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Re: Calling Alan Geraldi [GatorDawg] [ In reply to ]
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Gatordawg,

Not at all, we are very cool! I hope you do encourage more debate and it's my job as a Board Member to respond as best I can.

Jack
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Re: Calling Alan Geraldi [ironjack] [ In reply to ]
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Can you elaborate on the deliberations any? Who will be there as interested parties, and neutral (hopefully unbiased) parties? Is there a time frame for these deliberations? Answer what you can Jack, I'll understand if can't go into specifics.



KEEP ON TRI-NG
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Re: Calling Alan Geraldi [GatorDawg] [ In reply to ]
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TriDawg,

All I can tell you it will involve all the present Board, those going off the Board as of Dec 31, 2003 and the losing candidates that filed the complaint. More then that I am not at liberty to say. Hope you understand. Meeting will take place later this week. There are no neutral parties in this but all those directly affected by the 3 disputed elections are recused and can only listen and not vote. Those having a say are the Board members who were NOT elected this past November, the Elites now on the Board and possibly me as my election was not challenged and I had no input into the way the election was conducted. However that has not been fully determined at this point.

Thanks,

Jack
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Re: Calling Alan Geraldi [ironjack] [ In reply to ]
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"possibly me as my election was not challenged"

as far as i can tell, nobody yet has challenged your right to vote. i can see an argument on both sides. i can even see that you could be allowed to vote in the first vote (is the protest upheld?) and in the second (the remedy in the protested regions), but not in the third, if there is a third (extend the new election to all the regions).

the one thing i REALLY hope happens, it would be exceptionally chickenshit if this were a secret vote. i hope everyone is allowed to stay on the conference call and hear the vote.

Dan Empfield
aka Slowman
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Re: Calling Alan Geraldi [sig] [ In reply to ]
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Bob:

Appears to be a simple misunderstanding. The e-mail that went out pointed out that the minutes were in error and aksed people to confirm or deny that they voted for, against or abstained for the (1) early website posting; (2) collection of ballots by the candidates. The directors responded back reiterating how they had voted, showing that what was reflected in the minutes was incorrect. Hope that explains the goose / duck distinction.

Alan
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Re: Calling Alan Geraldi [Slowman] [ In reply to ]
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Dan,

Think about it, the Complaintants although unable to vote, will be allowed to sit in on the entire proceeding. So.....

Jack
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Re: Calling Alan Geraldi [ironjack] [ In reply to ]
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"Think about it, the Complaintants although unable to vote, will be allowed to sit in on the entire proceeding. So..."

is that true? i hope it is. i don't know. i could just somehow see everyone in on this meeting until it comes time to vote, and then everyone being asked to hang up except those who're voting. i've seen cases before where the individual board members refuse to say what position they took in an important decision. call me paranoid of you want. but...

Dan Empfield
aka Slowman
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Re: Calling Alan Geraldi [Slowman] [ In reply to ]
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Tell you what, they have us hang up and I'll scream all the way to this web site.

Jack
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Re: Calling Alan Geraldi [ironjack] [ In reply to ]
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"Tell you what, they have us hang up and I'll scream all the way to this web site."

that's what i want to hear!

Dan Empfield
aka Slowman
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Re: Calling Alan Geraldi [GatorDawg] [ In reply to ]
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Hi Gatordawg-

Since there has only been one Board member posting on this discussion, I wanted to post as well to offer an alternative view. While I am no longer technically a board member (my term ended Dec 31, 2003), I have been on the board for the duration of this current "problem" (unlike Jack, who was not in office last year).

Basically, USAT has elections every year, and for some reason this year the losing candidates were not happy with the way the elections were run. Also for some reason, they did not bring up their issues with the election practices until AFTER the election had already been run and the votes counted. While I may agree in part that the election is not run the best way possible, I have serious problems with the intentions of the parties who are bringing forth this petition. They knew the groundrules, and if they had such a problem with them (since they have been the same for years and years), they should have brought it up BEFORE the elections were contested. Doing it now just seems like sour grapes.

