Looking at the rapidly growing list of unanswered 2023 Financial Questions raised at the BCMatters.org site, one must wonder…. is there any precedent for such a thing happening before in Big Canoe? Turns out that the answer to that is “YES”.
In 2003 Big Canoe experienced a “Financial Crisis”. If that sounds overly dramatic, the Smoke Signals at the time referred to it as the “current crisis” which resulted in an “emergency board meeting“* of the HOA, and a hastily convened POA “Town Hall” at the Chapel. Newly hired CFO, Cary Smith, in the first month of his employment, revealed financial indiscrepancies to the POA Board. As a “reward” for his whistleblowing, he was fired after bringing things to the Board’s attention. He later wrote a public 6 page letter* to property owners that brought the matter to community attention. The General Manager was subsequently put on leave, and eventually “left his position”. And a “Blue Ribbon Sweep-It-Under-The-Rug Non-Forensic Audit” was undertaken. Ultimately a lot of financial hanky-panky was uncovered, and corrections implemented, but great care was taken to not look too hard at details. The entire thing was then historically buried and forgotten. Anyone with a copy of Cary’s Original 6 Page letter, please send a copy to themtnsvoice@aol.com for our archive.
NOTE THAT NONE of the corrective actions would likely have happened without two things occurring:
- Fired Whistleblower CFO Cary Smith sent a 6 page public letter to property owners. The POA sure wasn’t telling anyone. Months had passed already without any transparent notification to property owners. Sounds sort of familiar actually.
- Big Canoe had an independent HOA in place to immediately pick up the ball and put pressure on the POA Board. The HOA controlled Smoke Signals jumped on the story immediately, with multiple writers putting perspective and facts together. Back then the Smoke Signals was an actual News organization. Can you imagine the Smoke Signals breaking any actual “News” regarding the POA today? 🤣
It was the HOA that once notified, scheduled an emergency meeting, sent a formal letter of notice to the POA, and put out an eblast to members. After that meeting the HOA launched a Community Poll to see how members felt about the Two (2) Main Ideas that came out of the original meeting. Only after this public pressure did the POA convene it’s 1st of 2 Town Hall meetings, and agree to follow those suggestions.
Below is a reproduction of that August 2003 Financial Crisis Poll
Having a Community Watchdog Organization, and a functioning Newspaper can provide a sense of security.
Here is an interesting comment from an August 2003 Smoke Signals Article by John Baugus at the time:
“Finally, one of the most perplexing aspects of this mess is Cary’s dismissal. His allegations had enough credibility that the Board retained an independent auditor to investigate. Then halfway through the investigation, the Board fires their “whistleblower”. Am I the only person who doesn’t like the smell of that?”
Sort of smells similar to how the author of BCMatters.org is currently being treated. She can’t be “fired” since she is an independent property owner / blogger, but she has been the subject of malicious gossip. FOBC has at least one 1st hand report of references to her articles getting a person banned from the online Big Canoe FB Group (N2N). Of course, referencing FOBC articles on the Petit Dam, the 2016 Land Deal, and basically Anything… have been a bannable offense on N2N for years.
And how is the POA Board itself handling the BCMatters.org reporting?
They basically refuse to publicly acknowledge its existence, as if its reporting didn’t even exist. One property owner (this FOBC publisher) recently reached out to the Board via “Ask The Board Ticket 11685“, asking about her financial allegations, and provided specific references to over a dozen property owner comments echoing those concerns. Here is what the Board responded in their Response to Ticket 11685:
“We would like to emphasize that allegations previously raised on bigcanoematters.org (sp?) have undergone thorough investigations, including as recently as the first quarter of this year, and have been consistently determined to lack merit.”
No details. No transparency. No explanation of what those “thorough investigations” were, or who did them. As previously reported, they even edit out public Board Meeting Questions that mention the BCMatters.org website, and even their AskThePOA response seems to intentionally mistype the website. This is what “Cancel Culture” looks like in Big Canoe.
Yet with similar allegations back in 2003, there were almost a dozen Smoke Signals articles; an Emergency HOA Board Meeting; and Emergency Community Meeting put together by Property Owners; Two POA Town Hall Meeting in a single month on the subject; a community wide Newspaper Poll; the GM was put on-leave (and eventually released); a Blue Ribbon Committee set up; and an outside financial investigation launched.
In 2023, without a Watchdog HOA (and subsequently a truly independent and unbiased Community Newspaper), what we have is Denial, Censorship, and Arrogant Refusal to even publicly acknowledge that any issues exist.
History can often teach us a lot about what our path into the future should be. It is clear that Scott Auer, Jayne Hagan, and our current POA Board of Directors have a lot of explaining to do. How we get them to do that seems to be the question.
FOBC’s next article will explore the legal options of creating a path to a “Forensic Audit” of the Big Canoe POA Accounting Records.
OK… I cannot ignore one last thing that I just found after I thought I had finished this article… a May 2003 Smoke Signals Article just after Cary Smith was hired as CFO. It is titled “POA committee’s fiscal study report gets high marks from board’s Deach”. Here is an excerpt:
“The POA Finance Committee’s fiscal study report was presented to the Board of Directors at a meeting in special session at the Chimneys on Wednesday, April 30. The committee was charged with development of a financial model of the Property Owners Association. Board President Jim Deach praised the committee’s work, calling it an “outstanding report – the best tool the board’s ever had to work with.”He said, however, that the report is a “work in progress” and not ready for distribution to the community. There are instances in the report where the data is in question, he said. CFO Cary Smith is reviewing the report now for feedback to the committee.“
The absolute Irony here is that this “Outstanding Report” by the FINANCE COMMITTEE totally missed the obvious “financial crisis” part, and 2 months later Cary Smith was getting fired for daring to expose the financial malfeasance that the report uncovered.
And I do not think things have changed, because time after time we just recycle Finance Committee members onto the POA Board… and look where we are now!!!
I’ll just leave it there. You can’t make this stuff up. 
Peace,
– david / publisher / property owner
Focus on Big Canoe, GA
* publications of The Mountains Voice
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