March 22, 2006

An Open Letter to the KRFC Community

Dear KRFC friends,

A lot has happened at the station since we went on air March 1, 2003. Much to our delight and pride, we have grown faster and bigger than many of us expected. In this last year alone, we installed brand new equipment in all our studios and more than 350 people volunteered more than 40,000 hours of time ­ equivalent to nearly 20 full time staff. We've moved from infancy to toddler to teenager as an organization in three short years. With that growth has come struggle and pain.

We set out in 2005 to create a strategic plan for the KRFC so that we could help channel and direct our future. Part of that exercise included rewriting our mission statement. We developed a process that was inclusive, public and very well advertised. More than 250 people were involved in crafting the new language. The board synthesized everyone's work and on February 16, 2006 unanimously adopted a new mission, vision and statement of core values.

At the last minute, after three months of process, several people who participated in the process chose to stop communication with the board and staff to pursue their right under KRFC by-laws to circulate a petition that asked for a full vote of the membership for adoption of the new mission statement. In fact, some of the petition organizers chose to go outside the KRFC community to collect signatures by using language that was misleading, personally disparaging to KRFC staff and board and detrimental to the well being of KRFC. We received numerous complaints from KRFC volunteers that they were harassed in public and at their places of work and electronically by organizers.

We attempted to communicate with some of the organizers to quell this behavior, but they would not return phone calls or emails from staff. We even enlisted the help of other volunteers to try to help solve this problem and resume communication to no avail. The organizers began to use the KRFC forums to encourage people to sign the petition and dismissed anyone who disagreed with their position. One of the signers of the petition attempted to remove his name from the petition with a very heartfelt plea for a return to dialog and a reminder that the organizers had not followed the process that had been agreed upon. We thought this was a step in the right direction toward solving our differences. Instead this volunteer's character was defamed and the board decided to shut down the forums. They have been used too often by this same group of people for behavior that is inconsistent with the culture we want to have at KRFC.

This is the fourth time in the past three years that this same group of people has hi-jacked decisions and publicly polarized the community.

We believe that this rift was inevitable because this group has a different vision for KRFC. The Board and staff and the vast majority of the KRFC community want the radio station to be a community radio station that is open to the diverse opinions that make Northern Colorado so unique. We do not believe that KRFC should be a radical, left-wing, political radio station as this vocal minority would like. We also, very emphatically, believe that KRFC should not be a bland, commercial-like radio station and that KRFC should never pander to the specific interests of any group by compromising programming for dollars. Do not be fooled by the rhetoric of this group. The open, consensus style of operation and commitment to democratic principles, human dignity, exploration of new ideas, and diverse music are not at risk.

And so KRFC faces a divorce. We cannot run the station or the organization without splitting from this group. Enormous staff and board time has been spent trying to bring everyone together, but we do not believe that there is common ground.

To that end, the KRFC board has revoked the memberships of Eddie Arthur, Paul Bame and Kathleen Brandon, three organizers of this group who we believe have acted time and again against the best interests of the station.

This makes us very sad. We have worked with two of these people for many years and, in some cases, considered them friends. All three have made considerable contributions to the station and we value and have welcomed their time, effort and expertise. We wish that things could be different.

But we believe that our actions are in the best interest of the station. We believe that KRFC cannot be healed and will not succeed if we do not separate and move on from this continuing conflict.

As for the petition itself. We are sorry that some people may feel like their signature was squandered. We intend to contact many of you personally to explain what we believe happened and why we chose to deem the petition invalid. As we grow, we find lots of places where we need clearer policy that will make these decisions easier to understand and predict.

89 signatures were delivered to a KRFC board member's home without any address or phone number. There was no legitimate way to confirm that the signatures were real. We consulted with a lawyer who confirmed this problem and raised others. The name of the person who asked that his name be removed from the petition was still on the petition. Given the complaints that we had received about the manner in which signatures were collected we had clear reason to question the intent of some of the signers.

After complaints were made about using a technical reason for not accepting the petition, we spent the time to try and match signatures with our database. Fewer than 50 signatures were current KRFC members.

We know that this experience has been difficult for some of you. It has been, and continues to be difficult for us. We hope you will contact any one of us or Beth if you want to express your opinions, feelings or get clarifications. As always, our board meetings are open to the public. We wish that more of you would participate in our decision making process. Only one person, who was not a petition signer, bothered to show up to the board meeting last week when the petitions were delivered.

As always, thank you for your continued support.

KRFC Board