The real reason I wanted to post is because of your question about the resolution adding Valerie Gattis to the ballot. Under USAT bylaws, there is a group called the Nominating Committee that looks at all of the candidates for each region, and selects 2 based on their resumes. Others can be added to the ballot in a petition, meaning collected a certain number of signatures (I can't recall the number off the top of my head). In this past year, the Nominating Committee consisted of Ray Plotecia, Brad Davison, and Fred Sommer. For reasons unfathomable to most of us, the committee decided to place 2 other candidates on the ballot for the at-large position over our sitting USAT President (who is also on the ITU women's committee), Valerie Gattis. There is a rule that says an incument BOD member must be placed on the ballot, and that is how Karen Buxton got her at-large spot. Valerie was also an incumbent, but the committee decided that since she had represented a different region in the last election, she was not an incumbent by their standards. So they decided that the resume of Mike Greer, a race director from Texas, had a better resume than Valerie. The thing that makes it interesting is that Ray Plotecia, the chair of the nominating committee, had been the USAT BOD president the year before Valerie, but did not have the support to retain this position (you can see the conflict of interest here). And Brad, the other member of the nominating committee who voted for Mike Greer over Valerie (Fred Sommer did NOT vote this way), is also a race director from Texas. So another BOD member sought to remedy the situation by this resolution (since incumbents were supposed to be placed on the ballot). Valerie could have gotten a spot by petition, but did not have time to do so because of how late she found out that she did not get a spot from the nominating committee.

In my opinion, the nominating committee should be abolished, because there are not a set of clear-cut guidelines as to how candidates are selected. I personally think that this is a bigger "scandal" than the way the election was run. In a perfect technological world, the election will be entirely online, and candidates will not be allowed to collect votes. But think about it...if the members had such a problem with candidates collecting votes, why did they hand them to the candidate in the first place???

Bottom line, the election was carried out according to an established set of rules that all of the candidates knew about beforehand.

Amanda Pagon, BOD member 2002-2003
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Re: Calling Alan Geraldi [bigfins] [ In reply to ]
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"hey should have brought it up BEFORE the elections were contested. Doing it now just seems like sour grapes."

i don't think it's a simple as that. there were plenty of people squawking about these election practices. however, it appears that the three elites (of which you were one) along with gattis and girand, plus at least one more, outvoted those who thought that having unsigned, filled-out ballots collected by candidates and their workers was a bad idea.

i wrote about this a year ago. PLENTY of candidates and potential candidates have a problem with this, however they're not on the board, and have no vote in this. perhaps you're right. perhaps the candidates running SHOULD have a vote in this. but they don't.

mandy, it isn't 4 disgruntled candidates who were wronged. it was 47,000 annual members who were wronged. it isn't 4 who need redress, it's those of us who own the federation. and we will get redress. this election will be re-run. the ONLY question is, will it be re-run because the board decides to re-run it, or because a significant number of the 47,000 decide to re-run it. that's the question we'll have answered by friday morning.

several of those on your side have said, "yes, okay, the practices were bad, let's change them before the next election." for those who think that way, too late. you had your chance to institute proper election practices in june. you had a former head of the federation, the co-chair of the legal committee, the same guy who helped rewrite the bylaws so that you and the other elites could get USOC funding, weigh in on this at your request. he warned you this would happen. now it's happening.

yes, there are sour grapes here. but the sour grapes belong to those who were warned this would happen, chose a really, really bad set of election practices anyway, and are surprised that they aren't allowed to get away with it.

my question for the elites is, did all three of you vote for the election practices used this past year? and if so, why? i think you guys have some 'splainin' to do to the other 47,000 among us.

Dan Empfield
aka Slowman
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Re: Calling Alan Geraldi [bigfins] [ In reply to ]
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" . . . Valerie could have gotten a spot by petition, but did not have time to do so because of how late she found out that she did not get a spot from the nominating committee."

Actually, that's not true. When I heard Val had been shunned by the nominating committee, I personally gathered over 60 signatures of current annual members on a nominating petition for her (30 is the minimum) and sent it to her well ahead of the meeting in question. When I later heard of her "nomination" by resolution of the BOD, I was puzzled why she chose to rely on a controversial method for "nomination", rather than the one clearly outlined in USAT's bylaws.

