By order of the Blue Ribbon Panel, nominations for the 2003 do-over election were due in your office on May 28. In the same order, the panel directed the ballots to be mailed to the membership by June 14. That’s four days from now, Tim, so surely you know by now who is running in each of the four districts.
My question is, why not let the world know who is running? Why not give the voters some time to research, debate, and make an informed decision? Surely the BRP didn’t tell you to keep all of this a secret, did they? What about actually using the USAT website for more than a place to post sponsor logos?
And while you are at it, why not share some information on the election as a whole? Aren’t there going to be two separate ballots, one for the election and one for the proposed amendments to the bylaws? Don’t the voters have more time on the second than they do on the first? How do you plan to mail the ballots? When should annual members expect to see their ballots? What should a member do if his or her ballot doesn’t arrive?
Should anyone else be interested in the same sort of questions, Tim’s e-mail address is tim@usatriathlon.org.
In case anyone is in the same situation as me----I am fairly new to triathlon and just did my online membership with USAT on 6/3/04 (i.e. status=‘Pending’). I asked this question via USAT website:
“If my USAT membership is pending as of 6/3/04, will I receive a voting ballot for the new election?”
and received this response the same day:
“Probably not. If you haven’t received one by June 18, please request a ballot from Lora Lantz at lora@usatriathlon.org.”
B.J. Hoeptner Evans, USA Triathlon Communications and Media Relations Manager
(719) 597-9090, ext. 105 / fax: (719) 597-2121
My P.S. I appreciate the opinions and posts by people such as Dan & Lew, which have led me to become involved by membering-up and voting.
I think you’d be surprised who lurks on this site. Nonetheless, I should have checked the USAT site one last time before writing the letter. My apologies to Tim (to whom I sent a copy of the original letter, and to whom I will send this message as well). Note: The USAT website still does not provide information on how the ballots will be mailed, still has no information on the separate ballot for the proposed bylaw amendments, still has no instructions on what to do if you do not receive your ballot(s) by a certain date, still has no reminder that neither of the ballots will be available by any other source than by mail, still has no information on the different schedules for return of the two ballots (one of which, the election for the board, must be turned around rather quickly or it will arrive too late), still has no information on why one ballot (the board election) will be numbered for extra protection and the other (the proposed bylaw amendments) will not. And so on.
“Note: The USAT website still does not provide information”
the one element to your criticism to which i take gentle exception is this: tim’s been working very hard on all this, one guy doing two or three jobs, as you and i both know. there is a communications director at USAT. i understand that your open letter was to tim, and this is because tim is the acting E.D. i suspect you and i both realize, however, that the proper person to which work ought to be delegated is b.j. hoeptner.
i write this because i think it would be wrong to lay any lack of communication at tim’s feet. it’s b.j.'s job, all the copy for both ballots has already been written (as you know), it should be fairly simple to have this up on USAT’s site forthwith.
once i see all of it i’ll also post it on slowtwitch. one thing i do have is all the copy going on the ballot regarding the petition. i don’t see any reason why that can’t go up on slowtwitch now, so i’ll make sure no copy’s been changed, and then i’ll get crackin’.
Lew’s points are well taken. As many twists and turns as there are in this mess so far, I have yet to receive one direct communication from my governing body about the essential elements involved, let alone the finer points, save for the May 19th “Call For USAT Board Nomination’s” email notice.
While it may not be Tim’s direct area of responsibility to maintain membership communication, it is ultimately his to make sure this stuff gets handled, regardless of which staff member handles the action. The questions Lew is asking are all valid.
And then, I’m wondering why USAT has not asked for members to volunteer to assist in the process. That might have added an element which could have helped return a certain level of trust.
I have often read many of the posts on the website, but until now have not felt a need to write. This thread seems to have become more of a personal attack on certain members of USAT’s staff. This disturbs me as I have knowledge of the inner workings at USAT.
It appears to me that many people who write in on this forum do not understand that these “staff members” are actual people who have been working their asses off and even more so since the sudden, questionable “resignation” of Steve Locke. The furor surrounding the re-election process/blue ribbon panel is a reflection of the incompetence of USA Triathlon’s board of directors, NOT its STAFF.
