PacificaWatch

. . . notice the last name on the right? . . .

. . . and there’s more:

. . . https://www.linkedin.com/in/quincy-mccoy-8520b014 . . .

Seamless.

As Mr Slippery himself says, he’d been there over eight years.

No Pacifica director sleepwalker had the guts, not least the Chair, Ms Julie Hewitt (WPFW listener-delegate), to announce this shattering change at any PNB meeting, not least at the full board public meeting of 7July, or 21July, or 28July, or 4Aug, or 11Aug. Abdication of responsibility doesn’t grasp the half of it.

This week, Quince did his last day at KPFA (Tu16Aug, i’ve been told – of course, like the mafia, nothing’s written down), & on the weekend changed his LinkedIn page. Nice.

https://kpfa.org, https://kpfa.org/contact/ (the title ‘general manager’ or ‘station manager’ doesn’t appear, zilch), https://kpfa.org/about/kpfa-local-station-board (the station manager is a member), https://pacifica.org, https://pacifica.org/foundation_news.php (but then the latest post under the ‘News’ tab is on its way to its own eight years, being dated 15Jan2015 (sic))

His new stone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayview_Opera_House

Foto: courtesy of Sanfranman59 (at wiki)

Guess there’s self-interest & self-interest:

(In the vid, please excuse the inclusion of the misanthropic missionary position: see the truth described by Chris Hitchens, free download at http://library.lol/main/6573C0841922255B1B87295A35DE8A4B – also please excuse the presence of a later pope, & of Amerika’s first black prez, LBJ, & the unforgivable absence of the likes of Paul Robeson, shunned by the majority of the ‘leaders’ of the civil rights movement.)

~

. . . sleepwalking into the chainsaw . . .

UPDATE, Tu23Aug2022 (& then some)

At that evening’s PNB Finance Cttee, CFO Julia Kennard said, regarding the July monthlies, “who needs to receive it at KPFA, now, umm, that the GM left? […] is there an interim GM at KPFA now?” – no audiofile archived yet, but at 2153 EDT, c. 23mins before the open meeting ended. (One may think a bod chosen by ED Stephanie Wells – but praps by the PNB, given that the ED has said publicly, more than once, that she has no powers, under her contract, (a) to appoint anyone, (b) to dismiss anyone, or (c) to change any programming at any station (“I can’t do anything with personnel, and nothing with programming” (at a KPFK meeting, 1:36:30 … link, etc., at the ‘boxed in/boxed up’ paragraph way below)) – but one needs to acknowledge that the public record does suggest that her contract does give her the autonomy to breathe, move around, & rehydrate. Although she probably did need the PNB’s permission to donate that kidney this month.)

[. . . UPDATE OF THE UPDATE, hereafter 2° UPDATE: PNB Finance Cttee audio now archived (from 1:08:31), https://kpftx.org/archives/pnb/finance/220823/finance220823a.mp3 . . .]

The Chair, James Sagurton (WBAI listener-delegate), responded quickly & authoritatively: “argh, I don’t think so, not yet, not that I’m aware of. So I guess just send it to Maria, and, umm [long pause] yeah” . . . and to Maria we shall return . . . At the Finance meeting, clarification re the iGM couldn’t come from KPFA’s Treasurer, Chris ‘Janus’ Cory (staff-delegate until 14Jan2023, when his 6yrs are up – first seated as per https://kpftx.org/archives/pnb/kpfa/170114/kpfa170114_4792_minutes.pdf) coz he was MIA – praps plotting, given he’s a breaker, in that KPFA militia, the Protectors: “KPFA Protectors Staff Board Members[:] Sherry Gendelman[,] Chris Cory” – https://www.kpfaprotectors.org/news-updates.

All publicly available NETA-produced Pacifica monthlies are at https://mega.nz/folder/RR8XmaAB#kEhHjAFTec2X_Z6CzAC5dw.

And overall staffing at KPFA, the veritable home of welcomeness, conviviality, & joy? KPFA, home of the bestselling bumper sticker & range of children’s merch, ‘It’s Nice to be Nice’? KPFA currently has more than 30 full-time equivalents: in no uncertain terms, that’s where staff must be chopped – for the sake of the network. And the stock as a flow, KPFA personnel costs have effectively risen 14%, ⅐, since the onset of the epidemic! (All calculations are below, in a pair of paragraphs.) Yes, it’s all about power, inertia, a lack of vision – not a rational distribution of labour-power.

