The executive director of NCRA sent out a response to the Firmowners’ ListServ defending her position regarding contracting that has blown up because NCRA has refused to show up for the Virginia Court Reporters Association as they are right on the cusp of getting some very fruitful legislation passed to protect the public from some bad business practices.

Here’s an excerpt from the E.D.’s email sent out last Thursday:

“NCRA’s position on contracting is as follows:

“In November of 2016, in consultation with NCRA’s Government Relations team and legal counsel, the Board of Directors agreed that it is in the Association’s best interest to remain neutral on contracting. For several years, “contracting” has been used as a catch-all phrase for items and issues that fall in the category of business practices; the Board believes this puts NCRA at risk for antitrust claims. Any events, issues, and items concerning ethics should be addressed via NCRA’s Committee on Professional Ethics (COPE), which is charged with interpreting and enforcing the Code of Professional Ethics in accordance with the bylaws.”

Here’s an excerpt from the minutes of the November 12-13, 2016, NCRA Board Meeting Minutes:

“EXECUTIVE SESSION

“EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S REPORT

“Michael Nelson, Executive Director & CEO, presented a verbal report to the Board.  He commented on recent staff changes and promotions.  Mr. Nelson also informed the Board of a new leadership training program for NCSA on a regional level.  He also commented on other aspects of the organization, including finance, testing professional development, schools, communications and marketing, and government relations.

“CONTRACTING

“Dave Wenhold, NCRA’s Washington Counsel, gave a presentation on contracting.  Jackie Henson, General Counsel, also attended this session, as well as her associate John Steren, who joined the meeting by phone.  There was discussion on this item.

“END OF EXECUTIVE SESSION”**

This is ALL that membership knows about the official change in policy regarding contracting – that occurred 15 months ago, and we are just hearing about now!!!

What prompted the “presentation” to the board by the lobbyist and NCRA’s counsel?  A presentation involving a lobbyist and two attorneys just doesn’t pop up on the day of a board meeting!  There is a lot of research in making a “presentation” to a board. 

How much did this “presentation on contracting” cost membership?  WHY was the E.D.’s report and the “presentation on contracting” held in EXECUTIVE SESSION*? 

What was the “discussion on this item”? What was the vote of the board?  Was there a vote of the board? 

It sounds like the new executive director has alluded to an “agreement” that “it is in the Association’s best interest to remain neutral on contracting.”  All of us here at WUNCRA don’t believe that our association’s policy changes should hinge on mere “agreements” between a board of directors “in consultation with NCRA’s Government Relations team and legal counsel.”

Wake Up, NCRA!
Frank N. Sense

P.S.  Please send this to ten NCRA members so they are also informed about the latest hyperbole coming out of NCRA headquarters.

P.P.S.  Was the board involved in the selection of NCRA’s new lobbyist?  Was the new position advertised? Were multiple candidates interviewed?  Was it just three members of the executive committee that made the decision?  Or was it just the E.D. herself that made the decision?

P.P.P.S. Membership is still waiting for a full accounting and back history on the sale of NCRA’s largest asset – aka, our former headquarters building.  Was it three members of the executive committee that made that decision, too?

*Robert’s Rules of Order define an executive session as a meeting or portion of a meeting whose proceedings are secret. Only members of the governing body are entitled to attend, but they may invite others to stay at the pleasure of the board.

**Yes, fellow members of NCRA, these are all we get for minutes of meetings of the NCRA’s Board of Directors.  If it wasn’t so serious, it would be laughable

After three long days, the president of NCRA finally responded to a member’s email; although she never answered the pressing question about whether NCRA is going to show up for Virginia – or any other state affiliate association, for that matter.

We’ll break the president’s response down for you:

“Thank you for your patience, Lisa.  Please know I am doing my best to reply as quickly as possible to emails.  I am a working reporting (sic) in addition to wearing many hats within my firm.  Juggling my commitments is a process each and every day.*

 “As indicated below, NCRA is most definitely supporting and guiding our state associations in their advocacy work.  I think it is important for you to understand that our Government Relations Department remains unchanged as it pertains to our state association focus.”

Tell THAT to Virginia!

“There is no lack of attention being given to our state focus.”

Tell THAT to Virginia!

“In fact, it is our goal to become more ‘active,’ verses (sic) ‘reactive,’ when it comes to state agendas.  The reallocation of resources will not impact how NCRA is serving state associations.”