Lew
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Re: Calling Alan Geraldi [Slowman] [ In reply to ]
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Wow, this is great fun...

As for Dan's comments...I think it is a bit of a stretch to say 47,000 members were wronged. How many people actually voted? How many people, when they pay their 25 or 30 dollars, actually care who sits on the board? As someone who did this job for 2 years, I wish that more people would care and get out there and vote. The reality is, a lot FEWER people would have voted if the candidates were not allowed to get out and campaign. And that is what this is really about. If candidates were not allowed to hand out ballots, then people could sit in their house and just be an entity on their computer in some newsgroup, and hope people got name recognition in that manner. The way it is now, the winning candidate is most likely the one who got out there to the tri-group meetings and the races and made their presence known. I do NOT support the collecting of ballots, and if you reread what Gatordawg copied into this thread from the minutes, it explicity says that candidates are not supposed to collect ballots. The thing that Ray and Brad objected to was getting out there and handing out ballots. They also objected to colletecting them, but as far as I know we did not vote in favor of that.

As for Lew's message, I did not explain what I was trying to say very well. A person can get onto the ballot by petition, and I asked Valerie why she didn't just do that. But I guess not everyone gets on by petition, just those who get the most signatures. There was a concern because of the way the nominating process had gone so far that she would not be told how many signatures she needed to get to be guaranteed to be on the ballot, and would be conveniently left off. She also believed (as did several others of us) that the letter of the law was that incumbents should be put on the ballot. Nowhere does it say that a person must run in the same region to be considered an incumbent.

I hope that this discussion stirs more people to take an active interest in the elections to come!

Mandy
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Re: Calling Alan Geraldi [bigfins] [ In reply to ]
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Mandy,

Thanks for offering another point of view. Here in lies one of the problems. In the minutes, it stated the candidates were not to handle others ballots, yet the vote right after that, stated it was overturned. Overturned to what? That is my question. My opinion of this whole sorted mess, is that the minutes do not accurately reflect what transpired. I'd still like to know what was in the board packets in regards to the bylaw changes.

As for incumbent, you can find many definitions for the term, but I would say the general usage of that term refers to a specified office. To me, it would mean running as a BOD member for the same region. Let me give you an example. Congress. It is made up of Representatives and Senators. If a Representative runs for a Senate seat, they are not considered the incumbent, they would only be considered an incumbent if they were running for the same Representative seat again. So, I can see how the nominating committee would not consider Val Gattis an incumbent if she was running for a spot other than the one she had been serving.

It seems to me that the bylaws of the entire BOD should be looked at and evaluated by people other than the board members. Because, from where I sit, it seems most everyone on the board has an agenda, be it intentional or not, and wants to vote for what is best for them and not the greater whole. It really is rather sad to see. I think greater disclosure of what goes on at these meetings should be in order too. I will say this, as a USAT member, I don't want my money being spent on litigation of an election that can in no way insure it's integrity, whether it followed the bylaws or not. The other real kicker is, that the board was warned, and for whatever reasons they had, chose to ignore this. On this point Dan is right on, and it's time to pay the piper!

I surely hope all of the board members have the integrity to stand up and do the right, honorable thing here.



KEEP ON TRI-NG
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Re: Calling Alan Geraldi [GatorDawg] [ In reply to ]
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In Reply To:
Mandy,

Thanks for offering another point of view. Here in lies one of the problems. In the minutes, it stated the candidates were not to handle others ballots, yet the vote right after that, stated it was overturned. Overturned to what? That is my question. My opinion of this whole sorted mess, is that the minutes do not accurately reflect what transpired. I'd still like to know what was in the board packets in regards to the bylaw changes.

As for incumbent, you can find many definitions for the term, but I would say the general usage of that term refers to a specified office. To me, it would mean running as a BOD member for the same region. Let me give you an example. Congress. It is made up of Representatives and Senators. If a Representative runs for a Senate seat, they are not considered the incumbent, they would only be considered an incumbent if they were running for the same Representative seat again. So, I can see how the nominating committee would not consider Val Gattis an incumbent if she was running for a spot other than the one she had been serving.

