Estevan legion finances in dire situation

It’s an organization designed to help veterans, but the legion in Estevan is in need of major financial help.

Years of mismanaged bookkeeping has led to the legion being $40,000 in debt.

“When I took over in January and started getting into the books, things were not very good at all. We found that our bookkeeping methods are really not being done properly. Our financial situation wasn’t known to anyone the way it should have been,” Legion treasurer Leonard Grube said. “None of the executive knew this, someone doing the books might have, but they were too inexperienced I think to even recognize it.”

“It was just a failure from the start,” Grube said.

Grube said information was being entered in the wrong places in the books, making the financial situation look better than it actually was.

“We were a big enough branch that we thought we could rely on paid staff to look after the business. We had some expectations, but I think in reality, looking back, we relied on that paid staff to do a bit too much,” Second Vice President Danielle Evenson said.

“They had to know everything about everything, and it was just too big a job for one person.”

An aging building and past due maintenance bills also played a huge role.

“The buildings are becoming very old and we’ve had a lot of repairs that have come up (and) we just didn’t have the money to spend on them, but we had no choice but to put ourselves into that debt,” Grube said.

After discovering the dire financial situation, the legion formed a “ways and means committee” to help devise a plan to move forward and fix the financial situation.

“We’ve got a nice chunk of bills paid off, but our income over the summer isn’t good enough to gain anything anymore. We’re keeping our current utilities paid but that’s about all we’re able to do right now,” Grube said.

The legion also presented to Estevan City Council, requesting $16,000 loan to cover their past due bills.

“We weren’t really interested in financially helping, because once you go down that road then there’s going to be other organizations that would come forward,” Estevan Mayor Roy Ludwig said. “But before we even looked at doing that we thought that we would have one of our financial people go over their books and see if we could help.”

Although there is still a long way to go, the public has now stepped up to help out through donations and by volunteering. One family of a past member has donated $10,000 in memoriam. Three volunteers are also helping out in the office.

All of these are efforts to help keep the Legion alive, and honour those who gave for the country.

“We’re the pillar, we serve veterans; past, present and future,” past president Sharren Dukart said. “And that’s so important. We need to remember them. Lest we forget, lest we forget.”