Mt. Hope Other Happenings

As promised earlier, the following are the backgroung communications that I referred to. They are the letters to the members and the letter to the Presiding Elder. The e-mail responses by me to the Presiding Elder and hers to me will be posted at a later date.



All Mount Hope A.M.E. Zion Church Members

April 19, 2007

Re: The state of affairs at our once glorious church.

Dear fellow member(s):

I would like for you to take out your dictionaries and look up the meaning of the following two (2) words: TRUTH and INTEGRITY

After you read the following you will be able to determine for yourself why I’m asking you to do this, but more importantly, you will be able to arrive at the correct conclusion for yourself.for background purposes, I went to Mt. Hope A.M.E. Zion Church on Monday night April 16, 2007 to attend the 4th quarterly conference of the Westchester District, New York Annual Conference. When Pastor Maddox (who was filling in for Presiding Elder, Cynthia Willis-Stewart) called the quarterly conference to order, he then in a very loud voice called out my name and asked me to see him in his office. I proceeded to the office and he asked me to leave the quarterly conference. When I asked why, he told me I was not eligible to attend because I had not been attending Mt. Hope Church regularly and was not supporting the church (which are both true). However, I informed him that my General Claims and my District Quarterly dues had been paid and according to the discipline, this allowed any member of the church to attend the quarterly conference and have a voice. He said no and again insisted that I leave. I told Pastor Maddox at that time that he was taking an inappropriate action for which he would regret dearly. He said do what you have to do but you can’t stay in the quarterly conference. So I gathered my items and left the church.

Before I go into some specifics about why Pastor Maddox is unfit to serve the Mt. Hope membership, let me provide some current and alarming information:

a) Mt. Hope A.M.E. Zion Church is a “FAILED” church. It is so behind financially that it cannot possibly sustain itself any longer! You want proof of this – simply reflect back to December, 2006 when there was an appeal to raise $30,000.00 because the church had no money and was past-due with the mortgage, Con Edison bill and etc. The amounts in arrears totaled more than $24,000.00 and the next mortgage payment would soon be due. All of this, mind you, less than a month after the Women’s Day annual celebration. Several years ago the monies raised by the women’s day celebration would help to carry the church through December, January & February until the Men’s Day annual celebration in March; which would then carry the church through to the Church Anniversary Day celebration which would provide funds through the annual conference at the end of June. It’s sad to say but this is just not going to happen this year. I know that there is a horrible financial situation that will cause the Financial Committee to come back to you any day now to ask for probably another $30,000.00 and the situation will repeat itself throughout the foreseeable future – the same situation will occur again during the summer! I hope you have planned to keep giving your pledges until the church raises enough money to pay the monthly operating costs.
What a pleasant scenario to look forward to. Members you cannot save Mt. Hope; it’s to far gone and that is a fact. Let’s seek the conference’s financial help now!

