Hispanic Week woes
The greatest event celebrated in Lawrence for over 38 years has been Hispanic Week and through the years, my constructive criticisms have been aimed at making the organization better than what it is.
Lately, I have seen the decline and the need for a more severe recognition of where they are going wrong. There are some people involved so dedicated to this annual event that baffles my mind. The organization is very secretive about their internal problems and I wonder why anyone would want to spend any amount of time with a group making the same mistakes year after year.
That, precisely, has been the focus of my complaints. They should have a playbook beginning with the end of one festivity to start planning for the next one – after all, it always takes place on the third week of June. It seems that each year there are new people with “brilliant” ideas who attempt at doing things their way creating chaos within the group.
The playbook should be the schedule of things to take place for next year according to dates, instead of going crazy planning everything at once in the spring. One of my suggestions has always been contacting consulates and embassies from different Latin American countries early enough to contribute in some form and have more international representation, besides the two largest groups in Lawrence.
It is my understanding that there is a rule that all payments should be made with checks and no cash is to be collected by anyone for kiosks’ rentals or pageant tickets yet, that’s overlooked. Sometimes, food vendors are allowed to set up without payment, pending on their sales, others never pay. It becomes very difficult keeping track of such a system or the people in charge so anyone accepting cash when the rule is not to do it, should be banned from the board.
Money being stolen from the festival’s earnings goes back to the beginning and it is still a common happening. A few years ago, the treasurer ran off back home with $11,000 in cash. No legal action is ever taken and it’s all kept quiet. Their books are a mess; they have not provided a report of the 2014 festival nor 2015 yet they issued an audit report for 2014 which a non-trained accountant like me could tell immediately that it was all bogus.
A couple of years ago, when Jose Arnaldo Davila was elected its president, it was a very positive move. I liked him and trusted him for being a decent person who had his heart in the right place and wanted nothing but fairness. He was very proud of his new role and worked very hard to make it better.
Then, things began to happen. The discords at their meetings started getting louder and feistier. There was no democratic behavior from several board members and if they didn’t get their way, they would get up and leave the meeting in a huff. Rivalries began to grow and accusations of wrongdoings were next. The 2014 festival was loaded with disharmony. Monies missing were again the big issue; parents of candidates for the many pageants they hold were selling tickets and apparently, records were not well-kept.
For the past 22 years, Sara Saldaña was in charge of the pageants and thus the distribution of tickets for parents to sell. That’s how Sara was charged with $975 owed by Germinudy Rosario who sold the tickets but used up the funds promising to pay it back. More than a year has gone by, she knows Sara is being blamed for that and no payment is forthcoming.
Last year, the board decided to ban Sara for one year to be reviewed in six months according to their by-laws. Then, this year, the Board changed its by-laws and notified Sara that they were adding another two years to her punishment. Upon calling the group’s President Jose Arnaldo Davila, he explained that these were new charges but refused to tell me their nature due to privacy issues. This took Ms. Saldaña by surprised; she had never been told of any “new charges.”
Money problems are always present and accountability has been negligent. Others owed money for the 2014 event and no action was taken against them, beginning with President Jose Arnaldo Davila. According to Ms. Saldaña, he received a check for $57.61 for some mailing that was not done and did not issue a refund to the organization. Also one of the candidates Perla Rosario from the 2014 pageant still owes $235.00. Marisa Melendez also owes $100 for the Red vs Yankee Raffle that year and it remains unpaid.
On August 25, 2015 The Executive Committee received the Financial Report for 2014 from Nazario Esquea and his recommendation of forming a Financial Committee to have a better control of the organization. Mr. Esquea in his analysis said that he found several errors and he found missing $400.69 in the Santander account and $920.13 in the TD Bank for a total of $1,320.82. At no time was Mr. Esquea told that there was money yet to be collected.
Nelson Silvestre attended a board meeting advocating for Sara and was so disgusted with their behavior that he wrote the following in his Facebook page:
“REFLEXION: When a social and cultural organization, or a political organization ignores the pluralistic orientation of its membership, they become organizations with dictatorships excluding them, forgetting that a leader must be proactive in sharing ideas so that the concept becomes universal within said organization. When the leader has a dictatorial ego, the organizations tend to either die or change their habits. In any organization, their raw material is their membership. Social or political organizations are always advised to exercise leadership without ego. When the leader of the organization looks for errors among their members to feel superior, you can only harvest negativism preventing the contribution of ideas. In the end creative organizations change or die. (Words of Pope Francis during his visit to New York.)”
Last week was the swearing-in ceremony of the new board and only 4 members showed up. I take that as a sign of discontent.
Mr. Davila may be good at organizing events but doesn’t have any organizational skills and certainly cannot handle internal conflicts.
Lay off is off!
Mayor Dan Rivera has notified Joel Chalas and Jorge Jaime that the noticed they had received regarding a pending lay off on January 28, has been rescinded. This action was taken as a result of the supplemental budget recently approved by the City Council thus eliminating the need for the reduction in force.
Vicious circle
We know that Latinos (I am generalizing) don’t understand the importance of campaign contributions and for that you may ask any candidate running for office.
Political campaigns costs a lot of money and probably one of the largest expenses is advertising. As a newspaper, we feel the pinch at every election period and we refuse to give away our work. But that’s not the case with radio programs. We are saturated with political ads all day long and it is noticeable that each program pushes for their favorite candidates. There is no variety of messages because they give them away for free.
If you want to find how pervasive this is, you just have to look at their financial reports to see how they cover themselves with a minimal amount, for example, some of them may list ten or twelve programs and assign $50 to each one when in reality, they may be getting the equivalent of hundreds of dollars’ worth of advertising each week – for many months.
So, it becomes a vicious circle: Spanish-speaking candidates don’t attempt at having fundraisers because they know no one would show up. If they do, it’s just to eat whatever they serve. But, the candidate knows the publicity, at least, will be for free.
Now, they just have to figure out how to pay for signs and bumper stickers.