Tell THAT to Virginia!

“… It is our goal to provide guidance and tools to members to allow them to find the success they seek in their legislative initiatives.”

Tell THAT to Virginia!

The Virginia Court Reporters Association asked the NCRA to show up, and they were quite aggressively told that NCRA “would not, would not” be present in any way in Virginia.  They were told that NCRA represented “’all reporters,’ including those that worked for contracting companies.”

“Watch for today’s version of the JCR Weekly for an exciting announcement regarding our presence on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., as well!  NCRA is committed to promoting and advancing our profession.”

There is some stinky cheese coming out of Wisconsin, members of NCRA.  We smell some nepotism and some conflicts of interest** here.  Was the entire board brought together to vote on the hiring of the new legislative consultant from Wisconsin (and the firing of the gentleman who has the most institutional knowledge of NCRA’s and state affilliates’ issues), or was it the Immediate Past President, President and Vice President that made these grave decisions?  Members of NCRA, we need to DEMAND answers before irreversible damage is done to our profession.***

WAKE UP, NCRA!
 Frank N. Sense

P.S.  Thank you to everybody who lit up the comments section of this blog today keeping us here at WUNCRA updated.

P.P.S.  Please send this post to ten NCRA members to let them know how NCRA is letting them down, too.

*The president of NCRA has repeatedly stated that she is much too busy to respond to simple questions from NCRA membership, and she has dropped the ball this week on an issue that membership considers the most important facing the reporting profession today.  We believe that since she is going to be able to call herself the president of NCRA and benefit from that moniker and the cache (cash) that comes with it for the rest of her life, NCRA and its membership need to come first during the short time that she actually holds the position.  It’s a small price to pay.

**A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple interests, financial or otherwise, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation or decision-making of that individual or organization.

***It’s time for the directors on the board to get together and speak up to let membership know what’s happening.  Have these major decisions been made by a simple quorum of the executive committee?

So far, this past week the NCRA board has abandoned the Virginia Court Reporters Association during what is probably the most important hour of their history.  As long as this remains the case, the NCRA board’s actions are absolutely disgraceful! 

Here’s a synopsis that we’ve gathered together* of what happened with the NCRA board, executive director, and Virginia this past week:

1. After many years of trying to gain traction against contracting in Virginia, the Virginia Court Reporters Association finally got an anti-contracting bill sponsored by a Senator.  They were able to “crush it” (14-1) in the Virginia Senate Court of Justice Committee Hearing.
2. At the firm owners’ conference in Florida last week,  the new executive director of NCRA “quite aggressively” told a member of the VCRA, that “NCRA ‘would not, would not’ be present in any way in Va, that NCRA represented ‘all reporters’ including those that worked for the contracting companies.” (Yes, you did read that last quote correctly!)
3. The VCRA won in the full Senate (35-5).  They are now positioned to move over to the House side.
4. A VoterVoice link was set up a few months ago by NCRA so that the VCRA membership could easily email their support of this bill to their legislators.  When one of the reporters tried to use it, the link no longer worked.  The link was reinstated by NCRA after a complaint was made.
5. There were requests from members for answers from the NCRA board and its executive director regarding the issues around Virginia.  After a long delay, the president of NCRA responded that she had been quite busy in depositions and tending to her business.  She then gave a few patronizing comments about commending and respecting “the passion exhibited by those fighting for what they believe in”; that the NCRA board is doing the same**; that she believes that they are positioning NCRA to provide incredible member value,” blah, blah, blah … platitudes, platitudes and more platitudes!  She went on to say that “we respectfully ask for your patience as we define our path through our strategic plan, which should be completed by JUNE (emphasis added).”
6. An NCRA member then added that “Virginia doesn’t have until June.  They are in legislative session right now.”  It was then asked, “Will they be supported in the meantime by NCRA … in a meaningful manner?”  We have yet to see an answer from the president or the executive director to the last question.

Everybody knows that having NCRA at your side as your state is “crushing it” provides very good optics before a legislative body.  It is a complete shock to membership that NCRA has been a no-show in Virginia.  Where was the president of NCRA when Virginia needed her to be there? 

NCRA’s membership has been screaming for as long as all of us here at WUNCRA can remember about how bad contracting is for our profession.  We are sorry that some folks have emerged that don’t know the history of the anti-contracting movement in the reporting profession.  We are sorry that they don’t understand that helping contracting companies by and large hurts the reporters who work for (or, more accurately, are exploited by) those contracting companies.

