DPAC funds mishandled?

A police and bank investigation into the discrepancies in Kootenay Lake District Parents’ Advisory Council accounts dating back to 2020 have thrown a wrench into upcoming plans for the membership, recently released meeting minutes have shown.

From minutes of the Sept. 19 Kootenay Lake District DPAC meeting, treasurer Natalie Nazaroff reported that during the summer it came to the executives’ attention there were some discrepancies in the organization’s accounts, dating as far back as 2020.

“As a result of this discovery, the remaining executive is working hard to reconcile the books. To date, we have found an approximate $15,000 discrepancy in our accounts,” she wrote in her report.

“The treasurer's reports that were given were not accurate accounts of what our bank balances were. We didn't know we hadn't received our gaming grants for three years.”

The DPAC treasurer at the time submitted her resignation on Aug. 23, Nazaroff explained.

The gaming grant loss represents an additional $7,500 in lost revenue due to lack of completion of the fiscal year end requirements for BC Gaming, Nazaroff wrote.

The shortfall means the DPAC does not have enough money in its accounts to pay for B.C. Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils (BCCPAC) memberships for all the Kootenay Lake (SD8) schools this year.

The DPAC also will not be able to run any parent education nights that have a cost associated with them until the matter is resolved, Nazaroff explained.

There has been a lot of work to try and recover the ground lost with the loss of the funds, she added.

“Our executive has spent countless hours working on our Gaming reports in order to hopefully qualify for a late application for this upcoming school year,” wrote Nazaroff.

“Unfortunately, we are unable to provide the membership much more information at this time due to the police investigation as well as the bank investigation.”

Nazaroff said updates would be made to the members once more information became available.

As of Sept. 19, there is not enough in the DPAC Gaming account to pay for the BCCPAC annual general meeting and for the Gordon Neufeld conference.

“We do not have enough money in our accounts to pay these expenses, therefore, this debt will be waiting for reimbursement until we have enough money in order to be reimbursed,” Nazaroff wrote.

Confidentiality is still needed because of the police investigation.