Requiem for Failed FAA Officers and Trustees

From a first timer: A year ago on this forum (go to page two), we were alerted about how bad things are in the FAA. We doubted until we saw many members confirmed there are real problems. They offered ways to fix them.

The FAA board officers decided not to answer the question. Instead, several FAA board officers chose to shoot the messengers. One officer was so ugly and personally vicious he was banned for life from any more posting on this forum Instead of listening and doing what was asked, the officers fired back with blasts, never justifying their actions.

Think things got better??? Oh no. Look at the facts. The FAA Board continued a flameout. The greatest number of regular longstanding members in the history of FAA resigned. For the upcoming annual conference, only twenty-seven members have signed up early which will be the lowest participation in the history of FAA. Nobody wants to go to see this Board blow smoke about how great they area. They tried to jam brand spanking new bylaws down the throats of members who trust the Board to do the right thing. Trust not warrented. They continued to hold all of their meeting in total secrecy. They expect the members to vote for new bylaws without ever giving the members the chance to see them before voting started. They demand members go along with the Board. In desperation, they stooped so low to start a libelous email campaign using the FAA email system (only they can use it) against the members who smelled the rat and had the courage to alert the members.

The FAA future looks better only if the members vote for all new BOD members. The current VP has the gall to run for reelection, even though he held the memberhip in total contempt. He rarely looked at the members online message board. Now he tries to laught it off. Do not vote for a personality. Vote for substance.

There will be five new board members at least and possibly as many as seven out of eight positions will be newly elected officers. However remember that the outgoing president will be the Director Emeritus with a great deal of influence and he could have as many as three former BOD members be re-elected. So there is a long way to go. The former Vice President will probably be re-elected and will be appointed President. I do not expect to see great changes from the newly elected BOD members. Hopefully I will be surprised. We need more members to become active in the FAA and express their opinions freely. This has not been done in the past because the BOD members would personally (verbally) attack any such members with whom they disagreed. The FAA is losing members fast and I would expect many members to let their membership lapse this year. Many other members rejoin just to receive the membership directory and no other reason. The newly proposed by-laws will probably be enacted even though the general membership had no input whatever in their makeup. The proposed by-laws is merely a sign of the many problems for the FAA. Hopefully better days are ahead.

To the original poster:

OK, I'm not getting all this.

1. Your references to the FAA is most confusing. At first I thought you were referring to the Federal Aviation Administration. Then I thought maybe it was the Future Farmers of America. You need to clean up your terminology.

2. You say only 27 members have registered for the upcoming conference? I received an e-mail saying that 112 people had registered. Granted that some of these are spouses, still that seems like a pretty good group.

3. Did a large number of members actually resign or simply not renew their membership?

4. The official position of the Board of Directors is that communications must come to them through the regional directors, not via the message board. Although it would be good for board directors to visit the message board to get a sense of what is important to the membership, their official position is that it is not required. So that is not a particularly compelling criticism of the Vice President.

5. You are, of course, correct in your criticism of the procedure for voting on the new by-laws.

To the second poster:

1. In the main the membership doesn't care about how the board runs things. I doubt you will see an increase in interest or participation in the political process of the association from most members.

2. Unless the board members are doing something actually illegal it sounds like you just don't agree with procedural matters. If so, perhaps you shouldn't let it bother you so much.

Ponder that.

.

[worfusa2008]

Just as it was then, it is now. It's all about power.

In response of some of your comments:

Until Mr. Moore's email of 7/18/2009, the latest figure of attendees signed up for the conference was 27 persons. Even 112 is a small number compared to a number of years when 200 to 250 members, wives and family members attended. Perhaps the attendees might reach those numbers by September, but the OP was correct in his posting as to the number of 27 at the time. You are playing semantics with the words "resigned" and " not renewing their membership". The bottom line remains the same there will be less members this coming year than in the past year. Every member of this organization knows that the Regional Director set up is merely a choke point as it relates to messages from members to the BOD. Every Regional Director handles questions, suggestions and inquires from memebers in their region differently. We all know that often time messages sent to Regional Directors never receive any responses from the BOD. No one is required to visit the message board, however, one would think that members of the BOD would have enough interest to check the message board at least every several weeks to see what the membership is discussing. Several members of the BOD have only visited the message board once or twice over the past two years. The current VP visited once in approximately the last seven months. Your first comment to the second poster is probably correct. I totally disagree with your second comment. The present BOD has often totally ignored our present by-laws on numerous occasions in numerous ways and yet the membership has no input in the forming of the newly proposed by-laws. Does that make any sense to anyone. Their actions may or may not be illegal but they are dammable. This present BOD conducts their business in secrecy and when they do post on the message board what they plan to do; they don't do it. See recent postings by Regional Director of Region 2 and the President regarding their plans for presentation of the newly proposed by-laws. They did not do as they indicated, yet they fail to respond to any questions concerning the same. Sorry my firend you are way off base with your comments, but at least you could post them on this forum without anyone personally attacking you.

