Dear ARBA member,

Apparently you are interested in the other side of the story; you will find it below.  I am sorry that some members of this relatively small organization feel the need to personally and publically attack people with whom they disagree, but even more I regret that these individuals think that sending out letters like the one Ms. Rooney sent to the membership and the website remarks Ms. Kamenicky had illegally posted to the ARBA website after her resignation  do anything but harm the association as a whole. To carelessly harm the association because they are angry at me is an insult to the organization as a whole.

There are those that say that the general membership of ARBA are being "kept in the dark" with regard to all these alleged misdeeds. Those are frequently the same people that will accuse me and others on the board of trying to "tear ARBA apart." I'm sure that even this limited defense of myself will generate plenty of counter-charges for the membership to be subject to. My belief  is that the membership doesn't want to get involved in petty arguments. I have nothing to hide nor does the majority of the Board. All Board decisions are by majority vote, not by decree.

I find it quite interesting that Ms. Rooney sent her letter attacking the current ARBA president to nearly the entire membership with mailing addresses provided by our secretary, in spite of the fact that Ms. Rooney is not on the Board of Directors. Who paid for the postage, address labels, envelopes, etc.? We'll probably never know for sure that it was not ARBA.

Anyway, here is my side of these allegations:

A)    Cindy has used her position…to change the bylaws to fit her own agenda… Ms. Rooney and Ms. Kamenicky provide no specifics here, just a general accusation. I know the ARBA bylaws inside out; I know what they say and what they don’t say. The “Chapter 65” she refers to are the statutes for the State of Oregon regulating non-profit organizations (http://www.leg.state.or.us/ors/065.html ); ARBA must follow these as well. I have become extremely well versed in these rules also, and have taken to carrying  a copy with me to all sheep shows, events and meetings. In spite of allegations otherwise, I know how to read and how to follow rules. I have done so and will continue to do so. Allegations otherwise are untrue and defamatory. Since Ms. Rooney and Ms. Kamenicky do not explain what they think “my agenda” is, I feel no need to defend or refute it. Again, we see projection at play. Ms. Kamenicky held the association hostage unless we met her ever-changing demands.

B)     A divider, not a leader…polarized the board …Again, no specifics are provided here, just a scatter-gun accusation. I will say I support the majority of the board on most issues. These issues apparently are points of disagreement between the board and Ms Kamenicky and Ms. Rooney (I say “apparently” because Ms. Rooney is not a member of the current board, and did not speak to me about any of these issues before sending out her letter). As president, I have no power to bring motions or to vote on any motion unless there is a tie. It is the Board of Directors that are supposed to determine ARBA’s actions; if everyone on the board agrees, and the secretary follows their directives, then no controversy exists. That is not the case with the current board and  former secretary. I can see that youth scholarships, protecting ARBA’s history and providing more advertising opportunities for all members are of no interest to Ms. Rooney, but I submit that others may feel differently about this board’s accomplishments. In the last several months Ms. Kamenicky has refused to follow the Board directives, thereby requiring multiple votes to gain even partial compliance from her. Ms. Kamenicky has made at least three unauthorized expenditures with ARBA funds yet refuses to cooperate with a Board-authorized CPA audit of the books. 

C)    Continual distrust of the secretary …with no logical grounds. While it is true that the secretary and the Board have had a number of disagreements, each and every one was and is soundly based on logic and differing interpretations of the bylaws. All one needs to do to get a read on the trustworthiness of the secretary is to look at the order of the candidates on the ballot in the last election. They should have appeared  in alphabetical order, as they have been in the past; instead, the secretary’s choice was listed first in every category. As vice president, I in fact voted for Toni Scholder’s motion to make the choice of secretary permanent unless 2/3 of the Board disagreed, changing it from an annual approval. I had trust then in Ms. Kamenicky, but I have since been given ample reason to regret that vote. 

• Pirating of the ARBA website to slander the Association's President after resigning does not lead to trust. 

• Returning member's uncompleted registration applications using ARBA stationary, postage and her previous title and again slandering me does not lead to trust. Mind you, this is after Ms Kamenicky promised the next registrar that all registration would be up-to-date when handed over.

• Repeatedly spending ARBA's  funds for unauthorized purchases and then refusing to comply with the Board authorized auditor does not lead to trust. An audit cannot be completed properly if Ms. Kamenicky refuses to provide supporting documentation. Toni Scholder is the Board member who made the motion for a CPA audit (versus a simple review) of the ARBA books when Ms. Scholder and Ms. Kamenicky did not like the results of the internal audit performed by two members of the board. It appears that Ms Scholder should have strategized more thoughtfully with the then-Secretary before the last meeting before bringing her motion for a full audit. 

