Guadalajara Reporter

Dear Sir,

Jeanne Chaussee used the right word when she wrote in the December 19-25 Reporter that Howard Feldstein acquired “control” of the Lake Chapala Society (LCS) at its election on December 11. Feldstein was the candidate of the Board of Directors that has caused turmoil at LCS since last year and that blurred the rules to promote his election.

Consider these facts:

(1) At the LCS Nominations Meeting on October 14, Feldstein, thinking that the new constitution proposed by the Board would be adopted on November 12, only presented a slate to be elected under it and did not nominate a slate for election under the existing one, as his opponent did. At the end of that meeting, nominations were declared closed until December 11. But the proposed new constitution was rejected by the members, leaving Feldstein without a slate. He then announced his slate under the existing governance structure, and despite nominations being closed until December 11, the Board decided that Feldstein’s “anticipated to be nominated” slate should be listed on the LCS website along with the opposing slate actually nominated on October 14, so that members voting by “absentee ballot” could vote for them.

(2) The Board allowed Feldstein to station himself outside the LCS office where absentee ballots were deposited, where he buttonholed members, gave them a list of his slate, and urged them to vote absentee to avoid voting at the December 11 meeting. A Board member attending the box in which ballots were deposited was heard to say, “I hope you’re voting for the right people.”

(3) Although almost everyone reading the bylaws regarding absentee ballots concluded that they were required to be deposited by December 1, Feldstein announced in the Reporter that such ballots could be cast right up to the election, and the Board then agreed with him. Curiously, the Spanish version of the bylaws supposed to be registered with the State of Jalisco, which would be the final authority on the matter, cannot be found. The “absentee ballots” were not absentee ballots at all: they were early voting ballots and promoted as such by Feldstein and the Board.

(4) At the election meeting on December 11, members were treated to the farce of candidates on Howard’s slate, who had been listed as candidates on the LCS website since November 18, actually being nominated for the first time.

(5) The votes reported on December 11 and in the Reporter do not differentiate between those cast on that date and the so-called absentee ballots that Howard and the Board promoted, but the 858 absentee ballots greatly exceeded the total of 526 votes cast at the November 12 meeting, let alone the 174 votes cast on December 11. Howard was likely elected by the absentee ballots promoted by the Board.

(6) On December 1, almost seven weeks after the Nominations Meeting on October 14, the Board challenged the nomination of the member of the opposition slate who turned out to be its biggest vote getter, saying that her receiving from advertisers part of what they paid for their ads in the LCS Directory as a commission for selling them constituted a conflict of interest that made her ineligible to be a nominee. She was required to state that if elected to the Board, she would no longer sell Directory ads. Following the simultaneous nomination and election of Feldstein’s slate on December 11, a group of LCS members challenged the eligibility of the member of that slate who receives income from her organization’s sales of products at LCS under conditions, including the fee for rental of space and the commissions on sales paid to LCS, that the LCS Board sets, thereby affecting how much income she receives. Obviously applying a different standard to a member of Feldstein’s slate, the Board has declared that there is no conflict of interest in this case.
Kenneth G. Crosby