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Meeting Improprieties
Meeting Improprieties
The Board of Trustees and Community Board usually fail to post notices, agendas, or minutes of their meetings. When asked for this information, they've either ignored the requests or flatly refused to provide the information. Not only is this secrecy wrong, it's a violation of Texas State Law.
One board meeting attendee wrote, "At the last meeting Monday, there was vague mention of changing [board] meetings to Wednesdays. [But] None of the board members responded to station volunteers' requests to be told the time and date of the next meeting."
In August 1998, Michael Bluejay hand-delivered one letter to the board asking for meeting minutes and other information, and sent another letter via certified mail to the board asking for the same information. The board never provided the information, or even acknowledged receipt of the letters. The board also refused to routinely post minutes to KOOP's email list when asked to do so. And finally, the board has gone into executive session (excluding observers) several times without having the executive session listed on the agenda.
Not only has the board refused to provide minutes of meetings, but when member Ricardo Guerrero posted summaries of meetings to KOOP's email list, Community Board member Paul Odekirk tried to have Ricardo prohibited from doing so, using the excuse that the summaries were not official minutes. (Of course, Ricardo never claimed that they were official minutes, and if the board had bothered to post any minutes of its meetings, then Ricardo wouldn't have had to post his summaries in the first place.)
Here is a very abbreviated list of these problems (there are many more):
Excessive
Absences, and Failure to Meet Quorum
It is important for board members to attend board meetings because a minimum number of trustees must be present in order to legally transact any business. This minimum number is called a "quorum". Under normal rules, the board would need 2/3 of its members present at a board meeting (four out of six trustees). However, the board sloppily rewrote the bylaws and inadvertently included a requirement that ALL SIX trustees be present. Further, they stipulated that any motion requires a UNANIMOUS VOTE of all six members. However, they board has been ignoring their own rule and going with the 2/3 rule.
But even with the 2/3 rule, the board has often failed to meet quorum, and several BoT meetings have been canceled when BoT members failed to attend. It is particularly disappointing that some BoT members do not take their positions as trustees seriously enough that they're willing to even attend all board meetings. BoT member Gavino Fernandez in particular rarely attended meetings. He was not present at any of the five BoT meetings I [Michael Bluejay] attended (or tried to attend -- one was canceled due to lack of quorum).
One meeting that was canceled due to lack of quorum was the 6/8/98 BoT meeting. I tried to attend to find out why the board had not responded to a proposal I had submitted, but I discovered that there were no BoT members at the station at the designated meeting time. The board also failed to meet quorum for its next meeting, on 6/15/98, and for other meetings. After the court hearing in which a judge ordered the board to have a new Community Board election held within 45 days, despite having a clear need to prioritize making decisions about the election as per the judge's orders, two board members did not attend the 1/14/99 meeting, and one was an hour late.
On 8-12-98, I sent a certified letter to Board President Teresa Taylor, requesting certain information, including a list of which board meetings were canceled due to a lack of quorum. Although the board is required by law to provide this information, they have not done so.
Aida Franco has missed every single board meeting since early January 1999 when the court ordered the board to allow Friends to add two of our members to the board. In addition to Aidia, at least one additional board member has ben absent for the last four out of five meetings.
Here is a very abbreviated list of these problems (there are many more):
In addition to failing to meet quorum, KOOP boards have sometimes voted without having quorum, which violates both KOOP's bylaws and the laws of the State of Texas. Here's a RealAudio example of community board chair Eduardo Vera accepting a vote without having quorum (using the excuse that they had quorum at the beginning of the meeting until people left, so it didn't matter if they didn't have quorum at the time the vote was taken).
Further, when the board changed KOOP's bylaws (which they did without seeking the input of the membership), they did so sloppily and worded the quorum rules to require a unanimous vote of all six trustees. Obviously, nearly no decisions have been made by all the trustees, especially since it is extremely rare for all trustees to attend board meetings.
Incidentally, the board has ignored
multiple, written, legal requests for documents, including a list of
which meetings were canceled due to lack of quorum, and a current
copy of the bylaws.
In addition to not meeting when they're supposed to, the board also does the opposite and meets when they're NOT supposed to. One example was a surprise meeting held on Thursday, Oct. 22nd '98 for the purpose of extending the community board election process without considering input from the Community Board Election Committee (which wasn't scheduled to meet until later that evening). Another example was the infamous "meeting" at which the decision to cancel Pacifica Network News was made. It was held over the telephone on a conference call, and members could not observe or participate. There may have been other unannounced meetings that we don't know about.
As another example, someone once posted
to the KOOP email list to ask about the new Board meeting schedule.
Another KOOPer replied, "At the last meeting Monday, there was vague
mention of changing meetings to Wednesdays. None of the board members
responded to station volunteers' requests to be told the time and
date of the next meeting. Good luck in your quest to find out."
As required by State Law, tradition, and
common sense, KOOP is supposed to have an annual General Membership
meeting. The trustees promised to call one, but never did. We feel
this is more evidence that the trustees simply don't care what KOOP's
membership has to say.
KOOP holds monthly stationwide meetings for all people involved in the station. (They're also called "programmers' meetings", because the majority of people involved in the station have radio programs or do other volunteer work for KOOP.) Although trustees are not required to attend these meetings, one would think that the trustees should feel a responsibility to do so anyway, since these meetings are the best opportunity for them to hear from the majority of people involved in the day-to-day operations of the station, and the best opportunity for the trustees to address these same people. Further, station volunteers frequently have questions about the station's direction or board decisions which only the board can answer. However, it's not uncommon for most or even all trustees to fail to attend stationwide meetings. The message this sends to us is that the trustees simply don't care to interact with the rest of the station. On a similar note, the Special Membership meeting that we called in the summer of 1998 was poorly attended by the trustees.