. No logical grounds for distrust? In all of these vitriolic diatribes written by Ms. Rooney and Ms. Kamenicky, try this: substitute your name where mine now reads. Would you have trust? The musings of bitter, vindictive, self-interested people who have NO regard for the Association's membership do not belong in mailboxes of any members, and certainly do not lend the authors the right to protest any lack of trust.

D)    President presiding on committees is a conflict of interest, as the president traditionally does not ….This is simply untrue. Former President Sue Barker “presided” on a number of committees, including nomination committees, but most notably the committee that awarded her father the ARBA Lifetime Achievement Award (which ended up costing more than $150 more than was approved). I’m sure Ms. Rooney sees no conflict of interest there, of course. It is very clear in our by laws and Chapter 65 that the President may sit on committees and the precedent for this practice was set long before I even joined ARBA. However, The 2009 National Show Committee did violate Chapter 65 of the Oregon statue by having only one Board member, Toni Scholder. I did explain this to Ms. Kamenicky and Ms. Shoulder on multiple occasions, to no avail. I see two sets of standards, one for Ms. Kamenicky (and her friends) and one for everyone else.

E)     Driven ARBA to negative financial status …need for mediation…marathon phone meetings…hiring another mediation firm to count the ballots. ARBA has been pulling money from savings to cover spending since long before I was president – re-read “D” above to see where some of it went. However, I’m grateful to Ms. Rooney for bringing up mediation. Again, these were all votes of the Board, not my personal actions. The Board requested that we enter into mediation; Ms. Rooney herself helped the secretary select the mediation firm (Oregon Dept. of Agriculture) and  the secretary signed a contract with the firm without conferring with the Board.  I donated vacation days and paid for my food and lodging to attend the sessions in Salem , OR in September of 2008.What did Ms. Kamenicky donate?? I was quite pleased with how mediation went, and, along with our secretary, signed the tentative agreement. However, both parties are required to give permission before releasing any parts of this agreement or even the contents of the mediation, and while I am perfectly willing to do so, our past secretary is not, even though she signed it. I wonder why Ms. Kamenicky refuses to allow our tentative agreement to be discussed? Could it be that it might refute her assertions? How many of you have illegally heard Ms. Kamenicky's version of the contents of the mediation? It certainly seems to me that ARBA has the right to read the barest of results of the mediation it paid for. As to phone meetings, a quick check of the minutes of previous meetings will reveal that lengthy meetings began long before my tenure as president. A number of meetings were called due to the inaccuracy of the previous meeting minutes and the need to try to get Ms. Kamenicky to follow the Board's vote, not her own personal agenda.  I have been forced to call two emergency meetings to attempt to resolve time-sensitive issues as the secretary refused to follow the majority vote of the Board and re-votes were held. Each time I asked board member to donate cell phone minutes on a web-based conference call, thereby costing ARBA nothing. The allegation that it is costing ARBA money to have the ballots counted by a neutral mediation firm is totally false and Ms. Rooney is well aware of it. Private donations have paid for this service. Ms. Kamenicky paid herself for the month of August and collected storage fees for that month although she refused to process a number of  registrations sent to her in July. How is that not a personal agenda, if not outright robbery?

F)     Cindy did not respect the proxies of two board members who could not attend an annual meeting…misrepresented herself claiming she had been advised by a mediator…When a director cannot attend any meeting, phone or face-to-face, as was the case here, that director cannot simply name a “proxy” to take his or her place as a director. This would be a clear violation of the bylaws and Chapter 65. As is reflected in the meeting minutes, another director made a motion to disallow such proxies, and the board voted in agreement. The section of the ARBA bylaws that seems to be confusing Ms. Rooney and Ms. Kamenicky is Article IV, (as well as section 665.231 of the OR non-profit statutes) which refers to membership meetings, not Board meetings. (By the way, the “proxy” being referred to here is simply a ballot, ensuring that all members get to vote even if they are not able to attend the annual meeting). Directors’ meetings are addressed in Article V, section 5 of the ARBA bylaws.  I did not “misrepresent” myself (I’m sure Ms. Rooney and Ms. Kamenicky mean “lied”) when I referred to the advice of the mediator. This assertion is false, defamatory and can be proven as such. I also obtained legal opinion from the Oregon Department of Justice as well as two private attorneys that support the Board's decision.

G)    Cindy attempted to solicit candidates for the board position in Reg. 4 … denied involvement in this conflict of interest. The bylaws require that there be two candidates for every position. I was not informed by our secretary that there was no opposing candidate for Region 4 until after the deadline. At that point, I called Lynn Barnes, a man of unimpeachable character and qualification, asking if he would consider being a write-in. He agreed. What Ms. Rooney does not say here is that when she and Kendall Spielman (who was the sole candidate on the ballot for the region and had to join ARBA so he could run for office!) found out that Mr. Barnes had agreed, they drove to his house and attempted to intimidate him and his wife into withdrawing himself, saying that write-ins were against the bylaws (which they are not) and illegal. I denied nothing in this, as there is no “conflict of interest” to deny, except perhaps by Mr. Spielman, who was in effect trying to eliminate another candidate for the same position. Mr. Spielman had been a member of ARBA for less than 2 months before the election, and owned no sheep.