b) However, at the most recent quarterly conference on Monday, April 16, 2007 a so-called “Trustee Board” report was read that covered financial results of the church and the financial position of the church as of February 28, 2007. In the report given by Pastor Maddox, it was stated that there was a balance in the Mt. Hope combined Operating Account and the Organizations & Clubs account in excess of $30,000.00. Just think, the Men’s Day money raised for its annual day was not even included in this total. Conservatively projecting, the church must have close to $35,000.00 to $40,000.00 in its treasury as of March 31, 2007 (less than 20 days ago). With this rosy picture, there should not be a need to ask any member for special pledges anytime until October or November of this year. And by that time Women’s day should have kicked in and then there would absolutely be no need to ask the fine members for anymore special pledges through the end of 2007! The one note of caution here is that the “Trustee Report” was not even prepared by anyone on the Trustee Board!!! Apparently it was prepared by Pastor Maddox and a non-trustee member of the church. If I were to speculate, I would say that the amount of $30,000.00 plus was in reality a deficit and that Mt. Hope does not have any money!!! What would make me come up with such speculation; well how about the property tax bill for the retail space not yet being paid and it was due by January 1, 2007. To make matters worse, there is a second property tax bill due on April 30, 2007. Between the two bills the amount is over $6,000.00. If you don’t believe this, simply go to White Plains city hall and inquire about the status of Mt. Hope’s property tax status. Additionally, there are overdue amounts to Con Edison of God knows how much but certainly more than $5,000.00! And who knows what the status of the mortgage is. If it has indeed been paid, I’m sure that they had to scrape the bottom of the treasury barrel to make the payment.
c) Why is Mt. Hope all of a sudden experiencing such horrific financial problems? Perhaps it is because for selfish reasons a large part of the funds raised from the tithes & offerings and special programs are being used to take to the checkup meeting – the last one being on March 30 or 31, 2007! Why do you think that Mt. Hope Church bills are being sacrificed to pay General Claims and District Quarterly assessments? Could it be that the great pastor would be up the creek without a paddle if these excessive assessments were not paid for the conference year. As a matter of illustration, the total General Claims and other conference assessments are in excess of $35,000.00 for this conference year which ends on June 30, 2007. So doing simple math (which does not lie), the amount of $185.00 ($150.00 for general claims and $35.00 for district quarterly) per active member would total approximately $16,650.00 only – assuming that 90 members paid the $185.00 for this conference year. Therefore a shortage of some $18,350.00 would result. Now how would such a shortage be made up? How about taking money from the Mt. Hope Operating funds to pay to the conference leaving the church unable to pay its property taxes, Con Edison, mortgage and a host of other bills that are seriously past-due. Now you may begin to understand why you have been requested to pay twice for general claims, district quarterly, women’s day, men’s day and church anniversary assessments. One has to be pretty desperate to make such a request. But of course there was more than $30,000.00 in the Mt. Hope church treasury at February 28, 2007! This brings to question where all the money has gone in about a month and a half (and the Men’s Day annual day money was not even counted in that total since that didn’t occur until March 18, 2007)!!! Perhaps it’s time for the membership to demand an audit of the books and records of the church since something is drastically wrong with the numbers that are reported. Hopefully there is no inappropriate use of church funds. Since this is one of my fields of expertise, I would do the membership a favor and conduct such an audit during the last part of May and the first part of June at no cost to the church to assess what has occurred to put the church at risk all of a sudden (but its not so sudden since I predicted this in my June, 2004 letter to Presiding Elder Cynthia Willis-Stewart). When the Presiding Elder asked our church delegate –Sister Marie Baxter if anything I was saying was possibly true, Sister Baxter used the following terms to answer the question: “I can assure you presiding elder that none of what Brother Davis stated is true”. I have wondered to this day how Sister Baxter, who has nothing to do with the church’s financial records and transactions such as check writing, reviewing bank statements and etc., could make such a statement of assurance to the presiding elder. If you need to refresh your memories, simply asked to see the delegate’s report that was read to the church membership in August or September of 2004 after the annual conference had take place. This report was prepared and read by Sister Marie Baxter!
