Recommendation to disband Fort RAB?

["Michael R. Meuser" <meuser@mapcruzin.com>]

Hi - I just attended a Fort Ord RAB meeting last night. This was the first I 
have attended in 6 months or so. I came to find out that this meeting 
was not an "official" meeting (meaning not Army sactioned), but was a meeting 
held by some community RAB members off-base because the Army had cancelled
the regularly scheduled meeting because they were considering disbanding the
RAB. One regulator member of the RAB was present at this meeting, Ken
Kilgore from Cal-EPA. He gave a copy of a letter to the members in attendance
that said that he agreed with the Army's decision and said that this was 
because the RAB had not been doing its job outreaching to the community. Also,
several members told me that this recommendation to disband the RAB
originally came from CareerPro who I understand was called in by community
RAB members several months ago to mediate "a question of privelege."

Well - to say the least - I am astonished. For several years I attended nearly
every RAB meeting and workshop. I witnessed dedicated community members
wrestle with and come to grips with the complexity of the technical issues at
hand. I attended many committee meetings where community and regulator members 
worked diligently to understand, question, and comment on various issues. I 
witnessed very strong and dedicated folks trying again and again to push 
through the Army's "fenceline" only to reach a stone wall, yet they came back 
and tried to get their questions answered, to get the resources they needed to 
really act as a "conduit" between the Army and the community. For example, one 
member, the head of the community outreach committee, worked for long months to 
increase the RAB membership, making it more representative of the 
demographically diverse surrounding communities. One month the Army put her 
off because they couldn't figure out how to pay the postage, for instance. 
This went on for "ever," one delay after another, sometimes over pennies while 
the Army found plenty of money to pay a half dozen or so facilitators to 
($1000's per month I imagine) to run the RAB "show."

I could go on. If, in fact, Careerpro did make this recommendation based on 
their evaluation that the RAB was not doing its job, I would suggest that they 
could only make this determination on a very ahistorical basis. There are deep 
structural reasons why the RAB has been unable to do its job, the fault here 
lies with the Army, not the RAB. The Army has done little to provide the 
resources and the cooperation required to enable the RAB to do its job. This
is where any critique of "community outreach" at Fort Ord should begin.

I would also suggest that regulator members of the RAB also have a 
responsibility, just like community members, to do their best to make sure
that the RAB is doing its job. This might mean "pushing" the Army to provide 
the resources and venue to do so. Also, any regulators who "sign on" to this
action to disband the RAB should check the history, check with previous agency
employees whose place they have taken, check old minutes of meetings, talk to 
community members who have been there longer than themselves who can "fill
them in". Of course, the ARMY is also part of the RAB - they have the power,
the money, and the RESPONSIBILITY to make sure that the RAB does its job.
This means REAL substantive community participation.

Forgive me if this has already been discussed on this list. I was off the list 
for a few months and just signed on again recently.

Mike Meuser
meuser@mapcruzin.com