by Ed Berry
FVCC incumbent trustees are running scared. What are they hiding?
FVCC President attempts to illegally register students after registration deadline.
Glacier Bank President Robert Nystuen denies he held a secret trustee meeting on April 8.
The Faculty Senate Forum
All challengers attended the FVCC Faculty Senate forum for Trustees on Monday, April 18, at the college. The forum was highly structured to protect the incumbents. Five questions were distributed to all participants in advance and the rebuttals were limited to being within districts. Therefore, no one could challenge anything Robert Nystuen read from his notes because no challenger was in his district.
Since the subject matter was severely restricted by the 5 questions, rebuttals could not introduce new subjects or ask new questions. The forum was tightly controlled to stop any free form debate. We believe this is because (a) the incumbents are intellectually incapable of engaging in a free form public debate and (b) they are hiding unethical and illegal actions from the public.
Is this how they suppress student thinking and learning at FVCC?
The incumbents have refused to debate the challengers in a fair and open public format on Thursday, April 28. The debate plan was to allow each participant and not the moderator, to ask a question of the other group. This method makes for a very fair debate. The incumbents can’t stand fairness or openness, although openness if required since they are managing public money.
Mrs. Shannon Lund, went from being a challenger to incumbent by being anointed by the incumbents in March 2011. The limiting format of the FVCC candidate forum protected her. To answer the preset questions, she read from handwritten notes in different colored ink apparently hastily written by someone or several someones to help her presentation.
To be fair, Mrs. Lund, wife of Tom Lund who is Branch President of Rocky Mountain Bank in Kalispell, appears to be an innocent victim of these trustees games. But if she does not resign from this election she will become as liable the other trustees and incur possible damage to her bank.
I believe she did not expect to be put into the present challenging position. Trustee Tom McElwain promoted Shannon Lund for the trustee position opened by retiring trustee Englebretson. Using their perfected insider scheme, Englebretson retired in March rather than in April to allow the board to choose his successor privately rather than let the voters choose his successor publicly on May 3. Clever!
In the past, the trustees have successfully circumvented Montana law about properly announcing openings for trustee positions. So it is likely they told Mrs. Lund she would not be involved in an open election because no one from the public would apply for her position.
Trustee insider games?
Why, in March 2011, did the trustees choose Shannon Lund over Steve Luckey who is far more qualified to be a trustee?
Answer: For the same reason Mr. Nystuen and the trustees are running very scared now that this election has gone public. They are scared that one outsider on the board would blow their manipulation of the board to satisfy their special insider interests.
Trustees are legally bound to reveal conflicts of interest. Yet, I cannot find any discussion of conflicts of interest by Glacier Bank President Nystuen or by Shannon Lund, wife of Rocky Mountain Bank Branch President Tom Lund.
What games are they playing? Here are a few possibilities.
Glacier Bank President Nystuen has a conflict of interest when he manages the FVCC audits. Mrs. Lund has a conflict of interest because of her relationship to Rocky Mountain Bank. FVCC is a public institution and the trustees must obey specified Montana Code Annotated laws with respect to their positions and actions on the Board. Trustees are not supposed to have even an appearance of a conflict of interest.
The softball audit that Glacier Bank President Nystuen called “pristine” during the FVCC forum is merely a Financial Audit. It shows only that no dollars disappeared. It does not show how much money Glacier Bank or Rocky Mountain Bank made from FVCC accounts like construction loans or from holding federal or state money for student loans, or how much business ACE Hardware did with the college.
The challengers will demand an Operational and Performance Audit by a party unrelated to the interests of these banks. An Operational and Performance Audit will show how all FVCC monies circulated inside these banks.
I cannot understand why Mrs. Lund would want to risk her Rocky Mountain Bank by involving herself in a trustee position that is sure to cause a full Operations and Performance Audit of her bank. If I were her, I would immediately resign from the board and the election. She has too much to lose and nothing to gain.
There are other board problems.
Tom McElwain has apparently disqualified himself as trustee by being out of the FVCC district for more than 60 continuous days while living in his home in Mesa, Arizona. If so, then he must resign or be removed from the Board.
John Phelps may have disqualified himself as trustee because of his actions while serving as Whitefish City Attorney. See his invalid notary of Judge Bradley Johnson.
Glacier Bank President Nystuen has denied he called and held a special trustee meeting at the college on the morning of Friday, April 8, 2011. Tom McElwain admitted to the Pachyderm Club on April 8 that he had seen my name on the list of trustee candidates while he was at the college that morning. This list was not simply floating around the college or on a bulletin board. The only way McElwain would have seen the list with my name on it would have been in Nystuen’s special trustee meeting where this information was presented.
It is illegal for Glacier Bank President Nystuen to hold secret board meetings on such subjects, yet we have evidence he did hold this meeting and the agenda was to address the disruption of the board’s secret election game by the challengers. If Nystuen admits to this meeting then he must release the full record of discussions at the meeting. If he continues to deny the meeting then more evidence will emerge to prove him wrong.