It seems to me that the bylaws of the entire BOD should be looked at and evaluated by people other than the board members. Because, from where I sit, it seems most everyone on the board has an agenda, be it intentional or not, and wants to vote for what is best for them and not the greater whole. It really is rather sad to see. I think greater disclosure of what goes on at these meetings should be in order too. I will say this, as a USAT member, I don't want my money being spent on litigation of an election that can in no way insure it's integrity, whether it followed the bylaws or not. The other real kicker is, that the board was warned, and for whatever reasons they had, chose to ignore this. On this point Dan is right on, and it's time to pay the piper!

I surely hope all of the board members have the integrity to stand up and do the right, honorable thing here.


As a new board member I am almost rabid to hear more opinions from the athletes we represent. Please take the time to either voice your opinion in forum or to Board members directly. Personally, I ran for the BOD because I had gotten disgusted with my many years of complaints but no true help for solutions. My only agenda is to serve without a personal agenda...if that makes any sense. So speak up while there is time, the ears are listening.



Kevin Carter
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Re: Calling Alan Geraldi [bigfins] [ In reply to ]
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" If candidates were not allowed to hand out ballots, then people could sit in their house."

fair enough. but i have no problem with handing out ballots. i have a problem with collecting ballots, especially when they're unsealed. you also have a problem with this. so why did you and the other two elites vote to allow it?

" I do NOT support the collecting of ballots, and ... it explicity says that candidates are not supposed to collect ballots... as far as I know we did not vote in favor of that."

it sounds to me that you DID vote in favor of that. if you're now saying you three elites voted for a process that has gotten out of hand, and that went way beyond practices that were being explained to you, well, the three know what to do on thursday.

now, as to my 47,000, it sounds like what you're saying is that these annual members can't have their federation stolen from them if in fact they chose not to vote. yes, i wish more of them had voted. but here's my idea: if turnout is what you want, install a set of procedures to SELL the election, instead of procedures that allow the possibility for one to STEAL the election.

Dan Empfield
aka Slowman
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Re: Calling Alan Geraldi [Slowman] [ In reply to ]
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I learned about teh election early because Jim Girand, our current
western rep, is quite good about communicating with people and sends
out his own personal e-mail updates on what he has done and what the
USAT is/has been doing. In fact, Jim mentioned that he will be posting
here asking for all questions and sharing his answers and comments. He
is en route out of the country for a few days (bike ride in Europe) and
will post when he returns so his responses are timely (he has a policy
that he will respond to any USAT-related e-mail sent to him in under 24
hours).

This is a quote from SFTriGuy on this forum when he was campaigning for Jim Girand back in August. I made a search for posts by Mr. Girand and found none. Only Dan knows if he ever registered for the forum.
Re the incumbency of Ms. Gattis, in every municipality in my are that has term limited candidates, a sitting district councilman, who has served his/her limited term, can run for as an at-large position and is not considered an incumbent. I don't know California law but this is the case here.
I can understand the rd's, like Jack and Fred, wanting to be on the board to control their destiny and the elites to keep their livliehoods, but what, may I ask, is the reason and agenda of some of these board members wanting control of the past and future boards, other than an ego trip? If the benefits are that great, maybe publication of them would open the field to more candidates.

Bob Sigerson
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Re: Calling Alan Geraldi [sig] [ In reply to ]
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"but what, may I ask, is the reason and agenda of some of these board members wanting control of the past and future boards, other than an ego trip?"

i think there are a lot of motives for running for the board, some healthy, some not. i am not concerned for the future of the federation, regardless of who gets elected. yes, i have my own favorite candidates, as anyone does. but i'd be quite happy to see girand and/or gattis on the board.

i do not fear any candidate that is elected to the board freely and fairly by his constituency. i do have a fear of who'll end up on the board if anyone who's willing to get into the gutter to gain a seat determines the contents of our BOD.

Dan Empfield
aka Slowman
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