This post has been updated to include comments from former Cascade Bicycle Director Chuck Ayers.
The board of the Cascade Bicycle Club has asked the group’s longtime executive director, Chuck Ayers to resign, effective immediately. He will be replaced at least temporarily by Peter Morgan, a Cascade board member who is stepping down from the board to serve as interim executive director until a permanent director can be found.
Contacted by phone, Ayers said that he and the board “have been having disagreements on how best to grow the Club and the direction of our advocacy work for quite a while. They wanted to go a different direction. I disagreed with that.” He said his personal organizing style, along with advocacy director David Hiller’s, was “more along the lines of grassroots, on the ground style organizing, and I think that the board believes that we’ve matured to a point where that kind of advocacy doesn’t make sense.”
Ayers has been head of Cascade since 1997.
In a statement, Cascade board chair Chris Weiss said, “While we are grateful for these and other accomplishments during his tenure, the Board has made the decision that Chuck is no longer the right person to lead Cascade into its next phase of growth and opportunity.”
“A revitalized leadership will bring fresh perspectives and ideas that enable us to remain committed to focusing on the grassroots power and passion of cyclists to improve their lives and the life of their communities.”
Weiss did not shed any light on why Ayers was asked to leave. There has long been tension within Cascade about whether the 13,000-member group should be primarily a bicycling club, organizing rides and promoting recreational cycling, or an advocacy group, pushing for changes to state law and additional spending on bike infrastructure.
According to board member Tim Hennings, Ayers’ departure does not signal a change in policy by the group. “We’re 100 percent committed to [Cascade's] existing policy positions, including the lawsuit [against the Puget Sound Regional Council, over its Transportation 2040 plan], the completion of the Burke-Gilman Trail, and candidate endorsements,” Hennings said.
He said that as the Club expands, the board decided it needed “strong organizational leadership, and that’s where we feel we need a new executive.”
“This is a very, very big deal in the cycling community,” Hennings said. “We understand that. This was not a decision that was made lightly at all.”
Cascade advocacy director David Hiller said he couldn’t comment on the decision.