d) In reference to item (b) above regarding the “Trustee’s Report”, that report should not have been voted on by the members of the quarterly conference since it was neither prepared by the trustees or presented to the quarterly conference by any trustee. If you will check your A.M.E. Zion church discipline you should find out that the Trustee’s are responsible for the financial status of the church and they are to be accountable to the members for preparing and presenting the information!! How could the pastor, who is always talking about the discipline, not be aware of such a fact? I suspect that he is and just chose to ignore it since he knew that no-one in the quarterly conference would have the courage to object! How hypocritical is that. But this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to hypocrisy or worse – not being truthful when it is convenient for him like stating at each quarterly conference that Mt. Hope Church has in excess of 270 members (has anyone taken a count of the members on any given Sunday)? You would have to count each person at least four (4) times to arrive at over 270 members. I guess this is the “new math” that he is using! Other examples: When the church anniversary celebration took place in May of 2005 and the pastor stood in the pulpit and stated that he thought the anniversary was being held on a different date, the facts of the matter show otherwise and I have copies of the e-mails to prove it since I was in touch with him constantly throughout January thru the 2nd week of May advising him of what we were planning to do each Sunday in May leading up to anniversary day on May 23, 2005. Not only that, other persons in the church know this to be true and that his trip came up suddenly; it had not been planned until early May! His trip date was in conflict with the anniversary and he simply decided to go to Europe and not be honest about it with members (I’m purposely not using the “L” word but you can draw your own conclusions about what is the truth). There was another pulpit non-truth when the Mercedes Benz that was donated to Mt. Hope Church by Sister Mamie Yates was being sold via a Mt. Hope Church auction process and some unsavory strings were being pulled. One of our beloved members, who has since passed on, wrote a letter to Bishop Walker and outlined the insane behavior that was taking place. Pastor Maddox when he returned from his trip stood in the pulpit and stated that a member of the church had written “a terrible and nasty letter to the Bishop and said a lot of awful things about the pastor and the church”. He stated, from the pulpit again, that he didn’t know who the person was nor had he seen the letter when in fact he had discussed the letter with the writer, In fact I had a copy of the letter and so did most of the trustees. It was a perfectly mild letter that simply stated the facts – THERE WAS NO NASTINESS OR AWFUL THINGS SAID IN THE LETTER!! There is much more but I’m getting tired.
e) These are my most serious points: 1)Payment of a pastor’s cell phone bill is against the IRS rules and the church can lose its Tax-Exempt Status if this is brought to light. This practice must end immediately and you members must demand it. 2) The Mount Hope Rising Daycare program is against IRS rules and will also cause the church to lose its Tax-Exempt status if discovered by the IRS. The problem is that you cannot have a for-profit entity using a church’s facilities without paying an agreed upon monthly rent that is fair for the area and the rental payments must be made consistently each month. Also there must be a bona-fide lease agreement with all the terms spelled out. Church we have a gigantic problem since practically all of the money from the program is going to Ms. Herriot and Mt. Hope was even paying the utility bills! I think the members should demand that this free use of our facility stop immediately! In both instances, the cell phone expenses must be reimbursed to the church going back to the beginning which was around 1999/2000 and we should seek rental reimbursement from the daycare operator. The Daycare is not a Mt. Hope Church Program – if it was we would have collected the monies and paid the operator a fee for running the program. Also where is the signed agreement that authorized this program.
f) The members have been taken advantage of extensively over the past 5 to 6 years and no-one other than myself has had the courage to try and do anything about it. Where has the dysfunctional trustee board been all this time – it is unconscious- able what they have permitted to happen to this church!!! Frank Eller nor Joe Smalls would have permitted this to happen under their watch as chairpersons. I know that Rev. Gullette is turning over in his grave over this nightmarish situation.
g) Finally, to ascertain what is the current bank balance is, one would only need to review the March 31st bank statement balances for the Operating Account with Sound Federal Bank (which has now been bought out by another bank) and the Organizations & Clubs Account with JPMorgan Chase Bank (formerly The Bank of New York). Add the two balances and that is approximately our treasury balance. There should be a Financial Committee presentation to the members of this simple process so that the truth can be known and faced once and for all. It’s time to stop the deceit, lies and exaggerations; the Mt. Hope Membership deserves to know the truth.


