Spring General Assembly.

A sad occurrence in the history of our Community

It is indeed a sad event what those of us who were allowed to participate and those who were not, saw unfolding on the premises of Prophet Elias. We were supposed to meet and expedite the usual business of our community, but before the meeting even began we started arguing about who was eligible to vote or not, resulting in angry conversations between board members and parishioners.

Of significance, however, during the Assembly, was the report given by our Internal Auditors on the financial status and business practices of our community, especially after several years of inactivity of any auditing committee.

The report was a masterpiece of unbelievable reality of mishandling and mismanaging proportions of the various funds and accounts of both church offices and for a great period of time. The Auditing Committee gave credit where credit was due, but by majority found fault to just about all facets of the community’s finances. For example, no one expected to read about the co-mingling of funds, the allowance of the clergy to write checks and foremost, to have the Church pay Internal Revenue Service the sum of almost $15,000.00 for negligence.

These and other findings in the Auditor’ Report are very serious in nature and substance and a recommendation should be made to the Board to incorporate it with the next Messenger so that the whole membership of our community take note and prepare itself to come to the Fall General Assembly ready to ask any relevant questions.

The correction(s) will take considerable time and those of us who were in attendance, and foremost, the members of the Auditing Committee, will be eager and anxious to find out when the Fall General Assembly convenes, if their labor of so many hours became a great benefit to our Community or a loss of their valuable time.

Sakis Sakellariou