It was also important to get someonene to do the day to day business of the church as treasurer and Fr. Kelley brought the suggestion of John Bruce as a candidate to replace Jana [Akan]. I was originally in support of this as it seemed Mr. Bruce was the only viable person able to serve, due to the fact that according to the by-laws, the treasurer must be a full member of the parish. It was later learned that Mr. Bruce had not met the time requirement to be a full member and to serve as treasurer. Mr. Kang became a vocal critic of the attempt to seat Mr. Bruce as treasurer and this began a series of events that led to the meeting on December llth.Unfortunately, Mr Clark left the parish in frustration around the end of 2011, and he wasn't able to learn many of the details that might have changed his views. The dissident members of the vestry, including Mr Kang, were actually very selective in their enthusiasm for the parish bylaws. For instance, Article VI, Section 2 says, "Any pledging member of the Church shall be eligible to be elected a member of the vestry." None of the dissident vestry members, as of late 2011, had a pledge on file. (I knew this, because I was treasurer during that period.)
However, Mr Kang, although he was on the vestry without having pledged, was insistent that I couldn't be even an acting treasurer, because I was a few months short of the one-year attendance requirement to be a full member of the parish.
Nevertheless, after a characteristically long and stormy vestry meeting, I was voted in with some complicated title like "probationary acting interim treasurer". Oddly, Andrew Bartus called me in separately before the vote for a big-deal meeting with him. I assumed at the time that this was at Fr Kelley's request, possibly a preliminary assessment of my motivation and qualifications, but in fact this was unknown to Fr Kelley, completely unauthorized, and thus improper for a curate. I outlined for Bartus my banking experience and gave him several names of Episcopal clergy as character references, so he had to back down. (I would guess that if Bartus had called any of the references, it would have gotten back to Fr Kelley, and the jig would have been up!) Still, he tried to talk me out of taking the job.
I spent around two and a half months as "probationary acting interim treasurer", or whatever it was. It was long enough to discover that the parish's financial problems were entirely the creation of Ms Akan and Mr Kang. Ms Akan was, if anything, even closer to Bartus than Mr Kang; she socialized extensively with Bartus and his wife, and they made her godmother of their first child.
The parish had more than enough money in its general account to cover its bills. The problem was that nobody had written any checks. This, of course, would have been Ms Akan's responsibility, but she hadn't done that job for some months prior to her resignation. The parish van, for instance, was on the verge of being repossessed. My big task for weeks was to write dozens of checks to cover thousands of dollars in unpaid bills, with hundreds of dollars in late payment fees. I had to round up the authorized signers for signature sessions. This probably averted a catastrophe, although I was removed as treasurer in the December 11 vestry meeting before I could solve the biggest issue, the unpaid withholding tax, which I'll cover tomorrow.
But Mr Kang and Ms Akan were going to anyone who would listen with dark hints of financial irregularity. As several judges and the California unemployment insurance board have since determined, there was no financial irregularity or other misconduct on Fr Kelley's part. On the other hand, those making the allegations, and even trying to create evidence of irregularity themselves, were actively against what I was doing as treasurer, as Mr Clark points out. They were also closely associated with Andrew Bartus.
