Vestry Minutes and Church Audits

This will eventually be two separate pages, with a comprehensive collection of Vestry minutes and official audits--conducted by certified public accounts--of the church's finances. For now, a few of the documents crucial to the issue at hand:

The 1945 minutes: The meetings of May, June and July show the 1945 Vestry struggling with a new set of Churchyard Rules and whether they would be so inflexible and so restrictive as to bar burials of people who would otherwise be appropriate to have Caroline Church as their final resting place. It is clear that the Vestry was debating over these new Churchyard Rules and clearly not the Churchyard Endowment Fund.

The 1993 minutes: The meetings of May, June and July show the resolution to use Churchyard Endowment Fund monies to build the playground (May), the reversal of that decision because the auditors' feedback concluded that this was inappropriate (June), and the presentation of the audit for the last fiscal year (July).

Then compare the audit for 1992 (dated June of 1993) which on p. 8 enumerates the fact that the Churchyard Endowment Fund, Remembrance Fund and Building Fund are Restricted in their use. This is the first time the auditors put this into the annual audit, undoubtedly because the Vestry had just, for the first time, attempted to use restricted funds outside of their purpose. Compare with the audit for 1991, which does not contain that wording. Nor do any other earlier audits (which will be posted).

That language continued in the audits (and in quarterly financial statements) until the 2000 audit. That audit, without explanation, suddenly reclassified the Churchyard, Organ, Remembrance and Building Funds as "temporarily" restricted. 2000 is the same year that marks the first time money was pulled from these restricted funds for other purposes (in that year, $50,000 from the Churchyard Endowment Fund to the new "Transition" Fund.) Does anyone believe this change of the audit wording coinciding with the first unlawful pull is a coincidence??

The 1995 minutes: The June minutes show a Vestry person stating that he had been researching, and found that the Churchyard Endowment Fund could be used for other purposes. In fact, this was an incorrect reading of the 1945 minutes (link above). This seems to be the basis for the belief that these special funds could be used for other purposes--a myth that was stated so often that virtually everyone (myself included) assumed it to be true.