by Daniel Borgström
On Tuesday, July 29th, I went to the Richmond City Council meeting where the council was to make a decision on a proposed expansion of the Chevron Refinery. The City Planning Commission approved the expansion, but with conditions that Chevron didn’t want to accept. So Chevron appealed it to the City Council.
Continue reading Chevron, the Richmond City Council and the Morning Mix
Originally posted August 3, 2014
Berkeley- At the Pacifica National Board’s July 31st meeting, noticed by chair Wilkinson as a “special meeting” due to “urgent business” and “a report being prepared by CFO Salvador”, the rogue board majority pushed through a massive change in the executive director job description. The rewrite by board member Lydia Brazon, who has been a fixture in Pacifica’s dysfunctional personnel processes for the last 15 years, claimed to prioritize fundraising, but actually removed supervisory authority over the CFO and all accounting and financial staff from the executive director. The old and new job descriptions can be found here and here. Continue reading Help Not Wanted
Communities for a Better Environment Richmond campaign coordinator and KPFA host Andres Soto speaks at the San Francisco Labor Council about the programming he and his Morning Mix colleagues were creating for KPFA and Pacifica on July 14, 2014.
The enclosed planning notes were submitted by former PNB vice-chair and former chair of Pacifica’s election committee suggesting reforms for a cost-effective election process for Pacifica to repair the governance crisis caused by postponing and then refusing to move ahead with elections in 2014. Pacifica is likely to experience governance collapse at the end of the year, as several stations no longer have “runner-up” delegates left and would by default resort to self-perpetuating boards, ending the democratic experiment that began in 1999, after rumors of station sales were confirmed by the release of emails in July of 1999. Continue reading How To Have An Election
Originally posted July 31, 2014
Berkeley-Pacifica Radio, the nation’s oldest and first listener-sponsored noncommercial radio network finds itself on a precipice as FM radio moves steadily towards increased digital distribution. The network’s Sound Exchange discount, which permits the financially troubled network to stream copyrighted music on the Internet , will not continue for long if Pacifica does not recover grant funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The 2006 Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) established Sound Exchange to collect fees and discount programs available to CPB-funded stations insulate the network from additional operating costs. Continue reading The Day The Music Died
Originally posted July 25, 2014
Berkeley- At the Pacifica National Board meeting on Thursday night, the final seven bylaws amendments proposed by national board members bit the dust, with only one surviving of the dozen proposed – an amendment that would allow a 2nd bylaws amendment process later this year (because the first one was so successful). Continue reading Running Round A Hamster Wheel
Originally posted July 20, 2014
Berkeley- Houston listener representative Hank Lamb has introduced a motion to the Pacifica National Board to remove Margy Wilkinson as the PNB board chair and two-time interim executive director of Pacifica Radio. Lamb excoriated Wilkinson in an email he made public saying she had abused her authority as chair, withheld documents from the board, forced illegitimate votes, and “blackmailed the board”. Lamb also stated “Our majority is surreptitiously holding secret meetings to determine outcomes of official meetings in advance and illegitimately controlling agendas and acting in concert to prevent equal Directors a fair opportunity to have their issues discussed and solutions found”. Continue reading Removing The Unelected Chair
Originally posted July 15, 2014
Berkeley-The Pacifica Radio Network is entering its second week with no paid executive director. There is no board meeting scheduled to select one, leaving unelected retiree board chair Margy Wilkinson doing a dilettante job as the network struggles to survive. At the KPFA local station board meeting on July 12, director Jose Luis Fuentes, an employee of former corporate counsel Dan Siegel, said the volunteer ED was a “cost-saving measure” and suggested the job would not be filled until “there was less bad PR”. Fuentes previously made the motion to terminate the executive director (twice) and the job has been filled by two individuals for three intervals over the past 4 months, none for longer than 10 weeks. Continue reading No ED Until The Bad PR Stops
Originally posted July 11, 2014
Berkeley-The rogue majority on the Pacifica National Board declined to appoint an executive director at Thursday nights board meeting. In fact, they declined to talk about the executive director vacancy at all. Unelected board chair Wilkinson, after failing to receive a majority of votes as chair of the board in February, has inserted herself into the executive director position at Pacifica twice in the last four months. The board also failed to discuss or provide any information on the attempt to relocate WBAI’s antenna to the Conde Nast building, the replacement of KPFT’s declining transmitter before the 5th temporary stay runs out in November, the now 18-month delay in Corporation for Public Broadcasting funds, the erroneous tax returns filed in 2013, and the audit that has not begun 9 1/2 months after the close of the last fiscal year. Continue reading The DIY Employer
Originally posted July 6, 2014
Berkeley-The purges continue at Pacifica Radio. The latest victim is KPFK/KPFA interim general manager Richard Pirodsky, a 30-year radio operations veteran who was summarily removed from his position by the departing interim executive director Bernard Duncan, who executed Pirodsky’s termination in his last three minutes on the job. In the last week, the organization has seen the departures of the payroll and benefits manager, the administrative manager, the KPFK manager and the ED, with three of the four positions lacking a successor. This chaos creates a huge vacuum in an organization whose New York station is in crisis, whose public funding has been cut off, and which has not produced financial statements in months. Continue reading And Then There Were None