And we are tired of “talking to the hand.”  Who on the board is driving NCRA to take the position that “NCRA ‘would not, would not‘ be present in any way in Virginia”?  We need transparency and accountability – now more than ever!

If you can’t give membership transparency and accountability, you need to resign from the board.  Because if you’re not transparent and accountable to membership, whose interests are you serving?***

You don’t get many second chances in life.  But right now in Virginia NCRA has a chance to get on the right side of contracting – to oppose it!  Will leadership do the right thing?

WAKE UP, NCRA!
Frank N. Sense****

P.S. Perhaps the state leaders need to boycott the Boot Camp set for March 11-13. Why head out to D.C. just to hear more platitudes when the guy most knowledgeable about reporting advocacy and governance won’t even be there? Save your state membership’s hard-earned dues and protest the grave decision of not renewing his contract, and this “strategic plan” of not showing up when your state really needs them to be there.

P.P.S. Please forward this post to ten NCRA members so that they know what their membership dues are not buying anymore, too!

*Thank you to the readers of this blog for providing much of the information for this post.  Please rest assured that we will not disclose who you are.

**Not fighting the contracting issue.

***Companies that donate $50,000 or more to NCRA’s Foundation or Steno Projects?

****While on the subject of transparency and accountability, how about the Board coming clean about the disposal of NCRA’s biggest asset?

Well, some of our sleuths have been sleuthing to find out ANY info that they can about the sale for $5 million of the NCRA headquarters building in 2014!!!

Found were just a couple of brief paragraphs in the minutes. 

Most notable is this note from page 5 of the November 8, 2014, minutes:

“Update of NCRA’s Headquarters Building Sale

“Mr. Stewart reported on the sale of the headquarters building.  He noted that the building has been sold and closing is scheduled in the next few weeks.  The Board was advised that NCRA will occupy its current space while we move forward with locating space and negotiating a lease.  Our relators (sic) have developed a timeline of the various components of the move, noting that the current building must be vacated no later than August 31, 2015.  It was suggested that a list of talking points regarding the sale of the building and the move to a new location be sent to the Board to share with members as questions arise.”

By the time those minutes were published, that building had long been sold.  The meeting was on November 8^th and the minutes wouldn’t have been approved until the March 2015 meeting, at the earliest.  AND those minutes provided ZERO details about the sale of our most treasured asset.

So … all of us here at WUNCRA, and we are very sure membership in general, have some questions:

Why was the building sold?  Which board members voted in favor and against the sale of the building? What was the listing price of the building?  What was the sales price of the building?  How much was owed on the building?  Why was a mortgage taken against the fully-paid-for building?  How was the realtor selected?  How much was the realtor paid?  Why was the realtor selected? Was it a-friend-of-a-friend situation?  You know, dinners out, golfing, yacht fishing, front-row seats to the best shows in town … those sorts of things. 

We don’t know about you, but when we see a note that “a list of ‘talking points’ be sent to the Board to share with members as questions arise,”* it throws up a big, fat red flag.  For some reason, somebodies on that board felt the need to all tell the same story about the sale of the building. 

How about digging out those “talking points” and sharing some of that information?  That’s a good place to start answering the many questions that membership has regarding the sale. It’s time for management and the Board to come clean on this very dirty situation.

Also, please be aware, that three people form a majority on the Executive Committee with the power to make major decisions for NCRA – including spending vast amounts of membership dollars! Now that there’s a big pot of money sitting around from the sale of the building, in our opinions, asking for $100,000 or $200,000 for a steno project now doesn’t sound like a whole lot when we’ve heard that $500,000 was the initial request.  Three people on that Executive Committee can make the decision to turn those funds over.  Just something for membership — and the Board — to realize. 

Wake Up, NCRA!
  Frank N. Sense

* Note to the NCRA Board:  Questions are arising!

P.S.  Now that the Board has not renewed the contract for the lobbyist, are there freed-up funds for that steno project that three Executive Committee members can approve?

P.P.S.  Some of us here at WUNCRA are recalling a similar “steno project” during the golden era where a bunch of folks were vetted with psychological questions, given tons of support, and a free ride to learn reporting.  And with all that “freeness,” the rumor is that only ONE outta the bunch was successful.   Anybody else recalling this?

