The public comment session from KPFK’s March 20th local station board meeting. The primary speaker is general manager Leslie Radford’s roommate and the station’s new volunteer coordinator Adam Rice, who is addressing the board during public comment. The final speaker is Safe Harbor host Chrisanne Eastwood who explains that motherfuckers is a vernacular term that means “you guys” or “dude” and is not meant to be derogatory.
Pacifica’s LA station KPFK’s intended coverage of a community meeting on suspicious activity reports was a hot mess with over ten minutes of chaos broadcast from Santa Barbara to Tijuana with apparently no oversight from anyone. In this 10 minute 45 second clip, Michael Jackson music blasts over the speakers, a fundraising cart runs right over the event the program is trying to cover and a recording of Dave Zirin’s Edge of Sports is broadcast simultaneously with two feeds going out over the air at the same time. The debacle is indicative of the station’s decline since Leslie Radford took over as GM in June of 2015. The station does not appear to have enough money to get through April with Radford reporting a bank account balance of only $85,000 less than a month after the station ended a 30-day fund drive with pledges of $602,000.
This is a highlights reel from the Pacifica national board meeting of 3/17. It’s a bit lengthy, but easier to absorb than the full 3 hour meeting.
It begins with the board mandating an “email election” to resolve the mess caused by the board’s determination to seat the last place finisher from an election 3 and a half years ago on WBAI’s local board. The board’s interference gives the Siegel/Brazon majority a 50% plurality by refusing the seat the independent candidate who won the seat in the 2015 election.
Independent rep Bill Crosier observes he was disconnected and kept off the call for a 14 minute interval despite calling in 4 times for reinstatement. Crosier finally emailed a public list-serv protesting he was being kept off the call to force his re-admission to the conference call.
The board passed the “WBAI email election” initiative.
Humorously, the board secretary then tried to announce the results of another “email election” done for a national committee and could only produce one winner for the two seats available (the one from the Siegel/Brazon faction). Not a good testimony to the efficacy of “email elections”.
Then the board turned to the financial crisis and the dissolution motions passed on Tuesday at the National finance committee. The meeting broke into dissension with Siegel/Brazonite Jose Luis Fuentes breaking with board treasurer Brian Edwards-Tiekert over Pacifica’s failures to complete audited financial statements and attempting to send the dissolution motions and all the draft budgets back to the finance committee. He almost succeeded, losing due to one vote changed at the last minute.
Fuentes and chair Tony Norman then got into a conflict over whether Pacifica’s management letters from their auditors are confidential or not. (They always have been considered so and since the board has now decided they are not, they may be publicly released in short order).
Finally the clip contains the votes to a) refer the dissolution motions and budgets back to committee (i.e. reject them), which was narrowly defeated and b) the motion to require a plan for the DC station including liquidation or sale, which passed narrowly on a 6-5 vote with multiple abstentions.
KPFA’s local station board meeting 2-27: the first speaker is Save Kpfa member William Campisi who proposes that national voting rights should be stripped from stations that fall behind on central service payments and then that Pacifica should go into voluntary bankruptcy if it isn’t willing to cede national control to KPFA.
Campisi apparently doesn’t realize that under his plan, his own station KPFA, would have had “its” voting rights stripped from October 2015 to February 2016 when it failed to pay central services due to financial troubles – and for two a half years from January of 2010 to June of 2012 when KPFA was slowly paying back $250,000 in unpaid central service payments to Pacifica in installments.
The second speaker is Save KPFA member and national director Jose-Luis Fuentes who says the other stations in Washington, LA and New York are eyeing KPFA’s fund drive receipts to “subsidize their standard of living”.
Fuentes appears to be unaware that in order to restore CPB funding, Pacifica would have to produce not one, but two, annual audits in the next 88 days, as the FY 2015 audit would be due at the end of June 2016. The $150,000 he quotes for the FY 2014 audit is roughly twice the estimate and twice what an audit for an organization of Pacifica’s size should cost.
The third speaker is UCR-affiliated unpaid staff rep Frank Sterling, who speaks with heart and intelligence and in addition to acknowledging that all of the stations are equally important, brings up the issue of shell corporations being set up to “catch” Pacifica’s assets .
In this astounding clip from the 2-27 KPFA Local Station Board Meeting, SaveKPFA-affiliated board chair Carole Travis grows her nose by saying the KPFA Foundation shell corporation was set up *because* of complaints filed with the CA Attorney General to “scoop” things up in the event of government intervention. The papers were filed with the CA Secretary of State who stamped them received on September 24, 2013, six months *before* the initial complaint was filed with the CA Attorney General. Travis also says the KPFA Foundation is “dissolved” and then “collapsed”. It’s still listed as an active nonprofit organization with the CA Secretary of State *today*.
Attorney General Complaint Non-Confidential
https://soundcloud.com/tracy-rosenberg/carole-travis-at-kpfa-loca-station-board
In this action-packed snip from the 2-23 Pacifica national finance committee, WPFW’s general manager announces that his station is “on the precipice of major underwriting” and that WPFW has changed its motto from “listener-supported radio” to accommodate support from business organizations.
The upshot of the meeting appears to be a straw man confrontation engineered by the Siegel/Brazon board majority for either Pacifica to accept business underwriting after 67 years of eschewing it, or be driven into bankruptcy court with the assets parceled out to various board members.
In other news, CFO Agarwal says that he and volunteer ED Lydia Brazon have developed proposals in secret for alternate sources of funding besides listener support that have “legal ramifications”.
Agarwal also stated that the 2014 audit (after 17 months) was both “on-track” and “backlogged”, that there was no immediate prospect of CPB funding, and that Pacifica’s monthly income statements are neither reliable nor accurate.
In a funny exchange with nominal board chair Tony Norman, Agarwal complained that Norman’s station WPFW is not transparent with their financial info and refuses to allow him access to their bank account. Norman promised to get right on it if Agarwal would just cc: him the correspondence and Agarwal says that he has been cc:ing Norman all along and Norman is fully apprised.
In the February 9th, Pacifica National Board finance committee meeting, former Pacifica ED and board chair Lydia Brazon is heard insisting that “of course” members of Pacifica boards and committees get to stay on as voting members until they are replaced. The Pacifica National Board had its last two meetings disrupted because the Siegel/Brazon majority stripped voting rights from all the NY station representatives claiming neither the new ones nor the old ones could vote. If only Ms. Brazon had piped up with her statement at the national board meeting where her colleagues didn’t do what “we’ve been doing”. Twice. Continue reading Flip-Flopper
For the second time in a week, the Pacifica National Board’s attempt to have a meeting after disenfranchising WBAI’s elected majority and seating two bogus affiliate directors, resulted in meeting interruptus.
This time, no sweet sounds of Mozart but a great beepfest. Continue reading Dialing To Resist By
Safe Harbor’s attempt at a community conversation went terribly awry when the only caller in the hour-long program, Denise, said the program was getting on her nerves, called the hosts kids in a candy store cursing because they could, and said she would never donate to KPFK again. Continue reading The Only Call: Safe Harbor’s “Community Conversation
As Safe Harbor grinds along into its third episode, Wednesday morning brought us sex education featuring stripper poles, a Section 8 stud and a sleepy phone booth guy. Continue reading “Sex Education Baybee” or “The Phone Guy is Falling Asleep”