In response of some of your comments:

Until Mr. Moore's email of 7/18/2009, the latest figure of attendees signed up for the conference was 27 persons. Even 112 is a small number compared to a number of years when 200 to 250 members, wives and family members attended. Perhaps the attendees might reach those numbers by September, but the OP was correct in his posting as to the number of 27 at the time. You are playing semantics with the words "resigned" and " not renewing their membership". The bottom line remains the same there will be less members this coming year than in the past year. Every member of this organization knows that the Regional Director set up is merely a choke point as it relates to messages from members to the BOD. Every Regional Director handles questions, suggestions and inquires from memebers in their region differently. We all know that often time messages sent to Regional Directors never receive any responses from the BOD. No one is required to visit the message board, however, one would think that members of the BOD would have enough interest to check the message board at least every several weeks to see what the membership is discussing. Several members of the BOD have only visited the message board once or twice over the past two years. The current VP visited once in approximately the last seven months. Your first comment to the second poster is probably correct. I totally disagree with your second comment. The present BOD has often totally ignored our present by-laws on numerous occasions in numerous ways and yet the membership has no input in the forming of the newly proposed by-laws. Does that make any sense to anyone. Their actions may or may not be illegal but they are dammable. This present BOD conducts their business in secrecy and when they do post on the message board what they plan to do; they don't do it. See recent postings by Regional Director of Region 2 and the President regarding their plans for presentation of the newly proposed by-laws. They did not do as they indicated, yet they fail to respond to any questions concerning the same. Sorry my firend you are way off base with your comments, but at least you could post them on this forum without anyone personally attacking you.


1. You correctly state that Moore's e-mail was dated 7-18. However the original post on this thread was 7-19, a day later. Since neither of us knows what region the original poster lives in we don't know whether or not he had the benefit of having received the updated information at the time he made the post. Perhaps HIS regional director had forwarded the message sooner (or later) than Moore did. Which brings up an interesting point.
Why doesn't the originator of these "Please pass to your respective state members" messages simply make a mass mailing to all members, facilitating immediate delivery to everyone?

2. I am not playing semantics. Resigned has a very different connotation from not renewing membership. There is a not-too-subtle difference in canceling your subscription to a newspaper or magazine because you are outraged by their editorial position and simply not renewing your subscription due to a lack of interest.

3. Perhaps we should pause and reflect a bit on your description of the Regional Director being a choke point that determines which of our individual concerns and opinions are actually brought to the BOD. What's wrong with this? Specifically, how is this different from our own federal government in which you address your concerns to your representatives in Congress and they decide whether or not to sponsor a bill to bring the matter before the Congress. We all know that the primary reason that they even respond to you at all is to gain your support for re-election.

Your recourse in the case of a representative who you do not think represents you well is to vote him out of office. We have that same opportunity here. And the way that you have for mustering support for defeating your Regional Director, or even an At Large Director is the MESSAGE BOARD.

We both agree that it is a shame that the BOD members do not all read the message board regularly, because that would give them a sense of what is important to the membership and would provide a method of communicating with the board members bypassing the acknowledged choke point, but unfortunately the current official position is that board members need not visit the message board. It would be nice if we could elect board members who would make a commitment to visit the message board regularly.

4. You totally disagree with my comment that most of the members don't have any interest in how the board runs things? If this is not true why don't you see an outcry on the message board demanding they do things differently? More telling, why do you see the board members overwhelmingly reelected to office if they run as incumbents? The only way we seem to get rid of them is if they choose not to run again. I tell you that the majority of the members simply don't care.

5. You acknowledge that the actions of the board may or may not be illegal. You do not assert that they are illegal. My statement was that unless the actions are illegal, the issue is that you simply disagree with them on procedural matters. You don't contradict that, but then you say my comments are way off base. You are wrong.

6. We certainly agree that this same exchange on the other message board would result in having both of us subjected to name calling and personal attack unrelated to the validity of our comments.

We can only hope the next BOD will rectify this sad fact.

Thank you " wait a minute" for your thoughtful and well written response to other postings in this thread. Perhaps you misunderstood the writer's intention in the posting captioned "Response to Wait a Minute". In your current posting under #4 you indicate the writer totally disagrees with your comment that most of the members don't have any interest in how the BOD run things; when the writer in fact states "your first comment (referring to this same subject) to the second poster is probably correct". How any member knows what actions by the BOD may or may not be illegal without having full knowledge of Iowa state laws as it pertains to organizations such as ours is unknown to me. By not asserting that their actions are illegal does not affirm that their actions are legal, it is merely unknown to the writer. I would think you are correct in your assertion that more members did not renew their membership than "resigned". I am on the same page with a majority of your statements.

Everything I wrote in response to the original post was in a spirit of fairness. I thought some of the points were a little off target and only wanted to give balance.

I suspect that we are all on the same page with regard to the need for a clean sweep of the Board of Directors and that we hope we will finally get a group that actually follows the by-laws of the association. Of course, no matter who is on the new board it will be tainted by the by-law that was railroaded through by the last board that makes the outgoing President the President Emeritus and gives him the same travel and per diem benefits as the active board members. He will undoubtedly strive to have the board follow in his footsteps.

In urging the passage of the new by-laws at this time the President acknowledged there were flaws, many of which were posted on our message board by a member, but he dismissed the problems by saying the next board would correct them. How and when? Any changes will require another vote of the membership. Since we will have to vote again anyway why not defer the vote until after the changes are hammered out? That would seem to be a better course than to adopt a badly flawed document. Is it because this board and this President wants to leave a legacy of having produced an entirely new set of by-laws? People pursuing legacies often get off course. That appears to be the case here.

AMEN to Wait A Minute.