Many of you seem to forget that all of these issues you appear to have with USAT have all stemmed from procedures developed by the previous executive director and the board of directors. In case you are not aware, until Tim Yount became acting executive director, the staff had very little control over what they could actually do with their programs. Now that Tim has taken on this role, he’s working diligently to empower the staff to get creative and use its resources/ “rainy day fund” to help grow and improve programs. Which in turn will benefit all members of USAT. This process will take some time; people are too quick to point a finger at was is going wrong instead of realizing that the current staff are the ones to now clean up all this mess while they continue to try to best service the membership.
I truly do not understand this notion that the staff is trying to be so secretive and elusive with information? The staff is trying to do their jobs in the best possible way considering the situation at hand. Understand that the staff is now under direction from the blue ribbon panel and has very little control of how and when information is disseminated to the membership.
I understand that many things need to be fixed within USA Triathlon, but also consider the fact that this is an Olympic year (the second visit ever) which in reality should be viewed as a positive event for the sport of triathlon instead of focusing on the negative. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was USA Triathlon, but now USAT has a great opportunity to change for the better.
Your point is well-taken; the staff does work its buns off for the federation. But that’s not what we were talking about. We were noting, and lamenting, a persistent trend of non-disclosure. is it your contention, for example, that the Blue Ribbon Panel is telling Tim and BJ what can be posted on the website? That when no information at all has been posted about the ballot on the proposed bylaw amendments, this results from an order by the panel? If that’s so, say the word and we’ll transfer our ire to the office of USOC counsel - who, in case you didn’t know, is really running the show. The blue ribbon panel doesn’t functionally exist any longer.
“We were noting, and lamenting, a persistent trend of non-disclosure. is it your contention, for example, that the Blue Ribbon Panel is telling Tim and BJ what can be posted on the website? That when no information at all has been posted about the ballot on the proposed bylaw amendments, this results from an order by the panel?”
No that is not my contention…but again, you are insinuating that the information you are “waiting” for to be posted on the USA Triathlon website is PURPOSELY being withheld from members by staff members. My post was trying to explain to people that the staff is busy doing their daily routine- i.e. their assigned jobs- AS WELL AS dealing with all the additional information being demanded on an hourly/daily basis by candidates/USOC/members/BOD, etc. There is currently no one working for the sole purpose of posting information on the website relating to the current fiasco. The posts I have read infer there is a duplicitous nature being exhibited by staffers. Truth be told, the staffers probably are less entangled in the daily grind of this mess than the average Slowtwitch reader. Teams still need to go to Worlds, membership cards still need to be processed, mail has to be answered and phones picked up. Why don’t people ask the staff what is going on instead of listening to all this drivel and supposition everyday? Just a thought…like I said previously, PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE… (I am sure whomever gets elected will appreciate that consideration given to them after stepping in to the current quagmire)
I am from Canada, I am not a member of USAT nor will I ever be (maybe one day memberships when I race - that is it). I however empathise with the plight that the staff of the USAT has been under for the past few months. I have been through situations were senior management has left abruptly, the board is under siege, you are asked to do 7 million things extra things while still keeping the machine running and getting races up and going. I would imagine that this time of year is normally the busy season as races are getting set up for the summer and the chaos of the new election can’t be helping.
I do not think the frustration being voiced by Lew and company is not a personal attack on any staff members. It is similar in genesis to the frustration that the staff is feeling. They want to get things going, they want clarity on what they can or can’t do. I guarantee you that if everyone takes a deep breath and understand that everyone is doing everything reasonably possible that things will work much smoother in the end.
Lew,
I don’t know how USAT runs their website but it is frequently run by a third party who must be sent what you want put up and they must then post it. This is in a best case situation a half day process. Often, if you are a smaller website that isn’t a key client of the service provider it can take as many as two days (I know that it only takes the designer 5 minutes, but isn’t beaucracy wonderful). I have multi-national clients that will send press releases to their web host a day in advance just so it can be posted to the website at the same time they release it to the press. If the copy was just approved, give them a day or two.