P.P.P.S.  Another thought we are having:  With the advent of blogs and listservs and all kinds of social media, it’s time that the board come COMPLETELY clean on how they are running NCRA.  Stream the meetings; have a reporter produce verbatim transcripts; have detailed minutes!  Simple, common-sense stuff.

Now that there is some cash lying around at NCRA after the sale of the allegedly once-paid-for-but-hocked-to-pay-for-a-GOLDEN-parachute building*, the rumor is that some self-proclaimed “thought leaders” ** are frothing at the mouths trying to get their beaks into a chunk of that money like a bunch of seagulls following a trawler off the coast of Louisiana waiting for the chum to be thrown overboard.

Yep, that’s right, the ramifications of the rumors is that the Flagship of our profession is going to be gutted like a dead Mississippi catfish after these “thought leaders” fillet almost $500,000 from YOUR bank account at NCRA to fund the tuitions of the schools of students that will be vetted by THEMafter making it through the A to Z Program.  Apparently, they have some super magical formula *** for flooding certified reporters into the marketplace that wasn’t worth sharing with membership without tapping into a big pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

How much money will be lopped off the top for “administrative fees” before any of that bait gets down to the students?  Which “thought leader” will be the aDminiStrAtor??? 

All of us here at WUNCRA have so many questions.  Will the board answer to membership before sinking a half-million dollars?  They better before more members “fish or cut bait”!!!  It’s renewal time!!!

 WAKE UP, NCRA!
Frank N. Sense

* It’s time for the board to come clean with a FULL ACCOUNTING on the sale of the building.  Ignoring the requests of membership is not going to make this stinky fish disappear. 

** Note:  If a group of somebodies refers to themselves as “thought leaders,” it’s time to find a new fishing hole far, far away from where they’re fishing for our money.  We’ve never heard real thought leaders refer to themselves as thought leaders.  Have you?

*** We all KNOW that there is no super magical formula.  The only true magic at work here, in our opinions, is $500,000 disappearing from the bank account of NCRA and reappearing into the pockets of some “thought leaders.”

Well, it looks like all of the A to Z doesn’t stop at the ED or the DSA. Apparently, since a different ED has been chosen, the plan just needs the VP, the P and the IPP* – and maybe we’ll throw in some spineless Ds who wouldn’t even be on the board if it wasn’t for the DSA.

The bruit is that the cockamamie strategic plan is to have NCRA pay to send students vetted through the allegedly plagiarized A to Z Program to school and have MEMBERSHIP pay for those students’ trainings. Just wondering who stands to reap from all of that “free” education? Could it be the current DSA and the VP and the P and the IPP? Perhaps they’re looking to form their own school?

Hmmm … maybe that’s the reason why the building was sold for $5 million.**

In our opinions, it’s just a free lunch of alphabet soup … paid for on the backs of the membership of NCRA!

WAKE UP, NCRA!
Frank N. Sense

* Those three women alone, who form a majority on the Executive Committee of YOUR association, can spend the money to implement this crazy plan without the rest of the board even knowing about it until the $$$ are already gone

** Membership is still ENTITLED to a complete accounting on the sale of NCRA’s building … before all of that money disappears

All of us here at Wake Up, NCRA want to welcome OUR new Executive Director and CEO! The short blurb that was written about her vision to seize the vast opportunities with laser-focused intention makes us hopeful that NCRA can grow and flourish again.The new ED/CEO has been granted the sacred trust of membership. We’re hoping that her definition of “laser focus” is that NCRA will keep its focus centered on stenographic reporters, and not just on “the court reporting industry,” in general.

Here are some ideas that all of us here at WUNCRA have come up with to help make this new relationship with membership a very successful one:

1. Transparency, transparency, transparency.  *As members, we believe that we are entitled to know how every single board member votes on every single issue.  How else can membership determine the board members that we wish to lead us?  We’re a membership of high-tech stenographic reporters, so please consider using stenographic reporters to write the board meetings verbatim while also streaming the board meetings live, then posting those transcripts on the site very soon after board meetings.   That will go a long way to gaining the trust of membership, and may even be great PR for getting members back to NCRA.  It will also be a good marketing tool for members who are trying to sell those services to clients in their local markets.  Please publish the agendas and board books online before every meeting.   Please also publish complete minutes after board meetings, not the “skeleton” minutes that have been the norm since at least the golden years.  Please do not allow the Executive Committee to usurp the entire board by making major decisions in the dark of night between full board meetings.  We do understand that there are certain board situations that need to be guarded, but Robert’s Rules covers those rare situations.
2. In our opinions here at WUNCRA, many of the board members over the last many years have not been servant leaders.  Many have had their own personal reasons and agendas for getting on the NCRA board and then moving on to executive board positions, culminating in the presidency.   In our opinions, it’s best not to pay any mind to the Vs, the Ys, the Ns, the Ps, the Ws, the Ds.  Just follow the years of the decline in membership, and use caution and your gut.  We think that there are even a few on the current board to be wary of.

