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Gillespie Fund Interim Audit report public as of 3/6/2014


solajijic

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I am just speculating here, but I suspect that if you could converse with the ghost of Ms. Gillespie, and told her that the library wiring was in need of help and the walls were in trouble, she'd probably suggest that some of the money she left could well be used to do some fixing on the building surrounding the books.

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That doesn't change the fact that the Board will address the report in due course Luisa, as per the normal procedure. THERE IS NO LONGER ANY NORMAL PROCEDURE.

As a member of that committee, David was bound by the policy and procedures which restricted disclosure of this report until accepted by the ELECTED Board. NOT TRUE. THE PROCESS FOR INTERIM REPORTS WAS DIFFERENT THAN THAT FOR THE ANNUAL REPORT. t relied on memory of what was said in public board meetings. YOU NEVER ATTENDED A BOARD MEETING WHERE ANY OF THIS WAS DISCUSSED.

The active verb is WAS. I WAS bound by confidentiality when I WAS a member of the AAC. However, I have not been since November. Further, I did not disclose any part of the report. The relevent facts are all in the public domain in the form of BOD meeting minutes.

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Enough of this garbage. MC you make me sick. The posting of the two interim reports is perfectly legal according to the policies and procedures of the old AAC. Those P&P’s that the board removed the same time they removed the existence of the AAC. Please give me the rational as to why the committee should follow a procedure that has been voided? There is none.

The reports were already sent to the ED and he and the President already responded to them. At that time it was reviewed by the committee and presented to the board. It was also given to a guest. At that time it was no longer confidential. The reports were posted after that. FYI the two of them did not respond to over $80K worth of posting concerns. The President agreed that there were some postings that were in error. That’s where the process stopped. I personally asked the ED to meet with me to go over the concerns and was told that he didn’t want to meet with me and I should meet with someone else.

Just to be completely clear, any votes of the board are not binding until they are published. That’s next month. How do I as a member of a committee know what they board has decided when it’s not posted for a month?

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An interim report is not an accepted final report and no formal response and final acceptance has been made by the Board, though I am told that per policy there will be one.

I see that you all have no problem with the signatory giving a non-member of LCS a copy of it and she is posting it on public message boards. If that is OK with you there's really not much I can add to that. The ED is not empowered to respond for the Board, neither is the President. At this point, it is still an interim report and supposed to be confidential until review, comment and acceptance at a Board meeting.

At this point, it is an irrelevant argument. Starting with David's threat to go public in the December Board meeting, the subsequent use of information from this report by a number of (now) former AAC members to respond to my posts that were made without my having access to the report, and now the actual posting of the report, but not any response, by a non LCS member, that pretty much wraps it up. I'll leave it to others to decide whether this is appropriate behavior by the people involved in disclosing the information, In my personal opinion it is not.

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The entire point of putting this into the public realm was to allow LCS members to know that their board and library committee have had the resource since 2009 to populate the library with the best sellers and literary winners on a regular and timely basis. And that the board had utilized the interest from that bequest over the years to cover expense not within the parameters of the bequest at the expense of the library patrons. And that they intend to continue doing so, at the expense of the library.

I could careless that the AAC and the BOD of LCS had a huge disagreement centering around whether a present board can rescind and change a significant decision by an earlier board. The minute the board says they are not going to honor a previous board commitment regarding the use of money you know you have a problem for future donations.

They want the money for buildings. They want to build more and better before they know they have a viable organization with adequate programming to maintain membership into the future. As they lose members due to an antiquated library, a changing society and evolving community they choose to focus on bricks and mortar.

There is no help for that shortsightedness.

There is nothing to the claim the board would address the issues in the report after the report committee was disbanded. They were in conflict over the advisory committee findings. Who could have faith they would ever have addressed the issues without the committee. The board created a new committee and that is what you do when you don't like the news from the old committee.

The report was given at an OPEN board meeting to the board, accepted by the board, then requested to be made a verbatim part of the minutes of the meeting and then handed to a member of the public...that makes it public.

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The Board has already figured out they aren't going to raise a million and a half bucks for buildings any time soon. They had a survey consultant explore this in detail. The consultant/surveyor's report made it very plain that the first priority of LCS is to review and redefine itself going forward as many of the functions it did in the past are less relevant today.