I call upon Glacier Bank President Robert Nystuen to resign his trustee position because of his conflict of interest and because of his apparent illegal actions as trustee.
No wonder Glacier Bank President Robert Nystuen and his incumbent trustees and Mark Holston have refused to appear to debate the challengers on April 28: They cannot risk questions.
Here is the email I sent to Chairman Nystuen and the incumbents on April 22:
To: Nystuen, Robert (Bob), John Phelps, Shannon Lund, Tom Harding, Mark Holston
Subject: An invitation to comment and attend
Dear FVCC Trustees,
As you know, I have set up a website for the challengers for open positions on the Board of Trustees. I want you to know that fvcctrustees.com is an open forum, as are all edberry.com websites. We express our opinions and we welcome opposing opinions. It is like Letters to the Editor in a newspaper. The difference is that we do not have a word limit and we have much faster response time. Some say, we also have a larger audience than print media Letters to the Editor.
Since we have already posted articles challenging the incumbent trustees and we plan more articles each day before the election on May 3, I want you to know you are welcome to add your comments to any articles we post. If we have made errors of fact, we welcome corrections. If we express opinions you disagree with (as is likely), you are welcome to respond on fvcctrustees.com.
In closing, I wish to invite you (actually to challenge you) to accept Ava Walters invitation to participate in the FVCC Trustees debate next Thursday, April 28. I have recommended to Ava that she invite Mark Holston to be on your debating team in order to keep the debate fair and balanced. Mark has too much to say that the challengers do not wish him to be limited to being in the audience.
I hope you will accept Ava’s invitation for April 28.
Respectfully,
Ed Berry
Here is Chairman Nystuen’s reply on April 23:
Hello, I acknowledge receipt of your e-mail inviting the FVCC Incumbent Trustees running for election, plus Mark Holston, to participate in your invitation to comment on your website and to attend your Freedom Action Rally. We all respectfully decline to do both. However, I expect we will attend the FVCC Board of Trustees meeting on Monday and the Pachyderm Club lunch next Friday.
Sincerely, Bob Nystuen
Robert A. Nystuen, President Glacier Bank 202 Main St Kalispell, MT 59901 (406) 756-4254 Office (406) 249-0731 Cell rnystuen@glacierbank.com www.glacierbank.com
What is Robert Nystuen hiding? He won’t address me properly and he tries not to look at me when we meet in public. He can’t even use my name when he replies to my email. He says,
“However, I expect we will attend the FVCC Board of Trustees meeting on Monday and the Pachyderm Club lunch next Friday.”
Is Glacier Bank President Robert Nystuen illiterate? He can’t write a good email and he seems uncertain about whether the trustees will attend their own meeting on Monday and the Pachyderm forum on Friday.
We will learn more about what Glacier Bank President Robert Nystuen and his trustees are hiding on April 28 even though Glacier Bank President Robert Nystuen’s band of incumbents including Mark Holston will not appear.
Both Glacier Bank President Robert Nystuen and Democratic (Socialist) Mark Holston freely make remarks about the challengers to the press and media. They are two of a kind. Mark Holston, trustee and Chairman of the Democratic (Socialist) Party in Flathead County, is especially verbal when he is protected from answering a question. But when confronted with the task of debating the challengers one on one, he tucks his tail and runs!
Glacier Bank President Robert Nystuen and his trustees have formed a PAC to raise money to fund a campaign to attempt to defeat the challengers. They have more money than the challengers.
The college is openly assisting incumbent trustees by registering college-indoctrinated students to vote in the election on May 3. However …
Montana Code Annotated 20-20-311. Closure of registration says:
Registration for school elections shall close for 30 days before any school election, but it shall not be necessary to publish any notice of such closing of registration.
Therefore the college president, who should be teaching students to properly observe the law, is in bed with the incumbent trustees to break the law in their desperate attempt to retain her click of insider trustees. Why would President Jane Karas take a position in this election?
When I and the other applicants first applied to become trustee candidates, we did so thinking the election would be based upon a voters evaluation of candidates qualifications for trustee. How wrong we were. We quickly found that we have turned over a rock to find a bunch of liberal roaches controlling the college who are desperate to maintain control of their college. The trustee roaches are in violation of their Oaths of Office.
The present trustees have engaged in illegal actions as trustees. Since they are not capable of engaging in a free form debate for their own candidacy, they are not qualified to lead a college. Therefore, these trustees must be replaced.
Republicans, do you want trustees who claim to be Republicans but openly support the actions of flaming liberal socialist Democrat Mark Holston?
Do you want trustees who promote the United Nations agenda on your college?
Do you want these liberal incumbents to control your college?
Your answers must be a resounding NO!
Tell all your friends how important it is for them to vote for the challengers on May 3. You may never have another opportunity to control your college. It’s now or never.
Clean the dirty house. Vote for the challengers!
