seventy thousand dollars. However, the new management has claimed that thousands of dollars at a time will come in to replace those funds-they were to come from a huge boost in corporate underwriting. We are still waiting for these funds.

Fortunately, from decades of funding community radio in the correct manner-that is, receiving funds directly from the listeners-we still have some reserves left. 

 Actually, comments point out this "artificial crisis" has been going on for a while:

No	13.Jul.2013 20:01

---

get facts straight

link

"KBOO is suffering a cash crisis, in large part, because the 2012 Winter membership drive was cancelled by the new, brilliant and innovative management."

This is not the source of the crisis. The crisis has been going on for YEARS as KBOO has lost revenue. Staff is being paid out of surplus funds from the FEDS that KBOO no longer qualifies for and will not last forever.

And

More accuratly

13.Jul.2013 20:12

---

correction

link

"KBOO built up significant savings when it received CPB (Corp. for Pub. Broadcasting) grant money. That money is nearly gone. There is also $200k in Board Reserves that likely will be used to cover staffing in the near term."

Who needs pesky facts when we can have blind loyalty?  It's gotten the staff, er, "Inner Party" this far.  We can milk it for a little longer!   Like Per Fagereng says...uh, we're not sure what he said actually.  But it had something to do with COWS and that's good enough for us!

Solidarity!

Meresa Titchell