I could write for hours about the abysmal tenure of the Clueless Chair. But that would merely be a repeat of what I have written about this miserable wretch.
One thing is clear: I knew from the outset that the Lincoln Day Dinner would be a horrific failure… and I, typically, was right.
Every time Gellatly responded, he was lying.
Even now, he’s not man enough to accept responsibility for this horrific outcome of the year’s biggest fund raiser.
What is he babbling about now as an excuse?
"Hire[sic] than my guesstimate?"
Odd, isn't it? This heap-big business guy who assured me that he "made more money than I did" was off by multiple thousands of dollars. And the irony is?
Whenever he was off...WHATEVER his "estimates" may have been, it was ALWAYS to HIS benefit. That is, he ALWAYS claimed it made more money than it did, was cheaper than it was, brought in more people than ever before... but he never used numbers that may have made HIM look bad.
He was wrong about almost all of it, and now he focuses on a meaningless number that is unquantifiable ("brought new people in")
Coincidence?
Not for a liar it isn't.
And then these beauties:
After the horrific amount wasted on expenses, $68,000, all this moron could say is “Yeah, the Hilton really got one over on us…”
Us? Who, exactly, is "US?"
They screwed YOU. And YOU screwed “us.”
And then he tries to deflect even further, babbling about “correcting mistakes” and such for next year…
Well, getting rid of David Gellatly and putting someone in there who knows what they’re doing would correct the biggest mistake.
Face it, Gellatly got hosed. It broke out PRECISELY like I said it would, his attacks and multiple denials and shifting blame notwithstanding.
What he calls a “huge success” was a complete and utter disaster. A miserable failure by any stretch of the imagination, even his. And the result is that, as of now, I’m told we will NOT be able to keep the office open until the end of the year... unless someone comes along and writes a big check... which they'd be a fool to do with this moron in charge.
The entire purpose of the LDD is to make money. LOTS of money. Nothing more, nothing less. ANYTHING else is secondary to that... and no matter how much lipstick this loser wants to put on it, that, essentially, did not happen... nearly enough if at all.
You wanna “bring in new people?”
Then do it at the fair booth.
Meanwhile, on May 5th, I posted what Gellatly would SAY about the LDD:
"It was, without a doubt, the BEST LINCOLN DAY DINNER EVER!!!!!"
On May 6th I pointed out that so few people were buying tickets, they had to start using huge discounts…
On June 26th, I pointed out that the LDD sucked so badly, in part because of Gellatly’s insistence that Tomi Cleavage should still be allowed to speak, her RINO, pro-abortion cred notwithstanding, that Gellatly couldn’t even GIVE LDD tickets away.
The Party got hosed by this clown. The outcome for the LDD was as horrific as I knew it would be and as I said it would be… and now, all Gellatly’s got is, well, “we brought in new people.”
Because THAT’s gonna pay the bills, right, Davey?
Gellatly lied. Repeatedly. He lied about expenses, he lied about how much money it made, he lied about how great the whole thing was… as, I point out, I knew he and his sock puppets would, and now, effectively, the party is teetering on broke. He’s made unauthorized expenditures in the thousands, he’s used social media to attack, threaten and intimidate those who've questioned his serious lack of judgment… a reason to get rid of him itself, since he’s incapable of rationally defending himself or his actions…
According to the PDC, the local dems non-exempt fund has roughly $37,000 on hand.
It also says the local GOP non-exempt fund has roughly $6,000.
It says the dems exempt fund has about $26,300.
And the GOP fund has a whole $6,000 or so in there as well.
The local party which is working on political irrelevance has amassed a combined $63,000 or so on hand while the local GOP, which allegedly runs practically everything around here, has about $12,000.
In the cash wars, the GOP is getting clobbered around here. And the embarrassment of this utter failure of a Lincoln Day Dinner (numbers not included in this PDC comparison) doesn't help.
When you add this fiscal incompetence to his arrogance, when you examine his constant failure to accept responsibility for anything, particularly his failures, when they become obvious... when you add that to his determination to attack those who disagree both publicly and privately as he has attacked me on a personal level by threatening me with the release of information like my family's social security numbers and the like...
A true leader would acknowledge his mistakes and learn from them. He would take advice. He would acknowledge that he doesn't know everything. He would understand that in a volunteer organization, the good will of everyone is vital to the organization's success. He would set the example for all to aspire.
David Robert Gellatly does none of those things.
And it’s long since past time for him to go.
One thing is clear: I knew from the outset that the Lincoln Day Dinner would be a horrific failure… and I, typically, was right.
Every time Gellatly responded, he was lying.
Even now, he’s not man enough to accept responsibility for this horrific outcome of the year’s biggest fund raiser.
What is he babbling about now as an excuse?
"Hire[sic] than my guesstimate?"
Odd, isn't it? This heap-big business guy who assured me that he "made more money than I did" was off by multiple thousands of dollars. And the irony is?
Whenever he was off...WHATEVER his "estimates" may have been, it was ALWAYS to HIS benefit. That is, he ALWAYS claimed it made more money than it did, was cheaper than it was, brought in more people than ever before... but he never used numbers that may have made HIM look bad.
He was wrong about almost all of it, and now he focuses on a meaningless number that is unquantifiable ("brought new people in")
Coincidence?
Not for a liar it isn't.
And then these beauties:
After the horrific amount wasted on expenses, $68,000, all this moron could say is “Yeah, the Hilton really got one over on us…”
Us? Who, exactly, is "US?"
They screwed YOU. And YOU screwed “us.”
And then he tries to deflect even further, babbling about “correcting mistakes” and such for next year…
Well, getting rid of David Gellatly and putting someone in there who knows what they’re doing would correct the biggest mistake.
