Managing Director's role in RAAM matters

After the sale of RAAM, the UMCA’s Managing Director publicly posted his role, as follows: "The employment contract with the Board remains my sole organizational responsibility. I am not, nor will I be an officer or employee of RAAM." This same Managing Director also said in the Nov-Dec 2006 UMCA magazine that he would however become involved in RAAM matters through programs having no financial benefits to him.

Some members have valid concerns that the UMCA’s Managing Director is getting too heavily involved in RAAM. Many UMCA members are non-RAAM customers. The UMCA seems to take this “in your face attitude” about RAAM and force you to buy into the big box notion that RAAM is the “be all and end all” reason why the UMCA exists. For example, in a public post in early May, our Managing Director comments, "I'm working on the RAAM Guide in VeloNews and the UltraCycling/RAAM program. I will be devoting almost all my time to them."

A dereliction of duty: One of the losing candidates in the BoD election, Mavis Irwin, (and others) requested a UMCA directory a couple of days prior to the Managing Director's e-mail Topica forum post relating to his time commitment to the RAAM program (as explained above). It is evident that the Managing Director didn't put UMCA member’s business first because their request for an electronic directory was not sent for almost 40 days (then it was a paper copy for Irwin). Our Managing Director was observably so preoccupied with RAAM business that he contributed to the loss of opportunity for several of our members who thought they were candidates in a fair election. (For paper copies of the public UMCA directory during non-emergency times, the requests typically were completed in about 14 days for the “favorable” UMCA members.) Here, it was suspected that the Managing Director put RAAM first and ignored the candidate’s justified need for fairness in the last election...and these people were his customers.

Updated in June:

(Update with more evidence pending.)