We’re sorry that you’ve inherited a tough situation. But we here at WUNCRA, and we’re sure steno reporters in general, are pulling for you, Madam ED/CEO.

Godspeed,
Frank N. Sense

* We also believe that a full accounting and background on the sale of NCRA’s building for $5 million will also go a long way to gaining trust.  The NCRA board has a history of sweeping things under the rug and hoping that they don’t rear their ugly heads, but they usually do.  An example, in our opinions, is not completely 86’ing SLM from NCRA’s history, but instead allowing her to simply resign.

… because this week’s NCRA blast had a big ol’ article about the A to Z Program trying to give a boost to the reputation and status of the rumored member vying for the position who is also the recipient of the coveted — but now cheapened — DSA award.  Good PR is very good before a big announcement.

We haven’t had time to do the research, but we’ve heard from a few members that they seem to recall a similar program that was implemented around the country as long as a decade or two ago, so it may appear that the A to Z Program is just a recycled idea packaged with a new pretty bow.

This DSA recipient has been on the board of NCRA through many of its terrible events:  Boosting the credibility and career of a past president who now effectively replaces stenographic reporters with recording systems*; the sale of the building**; a lot of the umbrella brouhaha; the mass exodus of members, etc.

We find it interesting how a program that was recently re-introduced with no performance measures is worthy of the DSA award.  Why did the board pass up giving the DSA award to the masterminds of the “Writing Our Future” survey or the “Take Note” campaign?  Those programs have been around long enough to be statistically measured for their impacts on the stenographic profession.

In our opinions, this is the grand strategic plan that the DSA recipient and others implemented a number of years ago.  (We understand that the DSA recipient and a past ED/CEO have been selling “strategic plans” to reporters at many conventions this past year or so — but that’s a digression.)  We’re figuring that the grand strategic plan really got rolling in the late 2000s, and it will reach its fruition when the board announces the position of ED/CEO of NCRA.  And then the mean girls club will continue.

It seems like it takes loads of patience to see a strategic plan through, and maybe it went like this:  Nominate a good number of members to the board and then use your influence to get them on that board so that those board members owe you the favor of their votes to make you the ED/CEO of NCRA with a nice six-figure salary and great benefits package (wouldn’t we all like that?).  It appears that the DSA is just a marketing blitz to boost the resume.  Why wasn’t the A to Z Program implemented during all of those years on the board and through the presidency?  Perhaps because the DSA wouldn’t have been bestowed right before a new ED/CEO was due to be announced.

Wake Up, NCRA,
Frank N. Sense

*Did the new president run into the hawker of recording devices at the Court Technology Conference on September 12-14 that was attended by a “broad expanse of crucial decision-makers” from court systems around the country?  Just wondering.

**Membership is still entitled to a full accounting of the building that we now understand from a reliable source was not fully paid for at the time of sale (like Prince — may he rest in peace — we’ll now refer to it as “the formerly-paid-off-building-once-owned-by-NCRA”).  Soooo … was a loan taken against that formerly-paid-off-building to pay off a golden parachute?  So many questions that need to be answered.

But we know that we’re not.  The membership numbers aren’t horribly misinformed.

What has our leadership done to control the mass exodus that NCRA has experienced over the past ten or 15 years?  NOTHING!  They WANT a dwindling membership so that they can say that NCRA will die without credentialing recorders and voicewriters.  The single idea that has been most advanced and pursued by leadership has been the umbrella, and the things that they’ve done in pursuit of the umbrella has been against stenographic reporters.   This relentless pursuit has not served the interest of stenographic reporters, but it has served the business models, resumes, etc. of “leadership. “

Aren’t you just sick of hearing about the umbrella association model?  We don’t think that we’re horribly misinformed that our “leaders” are counting on the few members left having “umbrella association fatigue” so they are able to slip it in as NCRA’s model.  These are the things that happen when an association is run by a secret illuminati.