That is exactly what the Board and new officers are focusing on. That grand plan of reconstructing LCS is going nowhere and everyone who is involved in the continued rejuvenation of LCS is well aware of it. Perhaps if you talked more WITH the Board and less AT them, you would know this. LCS will be lucky to come up with enough money to keep the existing buildings functional, let alone replace them or do any major rehabilitation. And they know it.

The Board created a new AC committee that complies with the Constitution. I have no doubt that their belated compliance with the Constitution was encouraged by the divisive, personally mean spirited behavior of a few past and present members of the AAC. There is no doubt that beginning in 2011, the failure to restructure the AAC to comply with the new Constitution was a serious error by the officers and the Board. And they have paid dearly for it.

I am going to be reminding my ELECTED board members that this entire episode really drives home how important it is to adhere rigorously and completely to the basic law governing LCS. One can't credibly cite the Constitution as justification for any one action unless it is faithfully followed for ALL actions.

In this case, their failure to do so has allowed what was in effect a Constitutionally unauthorized committee since 2011 to become hijacked by a bunch of self appointed individuals who continue to use this and another public message board to attack and damage LCS and denigrate its elected representatives. We've been told how our volunteer board members, "lack integrity" and are "despicable" ad nauseum here and on TOB.

Ironically, most of these same folks didn't even show up at the AGM to make their case before the assembled membership.

This isn't offering advice, this is offering abuse.

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I'm offended by the personal tone of many of these posts. Calling one another out by name when that person's name is not apparent in their avatar is rude in my opinion. It makes the whole web board feel cliquish and trite. I read the original posting because I was interested in what was being reported. I am adult enough to then take that information and process it in a way that makes sense to me, and make my own decisions. This back and forth bickering is serving NO ONE. If by any chance anyone's agenda is to further or improve the reputation of LCS with this it absolutely does not. If I were new and didn't have feelings and opinions about LCS based on my own experience, I'd stay far, far away from it. Since I've now gleaned what factual info I need from this post, I won't read any more.

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I can understand why you wouldn't want to be outed given your conduct in this matter. Maybe you should have thought a little more about carrying out your threat to "go public."

Why, you could have even shown up at the AGM and made your case rather than used this and TOB to "go public."

You're very welcome, David.

BTW, you go by your actual name on TOB. Just for the record. :D

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I can understand why you wouldn't want to be outed given your conduct in this matter. Maybe you should have thought a little more about carrying out your threat to "go public."

Why, you could have even shown up at the AGM and made your case rather than used this and TOB to "go public."

You're very welcome, David.

BTW, you go by your actual name on TOB. Just for the record. :D

Yes, I do go my own name on insidelakeside. You however, don't use your own name on ANY board. As a mod your behavior of outing a member here is unforgiveable. Imho you should be banned. As for my request to the Board in December, I felt strongly that the BOD was on the wrong path and needed a warning. As it turned out everything I wanted the public to know has come to light, inspite of your devious efforts and those of the BOD to surpress it.

Now future donors can judge for themselves.

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You mean your threat to the Board.

Mr. Flaningam reiterated previous points about the Gillespie Fund, opining that the issue has not beenresolved and the community needs to know about it. Specifically, he requested that the Board revisit its decision regarding the interest on the Gillespie fund and that the Board should vow to be good stewards of donations. Hestated that if his demands are not met by next Friday he will go public with his opinions.
That isn't a request--that is a threat which you carried out when your unreasonable demands weren't met. You carried it out in public at LCS and on these boards and other places. You outed yourself all over town and you made this discussion personal. Take responsibility for it.
Future donors are being given a very clear set of guidelines, thanks to the Board. And once again, the decision to put the interest into the endowment that the 2009 LCS Board created (not the bequestor) was made by that Board and thereby reversible. It was not an original part of the Bequest.

With a little more investigation, I found out that Ms. Gillespie never even contacted LCS about the bequest before she made it. LCS wasn't even the primary beneficiary on the insurance policy. Hard for me to see how LCS could have provided guidance on the bequest when they weren't even aware of it until it happened.

There is a lesson here for future donors. Contact LCS first, read the guidelines, be clear and legally correct in your intention and it will be followed

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I did not go public with anything other than my opinion. If you think otherwise then prove it. What you see as a threat (you weren't even there) I saw as options for the board. The public deserved to know of their shoddy management of the Gillespie Fund. They could either fix it, or accept that the memership and public were going to find out what they were up to.

