William Heerwagen

Please elect me again to Local Station Board (LSB).

I have no magic. I can only work for an end to the WBAI/Pacifica years-long tailspin.

Financial and moral crises continue to intensify:

• The Pacifica National Board (PNB) has not addressed how to fund interest payments on a $3.2 million loan when the amount retained as a set-aside for the first 18 months of interest payments is exhausted this Fall, or the full amount due 18 short months later.

• Unit budgets for the stations, national office, and Archives have not been approved by the National Finance Committee (NFC) or PNB for years.

• An audit for the year ending September 30, 2017 has just been completed. Neither previous staff nor present contracted accountants produce regular monthly financial statements. Not knowing where we are financially is untenable.

• Lack of audits and perhaps other deficiencies per the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) have resulted in Pacifica stations not getting annual grants.

• Flouting our Bylaws has become habitual: Secretly contracting/paying certain Director(s) without disclosure to and approval from the PNB, violating the Bylaw amendment process and Delegate election process, illegally extending terms on the PNB and shortening the mandatory one year off, political targeting of Delegates for removal, electing ineligible Director(s), manipulating the calling and canceling of meetings, and more.

At every election Justice & Unity seeks to inform you about the state of the station and network. Last election’s tabloid from the Steve Brown camp was a supermarket flyer with questionable content. The junk marketer described by a state Attorney General as “incapable of conducting an honest sale” has been barred from doing business in several states. He knows how to spread misleading info and how to attract attention. He personally ranked the sole person of color on his slate 16 of his 16 candidates, only adjusting that for his mailer to avoid embarrassing optics. And that #16 is a staff person masquerading as a listener candidate. Please think before you vote.

Keeping the same people in control will likely end with the death of WBAI/Pacifica.

Locally, the current majority have held that majority for more than a decade – but they boldly blame others for the problems they themselves have caused.

J&U will continue to work toward keeping WBAI/Pacifica afloat despite others’ efforts to delay until it’s too late for any form of rescue.

I’ll work for serious off-air fundraising, clear policies and procedures, prudent planning, honesty, civility, and a return to honoring staff contracts.

Keep WBAI from the circling vultures. They get closer all the time.

Please use the following rank order to maximize the value of your vote (it is not a reflection of the personal value of any of us as candidates):

We recommend the Arise slate—Rank them 8, 9, and 10 in whatever order you prefer.:

• What experience, connections, skills or traits would you bring to the local station board to advance the station’s mission?

  I would return to the LSB with several additional months watching local and national boards getting Pacifica closer and closer to dissolution of Pacifica. I will know a little more about what not to do. In addition, I bring a career of accounting, audit, computer and other business and life stuff. I have read and hopefully will get a chance to use Pacifica Bylaws, California law, government and corporate rules to aid Pacifica. Common sense will also help.

• What do you appreciate and value in the station’s current operations?

  It is amazing, with the very low number of administrative managers at WBAI (three), that WBAI is still on the air. Although rules, norms, policies exist, they are often left off to the side. These managers have no administrative staff beyond volunteers. More money for more staff MIGHT help with compliance from their end.

• What would you like to see improved or changed in the station’s current operations?

  – Fewer days of on-air fund raising.

  – More respect for paid and unpaid staff, particularly around lack of process and even lack of respect regarding schedule changes, preemptions, additions, cancellations of programs.

  – Need explanation of how WBAI got from no paid program producers to perhaps two strip shows with paid staff. I thought that some kind of budgetary considerations… oh… wait … I almost went into a past life where budgets existed and mattered.

• Describe what you anticipate would be your top three priorities or areas of focus if you were elected to the local station board.

  – Fundraising alternatives.

  – Creation of Pacifica plan to pay interest on $3.2 million loan starting this Fall, and to pay full loan in early 2021.

  – Reimplement the following of actual rules, regulations, policies, procedures, processes, laws at both the local station level and at the national Pacifica level.

• Sustainability is an important part of any nonprofit operation. What are your thoughts on how the board can help to improve the station’s financial footing?

  Actual fundraising thinking, and budget activities such as creating, implementing, following said budget/s especially before, during and after expenditures, but also as related to incoming monies.

• Is there anything else you would like prospective voters to know?

  How many ways can I explain that what the other crew has been doing is killing WBAI/Pacifica?

  Doing (and not doing) the same things over and over, expecting different results is known as cognitive dissonance.

  The same group that has for the last decade been taking WBAI/Pacifica to an ignoble end, thinking that they are now going to save us, is skewed slightly toward the cognitive dissonance spectrum!

  (Slightly?)

  Wake up!

  Something’s wrong with the status quo!

  Vote for Justice & Unity who might actually effect/create survival.

  VOTE J&U!!

  (Pacifica’s life matters.)