Fundamentally, Pacifica’s decline & crises this century are the responsibility of successive sets of directors sleepwalkers, who have refused to ensure that there is adequate centralised control over operations – the very activities that could have been designed & coordinated to turn a vision for Pacifica into reality. In this, the sets of directors sleepwalkers have dramatically failed to ensure that their main instrument, the executive director, uses a control structure that does the job. Lack of vision. Lack of skills. Lack of control. The observed destructive deficiencies shredding Pacifica are evidence that the directors sleepwalkers have failed, & continue to fail, to discharge their fiduciary duty, their legal responsibility as trustees to protect the assets of this public charity.

. . . no, not a Board of Directors: a Board of Sleepwalkers . . . sleepwalking into the chainsaw . . .

FTE’s at KPFA: FY2022, personnel costs thru Apr2022 annualise as $2 525 834, say ~$2.525m … using the evidence examined in a Nov2021 PacificaWatch post, @ $66k, that’s 38¼ FTE; @ $75k, 33⅔ FTE; @ $80k, 31½ FTE … so, roughly, between 31 & 38 FTE. Part of that data solely concerned KPFA, during June2019, giving estimated average annual personnel costs of $71 463; three years on, 2.525m ÷ 71.5k = 35.3 FTE. But hang on a sec, shouldn’t that figure be deflated given the 14% increase in personnel costs? Only if there’s been a rise in the FTE unit labour cost, such as from $71.5k. So, for example, $71.5k x 1.14 = $81.5k … & 2.525m ÷ 81.5k = 31.0 FTE, which happens to agree with the number derived from the June2019 payroll records of the station’s 47 employees (suggesting a possible staffing freeze). Given the limits of the publicly available info, if a single figure is to be used, perhaps the most reasonable prudent working assumption is 31 FTE – see Apr2022 monthlies, & appendix at https://pacificaradiowatch.home.blog/2021/11/19/today-kpfk-is-losing-money-at-a-rate-of-3500-dollars-a-day-105k-a-month-1-point-26m-a-year-as-per-the-docs-publicly-why-does-no-one-recognise-the-scale-the-urgency-qm/.

The 14.02% rise in KPFA personnel costs across the 3yrs, 1Oct2019-30Sep2022: FY2019, $2 215 341 (FY2019 auditor’s report, page 35 (the PDF page # always lags, here p. 38); lacking the auditor’s opinion on the figure’s material accuracy – p. 2); FY2020, $2 282 066 (FY2020 auditor’s report, p. 36; judged materially accurate by the auditor, pp. 2 & 3); FY2021, $2 428 265 (NETA’s computation) [2° UPDATE: the FY2021 auditor’s report gives $2 441 210, p. 35; judged materially accurate, p. 2]; FY2022, $2 525 834 (annualisation of NETA’s total thru Apr2022) … year-on-year changes: FY2020, +3.01%; FY2021, +6.41%; FY2022, +4.02% … the +14.02% over 3yrs: 2525834 ÷ 2215341 – https://pacifica.org/finance_reports.php; Oct2021 & Apr2022 NETA-produced monthlies.

Well, re the iGM matter, guess neither Julia nor James subscribe to the KPFA e-newsletter: the adieu sob to Quince, signed “KPFA’s Management Team [line-break] Antonio Ortiz, Interim General Manager [with on the next line, four other names – including Maria’s]” (emphases added), not dated but archived as Th18Aug, https://us2.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=2a41e4b88df5fc0a665096618&id=c99d228302; Julia, James, newsletter subscription button is, conveniently, in the bottom-left corner of any webpage at https://kpfa.org/. (Tino keeps stepping up, but then he is a dancer: at KPFA since 2004, including 4yrs as Operations Manager before Quince appointed him Director of Operations as recently as January – https://www.linkedin.com/in/antoniotortizjr.)

It’s a pity ED Wells didn’t tell CFO Kennard what’s going on. But i guess that lil prob gets solved in typical Pacifica fashion by there being no CFO from 1Oct – only an NBM, a National Business Manager, an empty vessel getting a few mentions that evening. Brilliant.

~

[Two 2° UPDATES, the first much longer:

[. . . 2° UPDATE: a vessel now filled, without as much as a vacancy advert or even a job description, by KPFT’s bookkeeper/business manager, Markisha ‘I’m so calm I could be basking in the Gulf – and yes, I’m cooler than Cerene’ Deshaun Venzant-Sampson – although her appointment hasn’t been thought worthy of a public announcement at any Pacifica meeting or in any Pacifica statement, the word ‘Markisha’ simply mentioned in passing. (The ‘V’ part of her name is usually misspelt in Pacifica docs.) Good luck in getting the Sep monthlies out by mid Oct – or before Xmas. And good luck trying to cope with Maria.

