More Questions Than Answers With ABATE
Friday, December 26th, 2014
Sponsoring racers is not likely to be an ABATE priority due to the group's current financial crisis.
I had a discussion recently with Bruce Downs, the new state coordinator for ABATE of Colorado, in regard to the financial issues the organization is facing. It was not a particularly satisfying conversation.
That’s not, in large part, Bruce’s fault. A lot of the questions I asked had to do with events that took place before Bruce stepped in as the new state coordinator. He has no desire to comment on matters that he had no knowledge of, and no one can blame him for that. In many cases he said that he was asking the same questions himself and so far had not been able to come up with solid answers.
I have to admit, too, that I had an erroneous understanding going into this discussion. With all the stories and rumors going around, Bruce had issued a statement to the membership denying/refuting specific claims and offering . . .
This is where I didn’t read carefully enough. I had the idea in my head that he was offering to speak to anyone who had questions about the matter. If I had really focused on his words I would have had a different take. Here’s what he said:
I would like to state right now that I am interested in getting to the truth about the rumors circulating about ABATE and its operation. I am willing to meet with anyone who can provide me with justifiable documentation as to the rumors.
And then this:
Again, I ask that anyone with justifiable documentation please come forward and show me the proof. I and others have dug deep and can find no evidence to support any of the rumors. I am willing to be corrected and will say so. If no justification can be provided any statements made are based on hearsay and innuendo and will be treated as an effort to defame ABATE and will be dealt with as such.
Not at all what I was thinking, is it? Bruce was not offering to answer questions, he was asking anyone with information to help answer his questions. So I soon got frustrated asking questions to which Bruce would respond that he didn’t know the answer. That was my own fault. But it had been my intention to speak with him even before he sent that note out, so my questions were the same as they would have been.
With that said, what did we discuss, and what did I learn? A little; not much.
My first question was broad: Considering how flush the organization was a few years ago, how did we get to the point where someone decided borrowing money at a high rate of interest was a good idea?
Because most of the money flowing through ABATE comes from rider training, this is inevitably where this question leads. Bruce walked me through the introduction of new competition and changes in the Colorado Motorcycle Operator Safety Training (MOST) program that reduced revenue per student. While a relatively stable number of trainees signed up for classes, trainers proliferated and ABATE, which at one time was training more than 5,000 per year, last year trained around 2,700. Meanwhile, the amount paid to training organizations by the MOST program in order to reduce the cost to the students, thereby encouraging more students to get trained, fell from $100-$125 apiece to about $35 now.
OK, I knew the generalities of all that, if not the particulars. So what did the board do, and when, to address this declining revenue?
“I cannot answer that question for you.”
Bruce was on the board in the early 2000s as Northeast Regional Coordinator but left the board before the downturn. So he was not there to be privy to the discussions that may have gone on.
Let’s move on to the stories about a $45,000 ad campaign that reportedly went nowhere.
I have no idea where that figure came from and to hear Bruce discuss it, he doesn’t either. In his message to the members he had said as much:
As to the rumor that ABATE spent $45,000.00 on advertising I can find no documentation or evidence that that claim is true. We did spend a lot (in my opinion) of money on advertising but nowhere close to the amount claimed. Please prove the claim or quit using false information.
He told me, “I have dug into the 2014 financials and there was nowhere close to $45,000 being spent on advertising, much less $45,000 over budget. It has come to my attention that this did not even occur this year. If that is the case, I’m still going to look into it, but if this is something in the past, it’s something in the past.”
Let’s move on to the loans that are crushing ABATE now. Who made the decisions to take out those loans?
Bruce doesn’t know. He wasn’t there when the decision was made and apparently conversations that seem crucial now were not seen to be significant at the time, so memories are vague.
Why were the loans taken?
“As I understand, it was because we were short money and needed to pay bills.”
That about sums things up. That’s about all Bruce was able to provide.
I want to make the point here that Bruce’s focus since he took over as state coordinator is primarily on the future, not the past. His primary focus is on accomplishing whatever is necessary for the organization to survive, and not so much on how we came to be in this spot in the first place. After survival is assured perhaps you can go back and look into how the problems came to be in the first place.
“I’m trying to give you as much information as I can. I don’t know that we’re ever going to . . . I think there’s way too many things that went on that we’re never going to be able to say, ‘This is the cause.’ I think it was a multitude of factors and hopefully we will learn from that. Hopefully the members will say, ‘Yes, I have a responsibility for this organization, and I am going to hold those more accountable in the future’ and go from there.”
I don’t argue with that priority. But as a member I’d still like to know how we came to take on these scandalous loans. I think it was Larry Montgomery who said at the first D-10 meeting where this was all announced, that “doing absolutely nothing would have been better than taking out these loans.” How the hell did that decision get made? I think we have a right to know.
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