New San Diego LGBT Pride Board Co-Chairs Judi Schaim and Larry Ramey gave an update on changes Pride’s board of directors has made since being reconstituted one month ago at the San Diego LGBT Community Center, last Monday.

“When we inherited this job, we needed to make sure that our house was in order. So we’ve taken a tremendous amount of time sifting through everything to find out what works [and] what doesn’t.” Schaim said. “We know that you’re all watching us. So we want to be very, very thoughtful and careful.”

Both Schaim and Ramey were appointed to the board in addition to Vertez Burks, Jeri Dilno, Bob Leyh, Chris Shaw and Andrea Villa on Sunday, Jan. 24 by now former chair Phillip Princetta, former treasure Mike Karim and recently appointed board members Debra McEntee, Joe Mayer and Suanne Pauley.

The new board was created after former Pride executive director Ron deHarte spoke out about the former Pride board voting to grant former board chair Phillip Princetta a $5,000 check, which he accepted, for extraordinary service to the organization. deHarte was subsequently dismissed shortly thereafter and Princetta returned the check after several community members, Pride staffers and volunteers became outraged about it.

Former board members Princetta, Karim and Worrell, who resigned within days of the new board appointments, allege that Senator Christine Kehoe demanded their resignation and the appointment of the new members to the board at a meeting with the senator at her office with former deputy mayor Toni Atkins and City Councilmember Todd Gloria.

All three former or current government officials have stated that they took action to address community concerns over the organization but have not explained what it involved.

The new board members are former Pride board members, San Diego Democratic Club members and campaign supporters of Kehoe, Atkins and Gloria.

At a Pride town hall forum early last January, Schaim, speaking on behalf of a group of former Pride board members presented a list of 15 recommendations for the then three member Pride board to implement. At Monday’s Pride town hall forum, Schaim, now Pride’s board co-chair, addressed the status of each recommendation on that list.

Nine of the 15 recommendations have been accomplished Schaim said, including the appointment of five interim board of directors during which Pride bylaws would not be amended, bringing Pride’s tradition and bylaw of gender parity back (there are now five females, four males and a female co-chair on the board), re-commitment of the director emeritus position, adoption of a regular schedule of town hall meetings with the community (next one will be in April), public notice of regular board meetings on its Web site www.sandiegopride.org, open board meetings with time allotted for public comment and minutes of all board meetings on the organization’s Web site.

Schaim said that two of the 15 recommendations were in the process of being completed: a formal and independent audit of Pride’s books and business processes and a publicly accessible report on the audit to be posted on its Web site when complete.

Four of the group’s recommendations – making the board more ethnically diverse, reestablishing a youth position on the board and the adoption of an emeritus advisory and community advisory council – have not been accomplished, Schaim said.

On the board’s current ethnic representation, Schaim said, “We are well aware that we’re over 45 and most of us are white.”

“We are looking for all kinds of diversity, any area of diversity that you can think of. Nominations are open. Please have people send in applications,” she added.

Schaim gave a similar response with respect to the board’s search to recruit a young person.

“We can’t really put anyone on our board if you don’t apply,” she said.

Schaim also said that the board is currently in discussions over creating the two advisory councils.

“So that’s what we’ve done so far,” Schaim said. “Where are we going now?”

“We’ll let’s find out,” said Pride Co-Chair Larry Ramey, who then began a Q & A session with the audience.

During the Q & A session, audience comments and questions to the co-chairs ranged from the congratulatory to a variety of criticism.

“Are you going to discontinue fundraising or are you are going to keep that in and continue to compete with service organizations?” asked former Pride board member Lois Gail.

Schaim responded: “We haven’t really discussed how much fundraising we will do. We are not a social service agency. We are well aware of that, and we will not be competing.”

Speaking to the non-Pride affiliated members in the audience, former Pride board member Pam Schwartz said, “If the community has comments on how Pride should be, or how its message should be, there’s e-mail, there’s phone, there’s staff to contact or join the board. You can’t just sit around and bitch and complain about the event if you don’t want to be involved.”

Several audience members including Virgil Bowen, president of the California Cyclemen’s Motorcycle Club, congratulated the new board, whose members sprinkled the audience, for accepting their new positions.

“I like to thank all of the Democrats that came forward to be on the new board and for their efforts,” Bowen said.

One issue that continued to reemerge throughout the Q & A session was keeping Pride’s annual rally. Two weeks ago, former Pride board chair Princetta told the Gay & Lesbian Times in an interview with him and former board members Worrell and Karim that Pride eliminated its original annual rally because few people attended the event.

But for former Pride board member Wendy Sue Biegeleisen, the annual rally is the most important part of Pride.

“It’s where activists nationally and internationally come to speak in person. It rallies us as a community to go forward, and [tells us] where we’re fighting, and how we’re fighting and why we’re fighting,” Biegeleisen said.

Responding to Biegeleisen, Schaim said, “I think many of us realize that the rally is really the fire that gets the parade going and gets the festival going and were looking at it. We want that fire back. It can’t just be a boring kind of event. That’s our intention. We haven’t decided who, when or where but we’re aware.”

About 50 people attended Monday’s community forum, one-fourth the number of people who attended last month’s town hall forum on Pride.

“This room was full at the last town hall meeting,” said Scouting for All President Howard Menzer. “Where are all those mouths tonight?”