Park society in chaos

The membership of the Rutland Park Society had a clear message for its nine-member board of directors.

Stop your bickering, get along, and get to work.

That message resonated throughout the 50-year-old Centennial Hall during a general society meeting on Thursday night.

Two clear agendas were evident throughout the night.

Treasurer Wendi Swarbrick and five board members wanted president Ross Kulak, secretary David Buckna and vise-president Dawn Theissen removed from the board. Swarbrick stated the rest of the board could not work with either Kulak or Buckna.

Theissen was asked to step down because of a perceived conflict since she also sits on the board of the Uptown Rutland Business Association.

Kulak on the other hand, asked that the three stay and, per the bylaws, be added as signing authorities for society banking. Membership also wanted to see financial statements which were previously unavailable.

The membership overwhelmingly voted to retain the three embattled board members, approved signing authority within seven days and demanded financial records be made available for the last four months of 2016 by the next board meeting.

It was also decided that financial statements would be made available monthly.

The question now remains, whether the board as it currently sits, with all its infighting, can work together.

"I think our board of directors is going to reconvene and discuss that. I'm not going to say either way," said Swarbrick after the meeting.

"But, unfortunately, our president is incapable of doing his job. He is fully incompetent. We have given him every opportunity. We have tried to handle this in the most professional way possible and keep it out of the spotlight.

"It's unfortunate the membership doesn't sit on a board with them and they don't understand the challenges."

Further complicating matters, Kulak announced at the meeting Thursday he has retained a lawyer and intends to sue Swarbrick over comments she made about him over an alleged incident at the bank.

Infighting within the park society board is nothing new.

The previous board resigned en masse in the summer, leaving Swarbrick as the last remaining board member.

Much of the fighting has to do with the state of Centennial Hall and whether to renovate it, or tear it down and build a new hall.

Swarbrick said the real casualty of Thursday's outcome are the planned renovations to the hall and a $275,000 Canada 150 grant.

"Because of the actions of the prior board and the short time we've had, the only people actually working on that are this board here.”

"It's my opinion as a treasurer that grant, and most definitely the first phase, is now lost."

That works out to $136,000.

She doesn't believe there is enough time to get the necessary work done to satisfy the requirements of the grant. However, she believe’s the board could have done the work when it was first elected in October.

"It absolutely could have been done in five months. We had a very solid plan moving forward, and I was fully confident that could be done."

A draft of the financial statement released at the meeting shows the society has current cash assets of $841.492 with another $469,941 in fixed assets. That includes a value of $418,714 for the hall.