Castanet

According to Ladd the food bank serves 27 seniors in the community.

dragonlady7758 wrote:I heard that the Lanthiers were not given an option by the auditor. The management of manager and treasurer being related is not allowed.

Captain Awesome wrote:

According to Ladd the food bank serves 27 seniors in the community.

Isn't pretty low?

tiomio wrote:Bette's Single Parent and Seniors' Food Bank is taking a beating and the judge is still out! She still has 60 days to clarify the issues raised by Revenue Canada and has an accountant ready to do just that. Bette received the first letter back in 2010 telling her to redo the 2008 and 2009 charity returns. She then received a letter in 2011 saying they were in the process of revoking her status unless she supplied info by a specific date. She hired a retired auditor within a month and he was supposedly heading to Victoria to straighten this mess out by the deadline stated in the original letter. That was close to a year ago and it hasn't been resolved. Agreed that the form of bookkeeping and receipts in a box were sloppy, however there were points raised by Revenue Canada that are not true in the Castanet news. Firstly the statement about 2 cars - the foodbank does not pay for these vehicles, and Bette only owns one vehicle - a truck which is used to pick up donated furniture and large items which her registered families and seniors benefit from. The car she drives is a donated lease vehicle, and Bette pays for the insurance for both vehicles. True, the car she now uses is a donated leased vehicle but that wasn't the case when she was audited. She owned both vehicles in those years and charged the insurance, repairs and maintenance to the charity. She's stated the food bank is not picking up or delivering furniture, appliances, etc. any longer so the truck expense should be next to nothing. Gas receipts for these vehicles are re-eimbursed to Bette as they are both used for the foodbank. The truck might have been used 100% for the food bank but the car for the years in question was also used for personal use - trips in and out of province to visit family, shopping, etc. and those expenses shouldn't have been charged to food bank. Secondly, the cell phone expense - Bette uses her cell phone for foodbank calls at all times, why shouldn't she be able to claim that as an expense?

This foodbank has 27 seniors - yes! As for what may appear as a small hamper for a senior, please think about the eating habits of many seniors, most of them do not have large appetites. She also provides Ensure or Boost to those who are unable to eat regular meals. She also has many single parent families that depend on these hampers and furniture, etc Bette provides extra large hampers for Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas, with hams, turkeys, etc. Bette has a Christmas party annually for the single parents' children, with santa and gifts, and music. The seniors also enjoy the Christmas party and receive gifts. She puts out a large table of food and pastries and fruit, drinks and coffe/tea. Yes she holds a Christmas party but wouldn't the 1000's of dollars spent be better used to purchase food throughout the year with any leftover money used for gifts. If I remember correctly, my friend said the last party she attended a couple of years ago they were served watery chili and bannock with some dessert trays and a lot of the children weren't eating. Most of these children would never attend a Christmas party without Bette's foodbank.

Thanks to Bette, at Christmas time a lot of businesses and individuals, adopt a senior or a family and will give members of the family gifts, along with food for their Christmas dinner. What a blessing to these families who often cannot afford either the gifts nor the extra food. Those who do not get adopted are provided with gifts and extra foods by the foodbank so that no one goes without at Christmastime.

Bette has often purchased singlular items to put together an emergency hamper for single families who come to register and are in desperate need. She also purchased singular items for her family and people working at the food bank - birthday cakes, etc. - not an allowable expense. She also purchases gift cards for such emergencies. Bette has a big heart and helps those in need who qualify to register for her foodbank. Personally I think it would be a huge loss for our community to lose Bette's foodbank, and I hope she can resolve these issues with Revenue Canada. There were a lot of other recommendations made that she ignored.

occasional thoughts wrote:I myself have never understood the need of having two food banks in little ol' Westbank, but the motivation of extracting a living and other life and living expenses from one of them by its "proprietor" begins to explain the motivation.

Raven1 wrote:Meanwhile there are bigshots that help no one other than themselves burying hundreds of thousands of dollars in offshore accounts in the Caribbean. That's tax evasion. Several local developers come to mind.
But go ahead people, crucify a lady that's helped a lot of people.