While I’ve purposely stayed out of this as I don’t believe in airing dirty laundry in public I feel a public disclosure of some of the facts is now necessary.
A loyal MASNA supporter has just sent me a copy of an email that Connie Hannon has been secretly sending to BB Admins and MASNA members suggesting that they discourage people from continuing to support MASNA. At this point, I can only say that if she is still involved with MASNA or MACNA in any way, she should be removed ASAP for insubordination and conflict of interest as the main objective here seems to be discrediting MASNA and me, and drumming up attendance for the show that she and Dennis Gallagher (and others demanding monetary compensation) are planning.
To give you some history, MASNA began hosting MACNA when some of the BOD from 3 years ago decided that the Committee members should be able to pocket the proceeds. We had 2 valid bids from member clubs (Indiana and Ohio) but the excuse given was that they were not good enough to host. As I felt this was totally unethical, I resigned as Webmaster and many of our member clubs dropped out. I returned as Webmaster a year later based on the promise that all proceeds from the Lauderdale show would go to the MASNA Treasury.
For the record, while I signed the contract with the MARRIOTT in my official capacity as Prez, all negotiations were handled by the person who was considered to be our “resident expert”, Dennis Gallagher. He has publicly stated that it’s possible to put on an affordable show so why couldn’t he do it for MASNA???
The Lauderdale Coordinators could not produce a detailed Financial Report for Lauderdale to assist us in planning the Baltimore show. Instead, we blindly trusted the budget prepared by the CPA who coordinated Lauderdale in conjunction with our “Hotel Expert”. In fact, we now see we had a perfectly good contract with the OMNI Hotel but were told that it was not large enough and overall totally unsuitable for our needs and that we needed to switch to a larger hotel. The Marriott was the only one available at that late date.
When I ran for the position of Prez 2 years ago, it was with the explicit understanding that I NOT be involved with any MACNA planning. I don’t have the experience necessary and I wanted to totally dedicate my efforts to our members, hobbyists, and bringing MASNA back on its feet again.
A couple of months after being elected our MACNA Coordinator resigned along with our Fundraiser and Editor. I considered this the price to be paid in my efforts to get us on a more “professional” track but this now meant we also had no Coordinator. Dennis Gallagher kindly accepted the appointment and I agreed to assist. This while also trying to be Prez, Webmaster, Editor and Membership person until Connie took over Membership.
While Connie has blatantly made many false statements against me both publicly and privately, she still hasn’t grasped the fact that there was nothing we could do to renegotiate the signed MARRIOTT contract once we realized in June we’d never meet the projected attendance goal. Attendance by those paying for 3-day tickets was close to what it was for Lauderdale so why did those involved with that show let us set a budget based on almost twice that amount???
I WAS able at the last minute to cut our expenses by about $20,000 which was still way short of our goal. It was never MY intent to put on the fanciest show possible but there was money we HAD to spend per our contract with the Hotel.
Guess I forgot to mention that when Dennis resigned 3 weeks prior to showtime we became aware that NONE of the arrangements had been made with the Hotel or A/V crew nor had our Award Trophy been ordered. Did I take control of everything at this time…YOU BETCHA! Somebody had to! I was determined to give the hobbyists and all other attendees the best show possible under the circumstances. Those who were at the Annual Delegates meeting might now understand why I was so unprofessional and unprepared.
Oh yeah…the flock of people who resigned in August did so because they refused to continue working so hard without monetary compensation. Read between the lines, people! My efforts to bring us back to our original Mission Statement of being an organization of unpaid volunteers dedicated to educating hobbyists has been somewhat of a totally futile effort considering those secretly campaigning to destroy us!
I need to apologize profuslely to our Baltimore speakers who never received the royal treatment they deserved due to lack of time and manpower. My apologies also to Frank Wilson of Reef Concepts who generously donated a very expensive skimmer to our raffle that was even engraved but never got properly displayed.
The only other apology I can offer at this point is to the wonderful CMAS folks who got left holding the ball because I am not a
bionic mircale worker and was forced to resign due to the stress of it all having taken a toll on my health. However I see they are now also under attack for having principles and ethics! Tom, Carl & Eric, hang in there! You're doing a wonderful job under unbelievably stressful circumstances!
Nancy
[ January 06, 2002: Message edited by: NancyS ]</p>
