Florida Repeater Council members reject corruption.

Was wondering about that too. Without taking sides on this whole matter (I wasn't there) my wife is an accountant and one thing she has seen too often is the problem when books are unaudited. To be more specific, if one person both writes the checks and balances the accounts it can be a risky situation. (In companies another red flag is if the person in charge of the records never takes a vacation.) I don't know the situation here and am not alleging anything. But I would suggest that if the old board hasn't recently done so then the new one should bring in an outside CPA to thoroughly go through the records. If everything is okay then that will be one less bone of contention.

 

I sat here and drafted a reply/comment to this thread, then abandoned it. It was lengthy. But I'm with you, K5BBC. Long story made somewhat shorter at least, I am not only a member of the Amateur Radio "hobby" community, but I have also worked in career/professional circles and with folks in the commercial, public safety, and broadcast fields for about 36 years. It blows my mind how "volunteer" officers in a "hobby" related group can so quickly and easily go astray, causing them to become a hindrance or outright deterrent to people wanted to get -- or remain -- involved in what is just that -- a HOBBY. Conversely, over the course of 36 years I don't recall ever having worked with or dealt with communications "professionals" who resorted to childish, amateurish behavior, even though THEIR livelihoods and futures actually DO depend largely on technical and political communications-related matters.

Folks, just because it's called "Amateur Radio" doesn't mean we shouldn't all act and function in professional ways and be ambassadors of Amateur Radio.

 

There were 30 state coordinating body's whom either did not send their data in or like in our case sent it in only to have it not used.

 

Based on the FRC website they think they are still in controll and will be holding a meeting on July 22.

 

In the publicly traded corporate world (in my world anyway), we have enforceable, inviolable controls, supported by the Sarbanes-Oxley act and backed up by outside auditors to prevent exactly these types of conflicts. It's a major PITA to implement, but well worth the effort.

 

You not only need to audit the finances, you need to audit the processes of the organization.
Accountability is key. If you can't define the processes of the organization, then you have no accountability. Without accountability, you have nothing.

 

As someone that has used 2 meter repeaters (like the fantastic NI4CE linked repeater system) here in central Florida since 1996, I have heard about this very issue concerning the FRC for many years. If the allegations of misfeasance were false then the accusers sure would be going through allot of trouble for nothing.

But I don't think that I would have posted this article on QRZ.com until everything was settled legally, if at all. I'm just saying.

 

And this is why uncoordinated repeaters are popping up...

 

Politicians, Board of directors, and Chairpersons are like diapers and should be changed frequently and for the same reasons. Besides, it keeps the business at hand "fresh and fair". As Amateur Radio is a self-policing community, it appears the FRC fulfilled that aspect well. I wish them all the best moving forward.

 

Coordination council politics aside, why in this day and age would anyone have a burning need to get a new repeater frequency pair assigned? There are multiple threads here on QRZ about the deadness of repeaters, nationwide. "If you build it (a new repeater), who's going to use it?" Judging by the lack of usage, there's way too many repeaters already, sitting virtually silently (except for automatic IDs) day after day, night after night, for weeks and months and years. Maybe, the real problem here, is the egos of too many who think they need to have 'their own' repeater, for just them and their buddies. Ya think?

 

clubs/councils can be like HOAs - if you elect individuals with little or no leadership experience, it turns into a nightmare b/c history proves that humans lean toward dictatorial leadership styles...

 

True, I was thinking more of smaller organizations. We had a church near here that could not figure out why there was a perennial cash squeeze. They finally discovered that the nice lady who volunteered to keep all the records and handle the accounts had a gambling problem. Such things routinely pop up in our newspaper. Something similar even happened to a small county in this state! Again, not alleging anything about this repeater group, but it is something to be aware of.

 

I was wondering this too. It seems like the biggest issue is no one using existing repeaters.

 

The controls should formulated and agreed to the organization's members, what works for me most likely won't work for you. It doesn't really matter what size it is, as long as the players are held accountable.

 

I was wondering the same thing. Even if you put up an uncoordinated repeater in this part of the world (which is perfectly legal, by the way), the chances of clashing with an actual QSO on another machine is almost zero. It would certainly happen infrequently enough that it could be dismissed as Es or other such thing.

There are tons of frequencies available on 440... they may not be in the "repeater" part of the ARRL band plan, but so what? As long as you don't cause QRM to a satellite or some official government user, those are perfectly legitimate frequencies for repeater operation.