Face it, Gellatly got hosed. It broke out PRECISELY like I said it would, his attacks and multiple denials and shifting blame notwithstanding.
What he calls a “huge success” was a complete and utter disaster. A miserable failure by any stretch of the imagination, even his. And the result is that, as of now, I’m told we will NOT be able to keep the office open until the end of the year... unless someone comes along and writes a big check... which they'd be a fool to do with this moron in charge.
The entire purpose of the LDD is to make money. LOTS of money. Nothing more, nothing less. ANYTHING else is secondary to that... and no matter how much lipstick this loser wants to put on it, that, essentially, did not happen... nearly enough if at all.
You wanna “bring in new people?”
Then do it at the fair booth.
Meanwhile, on May 5th, I posted what Gellatly would SAY about the LDD:
"It was, without a doubt, the BEST LINCOLN DAY DINNER EVER!!!!!"
On May 6th I pointed out that so few people were buying tickets, they had to start using huge discounts…
On June 26th, I pointed out that the LDD sucked so badly, in part because of Gellatly’s insistence that Tomi Cleavage should still be allowed to speak, her RINO, pro-abortion cred notwithstanding, that Gellatly couldn’t even GIVE LDD tickets away.
The Party got hosed by this clown. The outcome for the LDD was as horrific as I knew it would be and as I said it would be… and now, all Gellatly’s got is, well, “we brought in new people.”
Because THAT’s gonna pay the bills, right, Davey?
Gellatly lied. Repeatedly. He lied about expenses, he lied about how much money it made, he lied about how great the whole thing was… as, I point out, I knew he and his sock puppets would, and now, effectively, the party is teetering on broke. He’s made unauthorized expenditures in the thousands, he’s used social media to attack, threaten and intimidate those who've questioned his serious lack of judgment… a reason to get rid of him itself, since he’s incapable of rationally defending himself or his actions…
According to the PDC, the local dems non-exempt fund has roughly $37,000 on hand.
It also says the local GOP non-exempt fund has roughly $6,000.
It says the dems exempt fund has about $26,300.
And the GOP fund has a whole $6,000 or so in there as well.
The local party which is working on political irrelevance has amassed a combined $63,000 or so on hand while the local GOP, which allegedly runs practically everything around here, has about $12,000.
In the cash wars, the GOP is getting clobbered around here. And the embarrassment of this utter failure of a Lincoln Day Dinner (numbers not included in this PDC comparison) doesn't help.
When you add this fiscal incompetence to his arrogance, when you examine his constant failure to accept responsibility for anything, particularly his failures, when they become obvious... when you add that to his determination to attack those who disagree both publicly and privately as he has attacked me on a personal level by threatening me with the release of information like my family's social security numbers and the like...
A true leader would acknowledge his mistakes and learn from them. He would take advice. He would acknowledge that he doesn't know everything. He would understand that in a volunteer organization, the good will of everyone is vital to the organization's success. He would set the example for all to aspire.
David Robert Gellatly does none of those things.
And it’s long since past time for him to go.
Just for the record, after a (financially) record setting LDD in 2013 (Doubled prior all-time record), and managing the money extremely well over the following year, and another extremely (financially) successful LDD in 2014 (I believe doubled prior averages), after all expenses, sometime around May or June, the local party had over $80,000 in the bank, unencumbered, which in turn became unheard of donation amounts to local candidates in 2014. When I called Don Benton at the time to tell him that, he told me that was unheard of.
ReplyDeleteI believe generally there is a moral imperative to minimize the percentage of local donor money which goes to expenses, and maximize the amount of money that is retained for the party. In 2013, the gross was similar to 2017 (based only on my recollection) but the net was over $50K. You can express that in ratios. 5 out of every 8 dollars retained, or <2 out of every 8 dollars retained.
Its as simple as realizing that absent extraordinary circumstances, there is a maximum gross you can achieve from the local community during this event. Increasing the glitz and tinsel, and thereby expenses, has no effect on the maximum achievable gross. A lack of glitz may cause one to fall short, but there is no amount of glitz which is going to pierce that approximate maximum ceiling unless you actually change the entire structure of the event (i.e. do something completely different than banquet/auction).
To wit: $2500+travel speaker in 2013 was a "big risk" mentally at the time. Subsequent years speaker expenses went to 5K then 7K. At all times keeping the smaller, cheaper venue. Then there was 2016 where there was no fee for speakers, and that was the year they tested a $7K consultant to run the operation instead of taking three months of dozens of peoples time to completely stress out and hopefully perform. That was also successful (but would not have been if also paying $7K to a speaker).
The problem this year was: 1) Record venue costs (with a venue known to be untrustworthy); combined with 2) Record Speaker costs; combined with 3) Doing the big consultant thing again.
Combination of 3 expenses where only 1 was ever present at any prior event, combined with one of those expenses being double anything historically, pretty much guaranteed financial failure unless someone had a tangible plan to increase the gross by 50%, (i.e. plan to make 2017 gross a minimum 150% of past).
This exact scenario was pointed out clearly, and before any venue or speakers were chosen. The general response was not to worry, that there were other donors backing it up, and that existing relationships with the Hilton would prevent the abuse, neither of which transpired. Finally, people who will only attend with extreme discount tickets or free tickets are not the people who are going to bid much on auction items, and ticket sales contribute almost nothing to retained revenue. Hopefully ticket sales pay for all expenses as a rule of thumb. That was empirically impossible this year as the expenses exceeded what ticket sales could reasonably achieve. Even 400 tx at $100 is only $40k. The old venue capacity was 250.
I'm just putting some facts out -- people can come to their own conclusions. But I think it is important to have an accurate understanding of the history in order to properly evaluate the situation. This was entirely avoidable. The information was made available prior to any decisions being made.