[And no, no director sleepwalker has publicly asked why there’s no disclosed timeline for hiring a new Chief Financial Officer; nor why there’s been no discernible progress, not even the placing of an advert.

[And it gets worse. Despite the dire situation, with NETA giving up on Pacifica, making it go it alone, with no cash to hire anyone (not even a GM at KPFK, to replace a guy trying to do the job from 3 000 miles away), no director sleepwalker or member of the PNB Finance Cttee has asked for a public disclosure of what’s at stake here: (a) the plan of the NETA ⭢ Markisha ‘transition’, with temporal details; (b) the achievements & cock-ups of this ‘transition’; (c) how Pacifica will try to mitigate for what Markisha can’t do; & (d) what are Markisha’s qualifications to do bookkeeping & accounting, her skills, & her experience in these quite different fields? The directors sleepwalkers, & the station treasurers of the PNB Finance Cttee, don’t seem to recognise how weird this silence is. It’s the practice of the politics of the emperor with no clothes: ignore it, & it’s not there. Denial = no problem exists.

[On the legal matter of Pacifica saying they don’t have a designated CFO, please see the note at the end of the ‘Chief Financial Officer’ section of https://pacificaradiowatch.home.blog/non-financial-pacifica-data/pacifica-officeholders-pnb-chair-executive-director-chief-financial-officer-secretary/ (a webpage also accessible from the drop-down menu atop each page of this blog). In a phrase, the California Corporations Code says that when the chief financial officer post isn’t filled then in law the corp’s treasurer is that postholder – unless the org’s rules prevent that . . . and that’s how it is with Pacifica.

https://pacifica.org/indexed_bylaws/art4sec8.html, https://kpftx.org/pacalendar/index.php, https://elections.pacifica.org/wordpress/2016-pacifica-delegates-elections-recount-report-2/, https://kpftx.org/archive_2016.php (pump in ‘WBAI Delegates’), & https://www.glib.com/lsb_attendance_ninth_wbai_lsb.html

[Not having a CFO poses at least one problem: the FJC contract. Requirements. Certifications. CFO certifications. Who’s going to become legally liable for the promises that a CFO has to contractually make, re ‘the big loan’, to the Foundation for the Jewish Community, operating as FJC? The promises are of two kinds: “[t]he financial statements shall be accompanied by a written statement of the Chief Financial Officer of Borrower certifying the financial statements to be true and correct” (Section 6.2 of the root loan agreement document, p. 11; p. 12 of the PDF); & “[w]ithin one hundred twenty (120) days following the close of each fiscal year of the Borrower, Borrower shall provide to Lender a certificate (the ‘CFO Certificate‘) of the Chief Financial Officer of Borrower, in form and substance acceptable to Lender, certifying to the compliance of the Borrower with the covenants set forth in Article 7 of this Agreement” (§ 6.3, same pagination, original bold & underline). https://pacificaradiowatch.home.blog/realworld-disciplines-pacifica/principal-creditors/foundation-for-the-jewish-community-operating-as-fjc/origin-of-fjc-s-name-and-acronym/, &, the root loan agreement doc, https://mega.nz/file/AI0iUYga#QzMtaBd0iRTZJ_YNmh2KZ1xKu7Qh_hQ6IcPMVkGWX94

[Both certification deadlines are 28Jan2023 – as the date also applies to the FY2022 audited financial statements (§ 6.1, p. 10; p. 11 of the PDF). The feasibility: (a) only twice in the last 28yrs has Pacifica been speedy (FY2006, 19Jan2007; & FY2007, 14Jan2008); (b) NETA have walked, leaving Markisha in the void; & (c) auditors, Rogers & Company, given the complaint they face, have probably already scarpered.

