We must say that we were surprised to hear that the newly appointed Pride board aka San Diego Democratic Club (SDDC) board (all its members come from the local political club) had so little to say what it had done in the past two months since its last town hall forum (please see this week’s news story, “Pride board makes scant progress on internal reforms”). Last February, Pride Co-Chair Judi Schaim told the community at a town hall forum that the new board had accomplished nine of the 15 recommendations it had requested a month earlier. In less than one month, the board had appointed more members to its board, reinstituted its goal of gender equity, appointed a female co-chair, appointed someone as director emeritus, began its proposed schedule of town hall meetings with the community and opened its board meetings to the public among other changes. While it wasn’t as significant as turning water into wine, we think it did show that the board could get things done. So as the next town hall forum came along, we were expecting to hear that the new board would by now have accomplished the rest of its recommendations: independent audit of its books, a publicly accessible report of the audit, appointing a youth to the board, adopting an emeritus advisory and a community advisory council. When we heard that they hadn’t accomplished any of its other recommendations, we asked, ‘So what have they done in the past two months?’ According to this week’s news story on the forum, Schaim said the board had accomplished two things: elected a chair to its audit committee and clarified its strategic plan at a one-day retreat. We thought, ‘Oh, that’s nice. The board spent two months on something that could be done in about an hour.’

Even besides what the board had accomplished in February, we know there were warning signs that the board wasn’t accomplishing what the community wanted. During the Pride scandal, the community’s number one question seemed to be, is Pride’s finances OK? If we were the newly appointed board, we would have gotten that question answered first. The scandal did start when former executive director Ron DeHarte went to the press about former board chair Phillip Princetta’s unethical $5,000 check for services rendered. So naturally, people wanted to know, were there any other financial improprieties or irregularities? Just from a business standpoint, if you want to build the public’s trust, you tackle what the community sees as the most pressing matter. It’s surprising that it wasn’t the board’s first issue it tackled. Are there not enough accountants at the Greater San Diego Business Association for one of them to perform an audit for free?

Pride is a nonprofit that shouldn’t have that many financial transactions (besides on the days of Pride). For most of the year, they pay rent, salaries and bills. It’s not like their making thousands of transactions per month. Our guess would be that they send out 20 or 30 checks per month, if that. Most accountants could probably look over a year’s worth of Pride’s financial statements in one afternoon. An audit would have brought a sense of calm to the community, a sense of stability, a message that the current board is in control of its financials and that the board took seriously what the community said in January. If that would have been done, we would have said, ‘Great, job well done. Next problem.’

Perhaps the board has lost its steam. Do they need to be reenergized? Boards often go through transitions were an initial board is appointed and gets things solved and then another more working board is installed soon after. We have a friend who is very good at initiating stuff but is horrible at following through. He would be very good to come in for a month and get a lot of stuff done but terrible for the rest of the year. Maybe there are some people on the board that are that type of person. We personally know one person on the board (sorry we can’t name names) who said exactly that: ‘There is no way I’m going to be able to do this. I can come in here the first couple of weeks, but there is no way I can keep on attending meetings after the first month.’

Maybe Pride’s new direction (new board and hopefully soon to be appointed new executive director) need’s to be two fold: get some initial things done with the SDDC board and then pare it down into a working board and recruit new working board members. Maybe the SDDC board was an initial board that could only get some of the job done, and now a new board is needed, a board with members who really want to be on the board and are ready to donate the time its going to take to complete the rest of its recommendations and get Pride back in business.

Another disappointment of ours is that the board still hasn’t found an executive director. If we were the board, an audit would be the first thing we would have done and appointing an executive director would be the second. Somebody is going in there every day and paying the bills and managing the staff and doing all those things that is taking time away from what a board should be doing. Instead of the board, an executive director could be delegating a lot of the tasks.

With a community as talented as ours, we can think of numerous candidates for the executive director position. What about City Commissioner Stampp Corbin? He is very involved in the community and is one remarkable entrepreneur. What about Carolina Ramos, who coordinates The Center’s Latino Services? Does she not have experience? How about David Contois? He ran the San Diego Human Dignity Foundation. What about Joyce Marieb, former chief executive officer of the Greater San Diego Business Association? She could have been asked to come out of retirement and take over as an interim executive director. These are four people that could have been asked to step in and help the organization get through the current year and train a permanent executive director.

We think the way Pride has recruited its board and committee members over the years is one problem. From past and present observations, we know that Pride’s board members don’t go out and recruit. They stand there at town hall forums and say, ‘We’re looking for people. Please contact us right away’ or place an ad in the local paper and then say, ‘We tried recruiting but no one has contacted us.’ We say, if you are looking for people and your running a business, you get on the phone and make phone calls. If Pride was our business and we needed someone to run it because we had a full time job (as many of the SDDC board members do), we would be on the phone calling people. You can’t just put an ad in the paper or online and expect people will call.

We also think that the current board doesn’t want people that come with different political perspectives or are known for being more independent. The fact that all the board’s current members come from SDDC is the main problem. Democratic Sen. Christine Kehoe appointed her donors, volunteers and supporters to the new board. We don’t think the SDDC board wants a strong independent leader like Corbin or Marieb. No board would be able to turn Marieb into a puppet. We think that the SDDC board wants a follower. So why hasn’t the board appointed someone from the SDDC? We think they want to give the impression that the executive director they appoint will be a leader. We can only wait and see.

Next time on “One Pride to Live” several of Pride’s volunteers and employees are discovered to be convicted sex offenders. Oh wait, that already happened. Ouch!