[Kzyxtalk] Structural change: Requre Board to Communicate with Members

[John Sakowicz]

You have my vote, King. 

----- Original Message -----

From: "King Collins" <king at greenmac.com> 
To: "kzyxtalk" <kzyxtalk at lists.mcn.org> 
Sent: Tuesday, March 21, 2017 4:53:03 PM 
Subject: [Kzyxtalk] Structural change: Requre Board to Communicate with Members 

To KZYX Members and Board 

Re. Structural Change 

It seems to be very hard to get this across: 

Years of watching and recording events as KZYX board members come and go, has convinced me that: 

It is not all that important which person is elected to the board, whether that person is a person of good character and or appears to be interested in the station. There have been many good people, and I think of most of them as friends. 

All those on the board, with few exceptions, over the years have been a good people, caring people, fine people. Yet somehow these good people just flounder along, seldom ask the right questions and go with whatever prevailing wind blows through the boardroom. And the same centrist hierarchical wind has prevailed since KZYX was founded by Sean Donavon, or certainly since the time I was on the board 

The only way that things will change in the direction of more control by the local membership, by the local people, is a Structural Change in the way the board is organized. In particular KZYX, which defines itself as a member controlled organization should have a requirement, a structural requirement, a bylaw that REQUIRES board members to interact, frequently and regularly with the members who elected them. 

That has never been tried in any serious way. If board members had to present themselves, and their plans, not just once but regularly, in front of the members, those with good ideas will have a chance, and those who are weak or ineffective will reveal themselves. 

Whereas in the current process the board meets in secret and the public never get to know what board members are like and how each contributes to the discussion or even what is discussed. Who knows what happened? Those who are weak and ineffective, or tired, or just going along---may very well continue forever and nothing will change, and indeed nothing has changed. (See The Secret Life of KZYX, written in 2005, when I posited the existence of "Centrist" and "Egalitarian" tendencies.) 

Act Of The Membership by means of a Ballot Initiative. 

For membership control, it comes down to how such structural change can be accomplished. There are other ways than electing individual board members. There is something called an Act Of The Membership, which can be a Ballot Initiative, passed by a majority of the voting members, establishing a new bylaw which to require the board to interact directly with the membership (as specified in the bylaw, perhaps a regular radio show, opening the closed board list serv, a public email listserv, or other means). 

That would be a structural change that directly challenges the current process of secret meetings, closed board listserv and very infrequent board meetings with limited opportunity for public interaction and refusal of board members to even answer questions from the floor. 

For a Ballot Initiative To Require Board Members To Communicate Regularly With Members 

--king collins 

P.S. The Ballot Initiative can be forced (to be put on the next election ballot) by a petition signed by 5% of the members. 
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