This Board of Directors has the power and ability to have NCRA run with complete transparency.  But they CHOOSE to run it with secrecy, and then we are accused of being “horribly misinformed” when we dig up nuggets of truth and share them with membership.  Imagine the nuggets that we’ve missed!  We’re sure that there are many that we’ll never know about.

This Board of Directors gave this year’s Distinguished Service Award to a woman whose business model, in our opinions, is more about making money off of an umbrella/”continuum of services” than it is about the best interests of stenographic reporters.  Does that make us here at WakeUpNCRA horribly misinformed, or is it the Board of Directors that’s horribly misinformed?  The DSA should only be given to a recipient that benefits membership as opposed to one who exploits membership.

Membership is still entitled to a full accounting on the sale of that paid-for $5 million building!  Maybe it was worth a few million more than $5 million, and we were TOTALLY fleeced.  Some of our limited research shows that a Massachusetts-based real estate firm was used as the agent for the building AND the acquisition of the spendy new office space.  We find that to be VERY curious.  The more digging we do, the more convinced we are that we are not horribly misinformed about what went down around the sale of the building.

 Wake Up, NCRA!
Frank N. Sense

P.S.  Please send this post to NCRA members on your contacts list so that they’re not horribly misinformed, either.

We were putting our heads together here at WakeUpNCRA and we figured out that the NCRA leadership has never deviated from their grand strategic plan of making NCRA an umbrella organization for recorders, voicewriters and stenographers (“stenos” as we’re referred to in the secret clique), even though membership has time and again stated that we want NCRA to be an organization “serving” stenographers only!

These are some of the things that we came up with:

1. During the golden era, the executive director/CEO held important meetings with a third-party facilitator so that he could put forward his goals and plans into action, but it looked like all the “great ideas” of making NCRA an umbrella association came from the board members themselves.
2. The board has a pattern over the years of refusing to go to membership for solutions, but instead implementing their own plans through the cliques that formed on the board.  If you made it onto the board and agreed to “go along to get along” (membership be damned!), you became a member of their secret society.  Just like a secret illuminati.
3. Ah, reduce membership from 35,000 down to under 12,000 so that they have the ability to say that NCRA will completely die if we don’t credential recorders and voicewriters.
4. They sold the paid-for building for $5 million without letting membership know until the board had to disclose it at a business meeting attended by around 80 members, not giving access to the meeting by streaming for all members to see.  AND, we’re sure that the new NCRA headquarters is in Class-A office space in one of the highest rent districts in the USA.  They’re blowing through the money as fast as wind in a Category-5 hurricane.  They’re making NCRA broke.  We will soon hear that they need to credential recorders and voicewriters just to stay in business – while putting the rest of us out of business. *
5. The board discourages participation in leadership.  They keep mostly sheep on the board.  The sheep don’t buck the system because if they do they won’t be able to go “up” to the cool girls’ table.  The one or two shepherds keep the grand strategic plan of the umbrella association alive.  Do a little research and figure out who nominated the most sheep (and maybe one shepherd) onto the board, including the current vice president (who is getting a ton of press through NCRA, after being nominated for and receiving the FAPR, news releases for becoming VP, etc.) over the past few years.  It’s the grand poo-bah of shepherds nominating all of those sheep. Baaaaaaaa …
6. Ah, yes, don’t forget the “board rules” that allow your fellow board members the ability to throw you off the board if you talk to membership about what happened during a meeting.  The “secret handshake” makes everybody feel so special.
7. Credentialing electronic recorders and voicewriters with NCRA’s coveted credentials fits the personal business model of the rumored member of NCRA vying for the Executive Director position.**
8. In our opinions, bestowing the Distinguished Service Award by the clique to the clique cheapens the significance that it gives to those who truly deserve it.

Wake Up, NCRA!!!
 Frank N. Sense

P.S. Please forward this post to other members of NCRA in your contacts list so that they can see how they are being screwed, too.

* We’re all still waiting for a full accounting from the sale of the building.  Maybe next year’s president will have the guts to give membership a full disclosure. We are ENTITLED! to a who, what, where, when and how.

** If the board is not very careful about who is given the job of the Executive Director of NCRA, they will see membership dwindle even more than after the famous umbrella speech of 2007.  But please read No. 3, again.