Five Hyack Festival Association board directors are resigning in light of the ongoing turmoil within the ranks at the organization that runs the city’s biggest annual festival.
The association has been dealing with an internal dust-up between those who support the former executive director and those who wanted him fired.
Directors Patti Goss, Bill Radbourne, Stephen Loyd, Ron Unger and Mariane Kazemir issued a letter stating they are leaving their posts because they “fervently fear” that if Hyack president Gavin Palmer, vice-president Alan Wardle and treasurer Gloria Munro, along with a group of past presidents, continue to control the direction of the organization it will destroy Hyack.
“We will be attending the meeting tonight, but as members,” Goss wrote in an email to The Record. “We are hoping to get answers to the questions we have been asking for the last three months.”
The decision to fire former executive director Douglas Smith cost the association and was done without board approval, says the resignation letter submitted by the five former directors.
The Hyack brouhaha began when Smith was fired on July 31 and later reinstated. He then left the organization when Palmer and his fellow executive members did not resign. A meeting scheduled for tonight was expected to be a showdown between the two camps – with each side voting for the removal of the other. The meeting is being held at The Columbia, 530 Columbia St., at 6:30 p.m.
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