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Volume 22 - Page 5 of 7 October 9, 2000
FABA vs. ABANA
ABANA Rebuttle

From: Fiorini & Skiles
Sent: Saturday, October 07, 2000 12:39 PM
To: (list of dozen ABANA Presidents)
Subject: Recent letters

ABANA Chapter Presidents,

Enclosed please find my reply to Patty Draper in regards to her letter to all Chapter Presidents. ABANA is not trying to rule the chapters. The ABANA Board is trying to follow the bylaws of ABANA . The ABANA Board is your board. We are only trying to keep some type of order for a overwhelming membership. The membership of ABANA is our concern. We are here for the membership and want input from all of you. I hope you will help us in developing a strong relationship for the organization. A lot of rumors have been spread over the last few weeks that are not true. Many of the items have only been in discussion, not brought before the board as motions. Even when a motion is made we must follow Robert's Rules and process the motion. This does not mean the motion will pass, but is needed to process that agenda. With a large board, discussion must take place in order to weed out the ridiculous and retain the valuable. Please bear with us in trying to carry out your interests.

Sincerely,
Bill Fiorini
ABANA President


Dear Patty,

I am a little disturbed that you sent a message to all ABANA Chapters regarding ABANA business and left myself and the ABANA Board out of the loop. I have however received a copy of your letter and would like to respond.

Yes, there are two motions on the floor. Once a motion is made and seconded, there must be a vote on the issue. The first is in regards to ANY Chapter of ABANA violating bylaws or disregarding ABANA rules. The second one does deal with removal of a Board Member. The first motion is in line with bylaws, the second motion will fail because bylaws state that a Board Member can only be removed by the membership. Lee Ann stated that she would send you a copy of the insurance papers when we received them from the insurance company. Your statement that ABANA refused your request is totally false. I would like to see a retraction of this sentence sent to all Chapter Presidents.

If you go to the ABANA web site you will find the published minutes of the Flagstaff meeting as well as the Financial Statement of ABANA. Although we do not sanction your event, being a chapter of ABANA does target us for liability.

There is no faction of membership on the ABANA Board. We are all there to deal with ABANA policy on an individual basis, with one vote each. The sentence "The faction of the board behind the motions also wants to remove a chapter if all of its board members do not join ABANA, and if the chapter does not maintain a set percentage as ABANA members (25% in 2001; 50% in 2002)." is also false and should be retracted by you in correspondence with the Chapter Presidents.

There are a lot of rumors going around on this issue. I have asked for input from all chapters on the membership and other related matters, with very little response. Rather than sending questionable letters to the chapters, it seems that it would be more productive to call myself and/or other ABANA board members and try to work with us for the betterment of Blacksmithing and the general membership.

I regret having to respond to this letter in this manner, however you leave me no other alternative considering I explained to you in a previous letter all of the details regarding the ANVIL SHOOT. I hope that ABANA and FABA can work together in the near future.

Sincerely,
William Fiorini
ABANA President

Koka Metalsmiths
Fiorini & Skiles

ABANA By-laws (local copy)

July Board Minutes: In the above letter Bill notes that the "published minutes of the Flagstaff meeting" are on the ABANA website. However, the term "published" is questionable. The minutes are in the password protected members only area and in Adobe Acrobat format. Chapter members who are not also full ABANA members do not have access to these documents and many may not be able to use the Adobe format.

We have reproduced the minutes here in standard HTML format where chapter members can read the minutes. space

ABANA Financial Statements These were also found in the members only area of the ABANA web-site. These too were in Adobe PDF format however they were from scans and produced huge files that were 4-5 times larger than an equivalent graphic file (GIF or JPEG).

We have not seen enough interest in this issue to convert and post these large (450Kb) files.


ABANA By-laws
Page 2  FABA letter to ABANA Presidents
Page 6  ABANA July Board Minutes
Page 7  FABA Response to ABANA
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October 2000 Edition
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