A partial, unaudited financial report has been distributed to apartment doors this evening revealing a $3 million swing from last year’s $1.7 million surplus to a $1.4 million deficit this year. An additional $700,000 expense was amortized — ten times more than usual — presumably for last year’s costly laundry room repairs.

This represents the worst financial report for the coop in at least a dozen years.

No balance sheet was included in the report, nor was cash flow statement included, as is normally the case. And the numbers were presented unaudited, more than five months after the close of our fiscal year.

I spoke with board member Lee Berman, who confirmed that he and other board members had not been able to review even these unaudited financial reports before they were distributed this evening. He wrote me, “The board does not always receive financials at its monthly meetings, and if the board is lucky enough to receive financials some random month, they are never provided in advance. Board members simply cannot exercise their proper fiduciary responsibilities to the corporation and to you the shareholders without this financial information, along with detailed analysis. It is inexplicable why the majority of board members do not find it troublesome that critically important timely detailed financial information is withheld from them, or from you.”

Berman also said that receiving these numbers less than 24 hours before our annual meeting makes it “impossible for [shareholders] to fully review and digest the material, or even afford them the opportunity to discuss it with their financial advisers so they could ask intelligent and informed questions regarding the finances at the meeting.”