Why UMCA needs an UMCA Managing Director replacement

February 27th, 2008 at 7:43 AM

Dear UMCA Government,

Like any good Board of Director members, will you be putting aside your opinions and investigate why renewing the Managing Director's contract is bothering the UMCA members watching UMCA's actions closely?

This will be what I will do no matter what my opinions and the opinions of those I am representing are.

If I am you, what I will be doing is never think this in terms of "them vs. us"--I never did. I will be thinking this in terms of law and order. What I am seeing is lawsuits in the coming years if law and order is not putten above everything else now.

Think carefully about renewing the contract if you are planning to do so. In the opinions of those I am representing, we do indeed need a new Managing Director with fewer conflict of interests as stated in my letter below.

Again, I would be investigating everything more than five times and talk to people standing at as many angles as I could find, especially as a Board of Director. (I did exactly this unstop the pass year.)

Mavis
Response:
(Unclear whether it's on the record or off the record from Joe Jamison.)
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Joe,
I am planning to resend the questions not answered since early January again next week because I didn't hear anything since my last resend on Feb 17th. I'm peaceful, but keeping UMCA reminded.

If UMCA is planning to answer those questions soon, please let me know and I will wait a bit longer. I however will be urged to push these questions again soon or later because it's important to all of us to be open-minded and researching carefully. (As an editor, I turned down a lot of things suggested for the blog due to little or no public evidence.)

Thanks for the note on Jack. Yes, he may had forgetten. I will confirm this then put it to closure. (Don't mind me. I am still hurted over being publicly called a lair, but as a representer, I am putting my own personal feelings aside.)

Thanks again,
Mavis

February 17th, 2008 at 9:58 AM

Dear UMCA Government,

This is my personal letter stating why I strongly recommend replacing the UMCA Managing Director.

1) Conflict of interests: The report in the Nov-Dec 2006 UMCA magazine stated that Hughes will not be receiving any earnings from RAAM, LLC and his earnings will go to Annemarie McSweeney scholarship fund. There is however still a conflict of interests in terms of his passion and devotion to RAAM’s well being. This will strongly influence his decision making on issues that are good for the UMCA membership, but not good for RAAM.
The examples involve, but are not limited to:

UMCA duties were suspected to be evaluated in May 2007 when 12 of the 18 candidates were never given their requested opportunity to re-level the campaigning grounds about 40 days before the ballot submitting deadline. Be noted that Hughes did publicly say he would be devoting most of his time to the RAAM program in this May 4th 2007 topica post:

http://lists.topica.com/lists/ultracycling/read/message.html?mid=812741735&sort=d&start=9767

The 120-page May-June 2007 UMCA magazine had about half of all pages devoted to RAAM and to the best of my knowledge, all of these were copies of what was posted on RAAM’s website. This May-June 2007 magazine arrived 6 days after RAAM started. Also, this was during the months of enriched ultracycling events, where many other events were being presented. The other races could use this amount of attention for the 85% of the UMCA members not having the resources to do RAAM. It would have been more appropriate for RAAM to produce their own program and mail it to the UMCA members, thus allowing the UMCA to offer more exposure to non-RAAM events.

2) Regarding before and after the UMCA’s change to non-profit status: Hughes was a Managing Director since 1999. A number of active UMCA members told me they remembered the UMCA history differently from the version posted on the UMCA website: Hughes didn’t take the lead in the status change; he was forced to do this. It could be true that Hughes may have a condition called “Founderitis.”

Check these links for a brief description and a couple of links to Founderitis management:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founder
or: http://www.philanthropy.com/jobs/2002/09/26/20021003-678240.htm

You may suggest Marino has this too, but his concerns are also shared by the new generation of cyclists in the non-profit era such as but not limited to Catharina “Cat” Berge, Lou Lamoureux, Steve Scheetz, Anna Noone, Jan Christiansen, and myself. Then there are others who I understood to take part in forcing UMCA to become non-profit in 2002 such as but not limited to Seana Hogan, Charlie Liskey, Chris Kostman, Pat Enright, Paul Biron, and Reed Finfrock.
Thus, I believe it’s time to have someone willing to abide by the non-profit ways. Time is changing and we know from the former and current Board members that Hughes is still carrying out things without the entire Board’s knowledge. We definitely need someone who doesn’t have the old for-profit habits to take over.

3) Hughes hadn’t cleared up the situation on why the UMCA private mailing list was released to an unauthorized UMCA member.

The overall story is in this blog post:
http://ultracycling-us.blogspot.com/2007/11/violation-of-private-policy_13.html
This blog post also has the topica post reference:
http://lists.topica.com/lists/ultracycling/read/message.html?sort=d&mid=812743447&start=9817

I talked to Jack Bochsler last week and he said UMCA hadn’t apologized to him or anything like that yet. He was very upset when Hughes publicly said this on topica (link is above): “There are multiple ways to validate the list and I've done that. That isn't my point. If someone is going to make a serious public charge about someone else without providing any evidence, that is nothing more than an unsubstantiated rumor, not a statement of fact.”

Well, UMCA now knows for sure that this person told the truth and she does have the evidence right from the day she mentioned the problem. She did try to help Hughes figure this out without giving him the name—go back and read the topica posts again to refresh the memory. She was just not in the position to disclose someone else’s name back at that time. Jack finally gave her permission to do so on November 30th 2007, when she asked him if he wanted to stand up with the others on the SaveUMCA team. If Hughes compared the public UMCA directory and the list he gave Jeff Stephens alphabetically, it won’t take him long to notice “Bochsler” was supposed to not be there like it never was ever since Bochsler became a member in 2004.

4) We are still investigating this one. Let’s try again: Hughes, did you send out this letter?

http://ultracycling-us.blogspot.com/2007/11/e-mail-to-managing-directors-friends.html

I guess it’s time for me to say I do know from Rick Kent that someone answered Hughes’s e-mail, saying that Hughes is ignoring this and told Rick Kent to do the same thing. Rick Kent didn’t mean to have this information in his e-mail to Pat Enright. Pat Enright forwarded this evidence to me. Thus, I do know Hughes and someone else answering his e-mails at UMCAHQ@aol.com is ignoring this.

None the less, this is a very serious thing and calling for a termination as stated in Hughes’s old contract, which I posted on the blog. I already confirmed that this e-mail was sent out from two of Hughes’s friends who separately got this first-person. They separately and independently forwarded this e-mail from Hughes to me as well as some other people.

Hughes never denied sending out this letter, so we do have strong suspects that this was indeed real. I was surprised no lawsuit was filed, but it’s dangerous to keep Hughes in office with this in the UMCA members’ memories.

For the sake of UMCA’s interests, we need a Managing Director replacement.

Coincidently,
Mavis