[(The loan is now $2 258 821, down $1 006 179 (−30.8%). In FY2019, $100k was repaid, & the rest in FY2022 thru 20July2022 (the FY2021 auditor’s report helpfully gave the balance at the day when FJC extended maturity to 30Oct2024) – however, Pacifica, & the auditor’s notes, haven’t disclosed the date, sum, & reason re any payment: per auditor’s reports, FY2019 (pp. 3 & 16; pp. 5 & 18 of the PDF), & FY2021 (pp. 3 & 29; pp. 5 & 31 of the PDF), https://pacifica.org/finance_reports.php. The current quarterly interest payment is, @8.5%, $47 999.94, ~$48k – https://pacificaradiowatch.home.blog/what-fjc-has-made-pacifica-do/. The next one, the 18th, so 4½yrs, is due 30Sep (the 1st fell on 30June2018, per §2.3(1) of the cited loan agreement, p. 5; p. 6 of the PDF). Pacifica listeners & members have handed over the best part of $1m of their donations to FJC as interest.) [The ¾ percentage point rise effective 22Sep will cost Pacifica an extra $16 941 pa – with a double-whammy expected of at least a further +1 point to endure for a year, pushing the annual charge to $231 529, a quarterly ~$58k.] . . .]

(Ms Etter was elected Nov2019, seated part way thru the 14Dec2019 LSB meet (new LSB roll-call, 11:50; the old one, 0:02), & her replacement (so only for the Sep, Nov, & partial Dec meets) is Ann Garrison, a noted anti-breaker – that’s if she can stomach Christina ‘Nurse Ratched’ Huggins et al.. https://elections.pacifica.org/wordpress/2019-election-results/, https://kpftx.org/archives/pnb/kpfa/191214/kpfa191214a.mp3, & https://pacificaradiowatch.home.blog/2021/07/07/vote-yes-just-take-your-medicine-you-know-you-have-to-says-christina-nurse-ratched-huggins-kpfa-lsb-chair-well-done-that-wasn-t-difficult-was-it/.) . . .]

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On Steph being boxed in/boxed up by the PNB, with minimal powers – so ‘the Vernile effect’ – she revealed all at the Su26June2022 KPFK Outreach Cttee (1:33:10-1:36:41, the topic continuing to pop up thru to 1:49:48) – still not posted at https://kpftx.org/archive.php, but it’s here, https://mega.nz/file/tUM0QbRQ#MeTGbJIebc5aMq0lurpoV4iSVbH-Gk-YGa1zbHSEsDs (please rise above the crackle – the recording came from the Cttee). Given how she described what the directors sleepwalkers expect of her, as codified in her employment contract, Steph merits being denoted as ER Steph: not the Executive Director but the Executive Recommender. At long last, Pacifica has a social influencer!

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This Quince piece is part of a triptych, the other flank being his olde friend, Berthold (who’s now telling the world that he’s looking for a new job: “[s]eeking a Director position”), with the central panel graced by an imaginative hiring idea spawned within the Su21Aug PNB Personnel Cttee. Yes, an employment theme.

If the energy allows, there’ll be an examination of the KPFK FY2023 budget, presented to the W24Aug station Finance Cttee. It was met by a series of motions, none of which passed. It’s due to be discussed at the Su28Aug KPFK Local Station Board. It had been prepared by KPFK Treasurer Kim ‘(sigh) yes, Bella? (sigh)’ Kaufman, CFO Julia ‘I work a 73hr-week, for Pacifica – what is wrong with me?’ Kennard, iGM Moe ‘what new excuse can I come up with to avoid going to the next KPFK meeting?’ Thomas (WPFW’s full-time engineer, & also working at KPFT – there seems to be no truth in the rumour that Pacifica is trying to lend him to a station in Alaska), & his assistant, Ali ‘Michael, I’d rather go after Beth’ Lexa Al-Hilali (director sleepwalker, & staff-delegate – what about management not being eligible for Pacifica staff membership? – see sub-section B, https://pacifica.org/indexed_bylaws/art3sec1.html). [2° UPDATE: director sleepwalker Ali Lexa has just left the sinking ship – mentioned in passing at the W14Sep KPFK Governance Cttee by Chair Michael Novick (listener-delegate, & LSB Chair). He reminded us, the iGM lives in Maryland. So now losing his right-hand in Los Angeles. Pacifica is unravelling.]

[UPDATE: the budget presented to the Su28Aug KPFK LSB had two immaterial changes: a deletion of an unjustified $3k from total revenue, & the addition to it of $10k (presumably to “Sponsorship”, doubling it from $10k to $20k coz of the likely PNB move to encourage underwriting, Politese for advertising). The adjusted totals presented that Sunday: revenue $1 102 245, expenses $2 219 403 (so, Central Services $500 868, others $1 718 535), loss $1 117 158.]

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