H)    At the eleventh hour, Cindy attempted to amend the election procedure. It’s hard to know where to begin on this charge. I suppose the April 2009 meeting is as good a place as any: Here the board voted to have the voted ballots sent from the members directly to the third party mediation firm for counting, then to the secretary, instead of having them sent from the members to the secretary, then to the mediation firm to be counted, and then back. The secretary claimed in May that this was not what was voted on and refused to comply.  Ms. Kamenicky's lawyer agreed with her (but the board was not provided with a copy of his opinion until June 6), and I found three lawyers that agree with my interpretation (read their opinions here) The emergency meeting on Memorial Day did not resolve the issue, as the secretary chose only to believe her lawyer and no one else’s. In order to avoid a court battle, I called another emergency meeting on June 11 and the board voted on and passed (three times, actually)  a compromise to include the following instructions with the ballot:

Ballot envelopes will be opened on counting day by the neutral third party mediation company, Resolutions NW in Portland Oregon.

1. Place your marked ballot in the enclosed secrecy envelope.  Note: 1 ballot per 1 secrecy envelope

2. Then place the secrecy envelope in the enclosed ARBA addressed #10 envelope. Note: 1 secrecy envelope per 1 #10 envelope

3. For validating purposes, print the voting member’s name and address in the “return address” area of the #10 ARBA addressed envelope.

4.  Put a stamp on the #10 ARBA addressed envelope and mail it to the ARBA office.

5.  Ballots MUST be received in the ARBA office by July 13, 2009.

 6. Any voting member may verify receipt and counting of their ballot by Resolutions NW by calling their office M-F during normal business hours (PDT) at: 503-595-4898

The secretary balked at #6 (in red above) claiming it defamed her, in spite of the fact that neither her nor her office are mentioned. The meeting ended with her refusing to follow the Board’s directive to add #6. The ballots were due to go out the next day. She informed the board after the ballots were sent out on June 13 that all six instructions had been included.  As it turned out, she did not include the version of  #6 that the Board approved, but her own truncated version.

I) ...Cindy and Vice President, Margaret Walters authorized District 2 Director, Mary Pratt, to deposit ARBA money in her personal bank account; a direct violation of ARBA bylaws and Oregon Law...  Margaret and I did agree, as did three other Board members, one being an attorney. The 2008 National Show Committee at Rhinebeck asked her to open a separate account  (which she did) to hold the donated funds until the potter who made the prizes for the Featured Breed Show was paid. This was necessitated by the fact that  Ms. Kamenicky would not respond to Ms. Pratt's emails, making the project next to impossible. When  Ms. Kamenicky brought forth an anonymous objection to the procedure,  Ms. Pratt voluntarily responded to the Board's request to surrender all donated funds to ARBA as well as to provide  a detailed accounting of those funds. Ms. Kamenicky continued to escalate her demands of Ms. Pratt and demanded to receive the statement of the closed account. Ms. Pratt had had enough and refused Ms. Kamenicky's demand. The Board accepted Ms. Pratt's accounting and ledgers. Ms. Pratt then sent a receipt from the pottery vendor, signed by the potter, to Ms. Kamenicky . The receipt, per ARBA protocol, was to serve as Ms. Pratt's request for reimbursement from the donated funds. Ms. Kamenicky refused to honor the receipt, again changing her demands by requiring a photocopy of Ms. Pratt's cancelled check. Ms. Kamenicky refused to honor the directive of the Budget Committee to pay the funds and it again required a vote of the Board to honor a signed receipt. No wonder Ms. Pratt felt she needed to set up a separate account. It took months for her to be reimbursed from funds she and her committee solicited. It is a sad testament that if Ms Kamenicky likes someone, then there are no rules, bylaws or Chapter 65; however, if she doesn't like you, beware because you will have rules applied to you that no one has ever heard of.

It should be pointed out that I entered office in 2007 with an open mind, ready to work with the entire Board and the Secretary without prejudice. Ms. Kamenicky, on the other hand, made it clear from day one, during the "congratulatory" phone call, that the she viewed me as an adversary.  Her self-fulfilling prophecy has been fulfilled. She effectively quit doing registrations in mid-July after I was elected for a second term, and immediately began scheming with her cohorts for the surreal debacle that was supposed to be dinner accompanying the National Show. I'm sure she's quite proud of her actions to end and regrets nothing, which is why her refusal to release the results of the ARBA mediation is so profoundly puzzling.

Please feel free to call (810-655-4091) or email me with any questions about this or any other ARBA business.

Cindy Cieciwa