This is Your President

[Emerald525]

I was not going to post this in the public thread but feel I have the right to do so to defend myself.

 

This is in response to this thread started by the President:

 

http://www.pnwmas.org/forums/showthr...Quarter-Report

 

Again I hate to air more dirty laundry but I feel Kevin has left me no choice. I am not going to simply roll over when the President of this forum makes such accusations. I hope that this does not get moved or closed so please be respectful in your comments. However I feel I need to present my side of the story as well as defend others that are being wrongly called out. In the time of I have been a member of this forum I have never seen so many people step down. Currently we have had 3 board members, 2 officers`and 3 admin (including one long term admin member) and the TFT coordinator step down. You really need to ask what is going on behind the scenes that so many people are stepping down. I feel Kevin is overstepping his powers and will move threads or close them so he can have the last word. As evidenced by the fact that my post was not up more than 5 minutes and it was moved.

 

Fellow pnwmas members I am sharing this because you need to know the type of person you now have as President. I am sharing this with you because you have all interacted with me and know that I had a passion for Tanks for Teachers and still see it as a wonderful program and that Beth and I spent many hours, gas money, time, heavy lifting and our own money to help out the schools and the teachers.

 

As many of you know Pledosophy's poor communication, unwillingness to work in collaboration, or listen to any opposing view has already contributed to so many people stepping down. This again is evidenced by the fact that he moved my thread.

 

At the bottom of this page, you will see the pm I received from Kevin.

 

First let me explain the context of this pm. Several years ago I opened a TFT paypal account after getting approval from the bod, officers and Mr S who was the former TFT coordinator before Robbie (MrWheeling) took his place.

 

It was needed because people were wanting to donate and there was no good way to track these donations and where the funds were going so I set up the account. It was meant to be a temporary account and was linked to my checking account which is why I used the name tanksforteacher@gmail.com (and intentionally left tanksforteachers@gmail.com for the club to use)

 

Like the rest of you, I received a group email from Micah about the details about the breach of security that occurred when the site went down and recommendations to change passwords as a safety measure. I changed the password to the TFT account and informed Robbie and Kknight and told them to set up a new TFT account and I would transfer the funds.

 

Yesterday, I logged in to my pnwmas account (after not being logged in for a few days) and received pms from Derbird and Kevin about the paypal account. I told them to set up a new TFT paypal account and I would transfer the full balance and suggested using tanksforteachers@gmail.com as a new name. The account was kept separate from the pnwmas to avoid confusion about where people's donations were going and where.membership fees were going.

 

 

I was floored by his response which is at the bottom page.

 

 

 

The image of Portland police breaking down my door and handcuffing me over an 1800 dollar paypal account would be laughable if it was not so insulting. I feel that Kevin overstepped and really took things too far with his threats and accusations. The reason the program was so successful was because people knew I cared and could be trusted to insure their donations went to the schools. To accuse me of stealing and threaten to call the police with not one ounce of proof and have me go to jail is infuriating and borders on libel.

 

Instead of listening to opposing views or getting all the facts your current President chooses to make unilateral decisions and use methods of intimidation and bullying to insure his way is the only way.

 

I find it disturbing that he would quickly jump to threats of calling the police and jail time simply because he does not agree with the past decisions of the club without having a discussion about the best course of action.

 

I also find it concerning that funds that members who donated intended to go to tanks for teacher are now in the general club fund and this is a misrepresentation of a charitable group. There were people who for whatever personal reasons did not want to contribute money to the PNWMAS and specifically wanted their donations to go to TanksforTeachers.

 

However, I did transfer the entire funds which was a little over 1800 dollars to the main PNWMAS account yesterday as I do not have the time or energy to deal with this kind of negativity.

 

Once someone explained to me how to remove my checking account from the TFT account I transferred it over. I also sent a long list of personal notes I had about costs from the builds. I did not have all of them as it was in the board discussions.

 

Below is the pm:

 

 

 

Quote Originally Posted by pledosophy

Hmmmm interesting: I have already contacted the police. You are welcomed to transfer the funds to paypal@pnwmas.org now, or we can continue. Holding funds for years away from a non profit is criminal. At this point weeks after the request and years later after the appropriate transfers were warranted . . . This needs to happen now. We have been in contact with paypay, US bank has surrendered the accounts. You can surrender the passwords and account information immediately or we can take the next step.

 

If this is some kind of misunderstanding, I am sorry. But given the extent of what I am dealing with I am proceeding that all embezzlement is criminal and we will be moving forward such.

 

Surrender the passwords and information immediately as the by laws said you would in July or the club will continue with prosecuting to the fullest extent of the law Monday. According to the police this is jail time for you.