For you to use my name on this board is unspeakably low and tacky behavior, especially for a Moderator.

Donors should be aware that the Board of LCS will use your donation for whatever they see fit. Try and find the account for the money raised at the recent Fiesta Latina. Supposedly those funds are for the programs for the Mexican community, e.g. ESL, Children's Art Program, etc.. Where's the accounting for that? You can't see it because it all goes into the General Fund.

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I am not posting on this thread as a Moderator and I am not moderating this thread. In that capacity, I have the same right to post here as you do.

Your excessive rhetoric speaks volumes about how you have personally attacked anyone who dares to disagree with your largely unfounded allegations about the LCS created Gillespie fund. Donors should be aware of nothing you allege, it is all just more of your campaign against LCS and the elected Board who did not cave into your threats.

\Your statements about donors and fund raisers are so misleading as to border on completely false. Fiesta Latina is a fund raiser for LCS, period. Funds from the general fund are used for outreach programs along with other LCS functions as determined by the Board we members elect. All money is spent on operating LCS and its programs. With the exception of a few paid employees, everyone one else who spends countless hours trying to keep LCS going and moving forward are volunteers.

It is time for you to accept that you have virtually no support at LCS for your extreme views and due the right thing and resign your membership.

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The Fiesta Latina provides a letter to each donor that says exactly how the funds raised will be used. The problem is that simply is not true.

You have a semantics problem; I have not "attacked" anyone, nor did I "threaten" the Board. The definition of threat is: "

a statement of an intention to inflict pain, injury, damage, or other hostile action on someone in retribution for something done or not done." The topic of my address to the BOD in December was transparency. To wit: if the board wasn't going to make the Gillespie Fund issues transparent (public) then I would.

I've spent over 5 years volunteering to LCS, you haven't spent one day. Who's worked more to strengthen the organization? It's time for you to face the truth about the mismangement of the Gillespie Fund and virtually all donated funds.

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Now we have two posters not to like! Flaunting their ability to snipe at each other while they drive membership down. We wouldn't join this place if the other choice was a free trip on the maiden voyage of the Titanic....

Mainecoons should resign as a moderator and his opponent should start a new career as a mud wrestler against puppies

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It inappropriate for Mainecoons as a private poster to have used my and my husbands names in his responses. My goal was awareness. I personally chose to not be a member of LCS because of my unhappiness about the Gillespie money not being used as it was designated. My unhappiness was in 2010 not recently. My husband kept most all of this from me until it was public because he knew how I felt and since I always have an opinion and the reports were confidential keeping it from me was a good idea. We were active volunteers and my husband was on the board at the time the Gillespie money came to LCS. He was asked to be on the advisory committee years later. Unlike Mainecoons we have a historical knowledge of these events. He hasn't ever been involved and his wife only recently.

If the library purchased 16 Kindles at $60 with shipping that would be about $1000 US. 12 to register immediately and 4 replacements.

Open 2 Amazon Kindle accounts each with 6 Kindles registered to it because that is the maximum that can share one book title. Then buy 3 newly published books for each account and install those on the 6 Kindles. Now you have access for 6 people to 6 new books at a cost of about $75 US. And of those 6 ebooks then buy a hardcopy of each at a total of $150.

So for an initial outlay of $1000 US for equipment which is a covered expense and then $225 for the first group of books both ebooks and hardcopies which are covered expenses. This is the beginning of a test period. Buy the same thing each month for a year for a cost of $2700 - all of which is covered from the bequest. At the end of the year you have 72 new recently published hardbacks for the library shelves and all of the books on the ereaders for ever. During the year figure out a better way to do it, but even if there isn't you could do this for over 20 years before compromising the prinicipal a long as you reinvest the interest.

Even so it might be too late to bother.

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Yes, you are a non-member. As such, you have no say in what goes on at LCS. Try and remember that in the future and particularly when you start posting LCS documents on public message boards.

If you want to influence how the library is run, I suggest that you (1), join LCS; and (2), become a library committee volunteer. Among other things, you might then get a broader picture of the competing demands on library funds and volunteers.

Have a nice day.

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