Berkeley – KPFA-FM has not paid property taxes to Alameda County for the last six years for the station’s studio at 1929 Martin Luther King Jr Way in Berkeley. At six years of consecutive unpaid property taxes, the County Tax Collector may seize the property for public auction and the tax collector has announced their intention to do so.

Here is a copy of the property tax statement for 1929 Martin Luther King Jr Way on file at the Alameda County Assessor’s Office. 

Here is a copy of the January 13 notice of an upcoming public auction of the 1929 Martin Luther King Jr Way property for unpaid property taxes. 

Berkeley – On January 23, an Alameda County, California courtroom decided to allow 600 members to force their late-submitted anti-democratic bylaws proposal to a referendum vote immediately at the expense of Pacifica’s membership. The January 23 decision pauses the results of the last delegate election, which 6,085 members participated in. It delays the seating of national board reps selected by newly-elected delegates and keeps the outgoing national board unwillingly frozen into place for another seven weeks. Each Pacifica member faces a bill of approximately $1.50 each for what will be the third nationwide election in little more than a year. Ballots are expected to go out in mid-February. 

This publication had previously suggested that Pacifica members would be well-advised to simply ignore these bylaws ballots should they receive them. But we are now changing that advice. On further review of this ill-advised proposal, we strongly recommend a loud and decisive “NO” vote. We will talk a bit about why below. 

Berkeley – When we last wrote, the Pacifica National Board had voted yes on the anti-democratic bylaws proposal so that the local station boards at the five stations would have the opportunity to debate, discuss and issue their referendums on the proposal to replace the network’s bylaws and revert to a self-appointing board majority. The national board’s statement regarding the bylaws proposal submitted by the Pacifica Restructuring Project can be found here. 

Since that time, three of the five local boards have discussed the proposal. On January 8, the local board of WPFW-Washington DC issued a unanimous no vote. On January 8, the local station board of WBAI-New York issued a unanimous no vote. On January 11, the local station board of KPFA – Berkeley, the spiritual home of the Pacifica Restructuring Project and the home base of seven of the nine proponents, voted no by a 4 (yes) – 13 (no) – 4 (abstain) margin. The four yes votes were from PRP members Aki Tanaka and Susan Da Silva, and two station staff members, Phillip Maldari, host of Sunday Show and Tim Lynch, co-host of Dead To The World (a Grateful Dead music show). The local board of KPFK-Los Angeles will vote on January 19. The local board of KPFT-Houston was supposed to vote on January 8, but ended up postponing to a meeting on January 22.