The Auditor's Onion Peel

Members are now in receipt of our Auditor's report and Financial Statements for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2008. These Financial Statements should have been presented in June of last year, however we've not had an All Members' Meeting since last Spring. The Auditor will now address the membership at our Annual General Members' Meeting on March 16, 2009. The highlights of the report are as follows:

• Vacancy losses - $63,741.
  
• Bad debts - $14,725.
• Member receivables - $30,221.
• Board of Directors Minutes missing from co-op binders; other minutes missing signatures
• Housing charge calculations and supporting documentation missing from the member files. The staff person was unable to locate these calculations
• CMHC and The Agency correspondence files missing
• Three Directors were in arrears while sitting on the Board of Directors
• Capital Reserves are depleted
  
• The co-op didn't obtain permission from The Agency when it spent money from its Replacement Reserves
• The co-op's insurance coverage is not adequate, including our public liability insurance

The auditor emphasized that the co-op is on the verge of being taken over by CMHC or by The Agency if we don't 'right the ship'. The auditor issued a 'Communication of Matters Identified During the Audit of the Financial Statements that identified significant weaknesses in internal controls, fraud, illegal acts or possible illegal acts.'

The auditor stated that the Board of Directors has a 'responsibility to its members to ensure the minutes are accurate, complete and properly processed in a timely manner.' Well, another year has gone by and Minutes are not published, no meetings have been held, no progress reports are issued, monthly Financial Statements have not been distributed to the general Membership, the Board is not transparent, and we'll have more vacancy losses due to all the units sitting empty.

So what happened to those missing Members' subsidy calculation files? Most certainly the files are in various Directors' units, because they've been doing the bizarre subsidy calculations, flagrantly violating Members' privacy rights in the process.