Santa Clarita Delegates

Response to Aaron Park’s posts of April 17th: Part 2

This portion is edited from a longer email that I sent to a Park supporter about a week ago.

Let’s take the Santa Clarita delegate issue.

Aaron claims that Santa Clarita RA Bylaws require members to be in the club for 90 days before they can be Convention delegates. The Credentials Committee could have caught this if they were provided the records; but George refused them access. Nevertheless, let’s say Aaron is right in this instance, here are things that might have happened.

1. Santa Clarita could have voted to suspend their Bylaws by a super majority and allow these folks to be delegates. This is perfectly legal under Robert’s Rules. What if this did happen but the Secretary forgot to put it in the minutes. Credentials gets a clarification and everything is good. No fraud just bad minutes.
2. Santa Clarita could have been made aware of the Bylaw issue and called a special meeting to suspend Bylaws, again everything is good.
3. Santa Clarita can’t fix the issue for whatever reason, and as a result, only part of delegates can be seated. This can be brought before the Convention and if Convention votes to do so, they can seat all delegates. Again, everything is good, no fraud just sloppy parliamentary procedure, do better next year.

But since George locked Credentials out of the records we automatically get claims of fraud. Why can’t it be something lesser such as I described above?

Nothing deceitful is happening, just people in a volunteer group that don’t know how to run a meeting under Robert’s Rules. Why must we vilify everyone just because they made a mistake? It looks to me from the minutes that Aaron posted that Santa Clarita had trouble finding folks that were willing to go to the convention in Sacramento so they opened it up to anyone willing to go. This is no conspiracy.

My club is only a few minutes away from Sacramento and we couldn’t get enough people to be delegates. I imagine that it would be even harder when you live on the other end of the state.

To me, Aaron’s whole premise is backwards. Investigate first, look at evidence and then if a pattern emerges you need to see if it is human error or purposeful deceit. I submit that often it is hard to tell the difference.

Aaron’s posts on April 17th were part of a campaign blitz not a detailed factual analysis of wrong doing presented to the Board. It was an emotional campaign piece designed to make an impression on readers to influence their vote. “Sell the sizzle not the steak” is an old advertising axiom.

If there was a campaign to show wrong doing in CRA, it would be rolled-out much slower, more deliberately and more detailed. Also a case would need to be made for a pattern of wrong doing not a single instance. Such a campaign would not be presented in a matter of hours but over a few weeks.

I have said this before, I don’t hate the Parks. I think they have made some poor decisions recently. Sometimes I agree with them and sometimes I don’t. By the way, I did vote for George as Membership Secretary at the last convention. Of the two candidates, he was the better choice. This might be a surprise to some folks who are reading my blog but like I have stated before, I go with principle over people. When people fall short of principle I have to call them on it.