Sally - The entire national organization has tried to ignore, duck, string-out, and rope-a-dope this initiative petition from the time it landed on their desks - which, by the way, was over four months ago. It’s now going out by ballot on Monday, but we haven’t seen peep one about it on the USAT website since its one and only mention back in March. If the defense for that is “we have more important things to do”, then someone needs a lesson in prioritization. From a process point of view, NOTHING is more important than a constitutional question.
Your view is eminently balanced and reasonable - in this case, however, it is also wrong. The national staff and most of the current board do not want the amendments proposed by this petition to pass, and because they are afraid that it will, their strategy has been to ignore, delay, and obfuscate ad infinitum. The mailing should have come within 30 days of the petition’s receipt . . . but it’s been four months already and if not for a full-court press by Dan and me, including hiring a prestigious law firm and threatening suit in California, no ballot would ever have been sent to the membership.
As for the “normal” delay for posting information on a website, you have to be kidding. Four months is “normal”?!! My wife does our website (www.cooltri.com) all by herself, in addition to all of our other businesses, and it takes her no more than ten minutes to post even the most complicated sets of results and photos. If this is the best we can expect from this sub-contractor (or this member of USAT’s staff), it’s time to move in a different direction.
I have been reading posts far longer than I have been making them, but I’ve got to beleive that you guys are trying to make controversy where there is none. It is my understanding that USAT can not make major policy decisions/changes without board approval. It is also my understanding that this petition came at a time when USAT’s board was out of commission due to the much discussed lawsuit. Therefore, USAT has not had the power to act on the petition until now. Where is the wrong doing here?
USAT’s staff does not deserve to be dragged through the mud because of a huge mess that the board created. If the board doesn’t make a mess, then this petition would have been taken care of 4 months ago, but under the circumstances, the USAT staff is doing all they can.
For the past couple of years, Triathlantic has been openly courted USAT, to sanction some of our races with them. While some members of Mid-Atlantic USAT have tried to keep us out, I have actually been considering sanctioning a few of our larger tri’s and du’s in 2005. We went and sanctioned our Steelman Duathlon this year as an experiment to see if this would be beneficial to all parties involved. Considering all the problems that have been arising the past few months and lurking on many message boards and reading all the comments and listening to many athletes at races about their thoughts about what is going on, I and i’m sure other RD’s are going to reconsider whether to sanction in 2005. There are many other affordable options for insurance, such as the insurance that we have used for 17 years and as I have seen first hand , sanctioning does not guarantee an immediate increase in numbers, but at times might have the opposite affect.
Bottom line, I do not support what is going on with USAT and after reading the emails posted by JJ on many sites and hearing from athletes in the Mid-Atlantic area about what they believe the ultimate goal of some members of the suing party might be, I will have trouble giving money to an organization that is in such dissarray and the way it is perceived, many self serving board members or wanna be board members
It is clear to me that I owe you an apology. I also owe an apology to any USAT staff member who may have taken my comments as a “…personal attack.” That was not my intent but since it was taken that way the effect was the same. I repeat my intention was not to attack anyone, but rather in my simple minded way, point out the frustrations being on the receiving end as a fee paying member of USAT.
The issue is what it is, and must be dealt with. I can’t help who did what, when, where, or why. But there is something staring us all in the face right now and needs to be handled up front and with as much information coming from those who remain at USAT as possible.
The fact that I have not received any communication with an explanation of what is going on from my “…governing body (note that does not name an individual)” tells me something seriously wrong is going on. I would expect someone within the ranks of USAT to offer up some guidance or explanation of the situation in order to maintain positive membership involvement. This is not the time to sit back and say “…we are too busy with other items…” , or use that as an excuse for why the people who pay for USAT’s existence are kept in the dark. Excuse me but there is little else of importance for the future of USAT than the upcoming vote(s). Trust will be lost or gained as a result of the process as much as the results.
This has nothing to do with throwing out personal attacks. It has everything to do with questioning who is running the show, and how, and therefore the viability of an organization I continue to support with my annual membership fee, personal funds spent to sponsor, support, and promote events, personal time devoted to volunteering with new event development, and crossing the finish line a dozen times or so each season. Some of us are busy too thank you.