In closing, I would like to inform the membership of my reasons for not attending the church I love so much and has done so much for in the past. Simply put, I have -0- (zero) level of respect for Pastor Maddox. He is a mean-spirited, vicious, vindictive and selfish man who lacks integrity (I could tell you about this in great factual detail) but I will forego that at this time. I cannot have a person like this preach to me on Sunday when I know what he is about. I also don’t have any respect for the trustee board whose responsibility it is to look out for the welfare of the members – they have failed miserably due to lack of leadership and a lack of moral courage. If they took their positions seriously, they would have found a way to minimize this terrible position that the church finds itself in. I even wrote each trustee a letter back in 2004 and asked them to standup and put a stop to the insanity; they chose to do nothing and in fact only one trustee bothered to come to me and say I know that you are right in what you have said. I don’t have to name him because he knows who he is. The glorious past for Mt. Hope Church is over and we need to step-up immediately to the task of trying to turn this church around under new and capable leadership! Like I said before, it’s too late for the membership to save Mt Hope Church; we need to bring our plight to the attention of the bishop and request serious financial assistance from the conference! The church is in financial quicksand and someone has to throw us a rope. I urge each one of you to question me on anything I have stated here because it is the truth and I can back it up.

Flash!!! The church needs a new roof for which the cost will probably exceed $100,000.00. Where will these funds come from with the present situation?

*** Integrity and moral courage is greatly lacking in Mt. Hope Church, let’s change that!

Sincerely,


Brother Glover Davis

Note: Sister Patricia Dale Gilman and Brother Larry Nathaniel Carter – for success in your ministry you only need take one lesson from the pastor: study and know the bible.
For Sister Norman, she has been in this fight for a long time and knows what it takes.

* By the way, if the church were to lose its tax-exempt status it would be required to pay income taxes on tithes, offerings and other funds raised and you will not be able to deduct your gifts as charitable contributions on your income tax returns!


Rev. Dr. Cynthia Willis Stewart
Presiding Elder, Westchester District
1129 Pembroke Street
Uniondale, N.Y. 11553

April 29, 2007

Re: Mt. Hope A.M.E. Zion Church current status.

Dear Presiding Elder Willis-Stewart:

God knows you don’t need anymore burdens but this situation is one that demands your and Bishop Battle’s attention immediately. It is extremely serious and Mt. Hope Church is at great risk in terms of its survival. I wrote you the attached letter in June of 2004 and asked that you talk to Bishop Walker and let him know of the dire situation at the church. I know it put you in a difficult situation and your hands were probably tied. This resulted in your inquiry of the church delegate, Mrs. Marie Baxter. Unfortunately Mrs. Baxter had no awareness of the poor financial situation and she was simply too close to Pastor Maddox to be objective in any way. Instead of her assuring you that none of what I said was true; she should have simply said she was not in a position to know! This is the problem with a lot of the churches, people speak on matters they know nothing about because they like the pastor and want to protect them. This is such an ill-conceived point of view and it ends up hurting the churches dearly.

There are four (4) extremely serious matters that must be addressed immediately and they will be one way or the other. This is not a threat but simply a statement of what will be done if they are not immediately addressed:

