Fort Ord RAB Update

[Aimee Houghton <aimeeh@igc.org>]

From: Aimee Houghton <aimeeh@igc.org>

Thursday, July 25th, was a dark day in Fort Ord RAB history. Recently,
provisions in the RAB bylaws, intended to ensure that the RAB members were
experienced and knowledgeable, were twisted and used to enforce 2 year
term limits. Of the seven members who had reached their "term limit"
only one member was not reinstated. Curt Gandy, the community member
who originally pushed the Army to form a RAB, who worked day and night
to learn all he could about the restoration and reuse of Fort Ord and
share this understanding with others, did not make the cut. In an
unprecedented closed-door meeting the ad hoc selection committee, consisting
of representatives of the EPA, Cal-EPA, the Army, plus two appointees
of the present community co-chair and the co-chair herself, voted
to accept the re-application of six others, but not Gandy. At last
night's RAB meeting the RAB voted to accept the decision of the
selection committee, though a quorum of the voting members was not
attained at the time of the vote.

Two members of the RAB attempted to make the claim that the committee
and its decision was not legitimate. I personally overheard the
facilitator, a suposedly unbiased individual, warning other members
that this claim would be made. Predictably, the claim got 
nowhere, the present community co-chair, with the aid and prompting
of the Army's Base Environmental Coordinator, dismissed motions,
charges, and objections. After the vote, the previous Base Environmental
Coordinator, Joe Cochran, followed Gandy into the parking lot,
telling Gandy that he had cost the Army a lot of time and money and
that he (Gandy) had told lies about him (Cochran). Gandy says
this is untrue - he told no lies. I have been watching the RAB
for two years and in my opinion, if any time and money has been lost,
it has ocurred because the Army has stonewalled Gandy at every
opportunity.

I'll be writing this all up in a journal article due to be published
in September. In the meantime if any of you would like a copy of
my co-authored paper on the Fort Ord RAB (written March, 1995 for
EDF) or would like a copy of the paper due in September 1996, please
let me know.

Best,

Michael Meuser
Environmental Sociology, UCSC
meuser@cats.ucsc.edu