 

I'm sorry Kim, I'm out of options. I am trying to the best of my ability to move this club forward. Where I am sitting now due to the lack of responsibility from my peers is disheartening,. What has transpired is criminal, and I will prosecute over taking the fall. It is really my only choice

 

I took this position because I wanted to grow coral better.

Cooperation is a much easier task.

 

I'd just like to end this now and not escalate.

 

All I am asking is that you surrender the accounts that were made for the benefit of our non profit so we can continue our non profit work. The longer it takes the more harm it causes. According to our by laws this should have happened July 1st. This needs to happen now, or we will have no other options then to proceed criminally.

 

 

 

I find it really disturbing how Pledosophy can cloud such a wonderful program and one of the best things about this forum in my opinion. I find it offensive that he has the nerve to imply that I was using the funds for my own personal use and his accusations border on libel. He has no proof of his accusations. I also find it upsetting that he would be so critical of former members such as Karen and Derbird who has given so much to this forum. The year before was more disorganized. Mohaynow took the fall for that but the fact of the matter was that noone really had the time to be President so other people were asked and he only agreed to stay because nobody else was willing or able to take the role. Regarding the by-laws there was nothing specific about Tanks for Teachers and how to manage it as it just was something that Roger a wonderful member decided to do. I just simply had a passion for this like others and was trying to help. During my time Beth and I with the help of others personally helped to set up 5 systems and provide livestock (Lakeridge, Clackamas, Sand ridge, Huntington and Pioneer and personally maintained the Pioneer tank ) During this time I never kept one piece of equipment and never took any of the money for my personal use. As all of you know, it costs a lot more than 1800 dollars to setup and maintain this many tanks. It is not true that things were not tracked. Major purchases were discussed in the board forum and unfortunately the past 2 years of these discussions were lost. I was able to get lots of donations from members and sponsors alike because they know that I am a person of my word. I would expect more respect towards former officers and more professional behavior from someone who has been a moderator for so long. I hope we can move forward and move on and would ask that the current President discuss with the rest of the board and officers before he makes such accusations in a public post. I for one very much appreciate all that the officers and former board members have done and I know how many behind the scenes hours go into making this forum work well. Again I was hoping we could move forward and move on but I will not keep quiet when I feel that I and other good hardworking former officers are wrongly attacked.

[pledosophy]

I'll post my reply here too

 

I have seen the top of this before, all but the last paragraph. This is the PM that you sent out to several people about 3 weeks ago about me. I know you set it to them, because several people sent it back to me. The PM in there from me to you I did write. I also later wrote you and apologized for the tone in which I spoke.

 

At the time I wrote the PM it had been 10 days since you went into a club account, changed the password, and had not contacted anyone in the club to tell them what that password was. Part of the fault was our own, that password should have been changed immediatley when the new term took over. But just because the password was not changed did not make it right for you to lock the club out of money that was to be used for the TFT's.

 

Kim, I am sorry you took my words on the Quarterly report to mean that you were stealing. I did not say that. I don't even think that, and when others looked at the transaction history, I actually defended you stating that I did not think it was theft. What I did say is that the spending of the money was not tracked and that receipts were never given to the Treasurer or the Secretary. We have asked both of them several times if they had any documentation and they do not. I could post the PM's with them stating such, but I think you will take my word for it as you know you did not give receipts.

 

When you logged into the TFT account, which has been managed by the club for a long time now, evident by your posting in the BoD forum about the spending of money (sometimes, not all the time, there were several transactions that were missing) it was wrong of you to do so. You had been out of a position of club leadership for several months, you changing the passwords to a club bank account and not immediately telling us the password seems pretty shady. Yes you did transfer the funds, 10 days after you locked the club out of the account. The BoD had to continually ask you for the password which you had changed and it took 20 days from the time you changed the password until we again had access to the account.

 

It seemed very suspect when you had locked us out of the account, but when we viewed the transaction history, it seemed much more suspect. We actually spent a long time trying to make sense of the accounts. Searching through old posts by dates coinciding with the transaction records to try to make sense of where the money was spent on. We found quite a few posts, but several others were not documented. So when I say there is no record of how the money was spent, there is no record of how the money was spent, even before the hack.

 

We did get several email strains from you, about how certain money was spent. I didn't mention this before but that also rose several suspicions with people. It seems many people on the BOD and Officers were not aware you were using TFT funds to buy G.C.'s to pay people for helping.

 

Also when I wrote about donations not being tracked and mismanaged, what I meant was several of the things donated we have no idea where they are. We talked to you about several of the things. You stated different people who you gave things to, but none of those people had those things. None of um. I am not saying you stole them, but they were mismanaged since they seemed to have disappeared.

 

I appreciate that you think I should confer with the other Officers and BoD before I post a report like this. I indeed have. This report has been up in the BoD forum for several days asking for comments and was shared in the clubs new drop box account so I could get some help with my grammar. This was not a secret to anyone, the majority had read it.