1) The pastor has a personal cell phone that the church is paying for each month. He obtained it without any authorization from the Trustee Board (which simply would not have given such authorization). The Internal Revenue Service rules are clear – a church is prohibited from paying for a pastor’s cell phone and the penalty is a loss of the church’s tax-exempt status plus penalties and fines on the Trustee Board members and the pastor. This practice must end immediately and the pastor must either reimburse the church for all of the payments since he got the phone in 1998/1999 or the church must issue him a 1099-MISC income form for the amount of all payments and he will have to file amended income tax returns for the IRS and New York State for all of his tax years since 1998!
2) Regarding the so-called “Mt Hope Rising Daycare” that was supposed to be a joint venture between Mt. Hope Church and Mrs. Herriot – the operator of the program; this to is clearly against the Internal Revenue Service code. The code states that there cannot be any use of a church’s facilities by a for-profit entity without the receipt of consistent monthly rental payments that are fair to the particular area and in line with other like facilities. Since the daycare area is approximately the same as the street-level retail area, the church had to receive approximately $3,000.00 to $3, 300.00 rental payments per month from its beginning in August 2001 through the present. It is a fact that Mt Hope Church has only received approximately $5,200.00 during the entire time. This is about $205,000.00 less that the church would have received if only $3,000.00 per month had been paid from July, 2001 throughout April, 2007 – totaling $210,000.00! The other issue that is just as important is the idea of this being a joint collaboration between the church and the operator (Mrs. Herriot). This is not permissible because the church is tax-exempt and she runs an entity that is for profit! At the last four quarterly conferences that I attended, I tried to pursue this farce of a program and people were so blinded by the rhetoric put forth by Brother William Brown, Pastor Maddox and even yourself that the discussion was shutdown each time. I knew it was bogus and no one else would speak up and help to have the situation resolved. Now this situation is in a heightened state of crisis since a child has been injured on the premises and the operation is being investigated. Additionally, the daycare has been closed down since the incident! Mount Hope Church is clearly in the line of fire on this one. To make matters worse, the Mt. Hope Church name is on the program and it has not been administered even one day by the church. To have been a Mt Hope Church program, the church would have had to run the program, collect all participation fees and pay the operator and her staff! Not only did this not happen but the church didn’t even receive any financial reports at the quarterly conferences; what a farce to have this perpetrated on the members of this church. This is clearly a lack of leadership on the part of the pastor and others! This must be stopped immediately and Mt. Hope Church’s name must be removed from the program. This will also cause Mt. Hope to lose its tax-exempt status with the IRS. The operator of the daycare, Pastor Maddox and Brother Brown should be forced to pay the fair rental fees for this period to Mt. Hope Church!!
3) Losing the tax-exempt status would mean that the church must pay taxes on it tithes, offerings and other program revenues to the IRS and NY State plus the members would no longer be able to deduct their gifts as charitable contributions!
This would be the final kiss of death for the church
4) The final item is the “Trustee Report” to the 4th quarterly conference that took
place on Monday April 16, 2007. This is an invalid report for the simple reason
reason that it was prepared by Pastor Maddox and another non-trustee member of
the church. I believe that the report is required to be prepared and reported on at
the quarterly conference by the Trustees, who are responsible for the upkeep of
the assets of the church (property) and for their fiduciary duties involving the
church’s finances. No other person or body can perform this function as long as
as there are any trustees on the board. If this premise is incorrect, please provide
me with the section of the discipline that makes this incorrect and I will gladly
retract this charge. Otherwise, I am demanding that the report be declared null and
void and it must be properly prepared and presented at another special quarterly
conference of the church. You in your position must require this to be stated and
done.
Finally, the report stated that there was in excess of $30,000.00 in the church’s treasury at on February 28, 2007. It is a fact that the annual men’s day celebration had not taken place until March 18, 2007 and additional funds would have been available. If this is so, why is there no money to pay the property taxes on the retail space, to pay for the Con Edison bills and why is the mortgage payment just barely able to be paid. There are numerous other bills that are past-due. The money is not there and someone must be made to account for how it has been spent. We must have an audit of the church’s books and records very soon! Please refer to my letter to the members of the church dated April 19, 2007 – a copy of which is being e-mailed to you in a second e-mail.

I demand that this information be brought to the bishop’s attention and that Pastor Maddox not be sent back to Mt. Hope Church as the church is no longer self-sustaining. I warned of this disaster in my June 2004 letter and for that I was suspended from the trustee board and I have no desire to ever serve again with the current board members.

I need a response from you and bishop Battle within the next two weeks advising what your actions will be. If a response is not received, I will bring the matters to the attention of the IRS and many other suspect activities will be revealed. If this is what you and bishop Battle want, that is what you will get. This situation has gone on much to long and Mt Hope members have paid a high cost. I am surprised that Bishop Battle has not visited Mt Hope Church since he has been put into his current charge. We need him to carry out his responsibility to our church.

Mt. Hope Church is a “Failed” church financially and the members cannot save it this time; the denomination must step in to help the church go forward. This is not a request, it is what is absolutely necessary at this time!!!

Sincerely,


Brother Glover Davis,Mt Hope Church member – but not currently attending due to the chaotic situation.