CRESTONE— Amidst questions surrounding unaccounted for finances, which have remained unanswered since 2014, the most recent Baca Grande Property Owners Association (BGPOA) general manager, Ayla Hoevers, resigned last week.
No official resignation notice regarding Hoevers or employment notice for a new director has been posted to the BGPOA official website as of press time. BGPOA board members, however, are reportedly interviewing replacements for Hoevers.
The resignation is one of several tendered over the past few months by BGPOA administration employees. Two office personnel members and a member of the Environmental Architectural Committee also have resigned. This week, following Hoevers’ departure, her partner and BGPOA fire chief, Tad Crawford, turned in his resignation.  
There are, reportedly, organizational problems left unresolved within both the BGPOA fire department and the ambulance service.
Hoevers’ performance has been questioned by BGPOA members since her first arrest in October 2017 as a fugitive of justice. The online law library defines a fugitive of justice as “Any person who has fled from any state to avoid prosecution for a crime or to avoid giving testimony in any criminal proceeding. 18 U.S.C… [or] One who, having committed a crime within a jurisdiction, goes into another in order to evade the law and avoid its punishment.”
In 2017, Hoevers was cited for driving under restraint, while her license had either been suspended or revoked. This is usually an offense for which an arrest is made. In April of 2018, she was arrested again on a warrant out of Alamosa County for failure to appear.  The warrant was later dismissed by Judge Anna Ulrich.
At a meeting in February, Hoevers confirmed that as far back as 2016, there were BGPOA funds which remain unaccounted for. Some believe that Hoevers left her position because the board was considering investigating the disappearance of the funds. According to unconfirmed reports, a civil lawsuit may now be pending.

Background
In the summer of 2014, a Financial/Audit Committee was appointed to make recommendations concerning financial irregularities in Baca Grande Property Owner’s Association (BGPOA) accounts, to pinpoint what appeared to be financial discrepancies.
The committee consisted of board president Bob Garnett, Lisa Cyriacks and board member Janie Thomas. The board’s appointed auditors, Fleming and Associates, LLC, recommended in April 2014 that the board conduct a fraud risk analysis prior to their final audit to examine the association’s internal controls, something most auditors today evaluate as part of their services to communities.
The board subsequently engaged Del Norte auditor Dennis Crown, certified fraud examiner, to conduct the investigation. But the committee ran into difficulties implementing the plan suggested by Fleming and Assoc. when the current management company for the POA, Hammersmith Management Inc. (HMI), failed to provide access to necessary POA information.
To further complicate matters, HMI community manager Kristin Ecklund later left the POA as its community manager. Prior to her departure, Ecklund sent an email to Crown and Cyriacks detailing a discussion with attorney Erich Schweisow about the feasibility of destroying certain “outdated” records in order to prevent them from being obtained by outside agencies. She recommended getting back to Schweisow concerning this.
For a short time, Ecklund also served as the town clerk for Moffat. During her tenure, questions were raised by Moffat property owners Bob and Virgil Tafoya regarding the town’s finances. Ecklund received requests for budget information from the Tafoya’s, who later reported the budget information she supplied was incomplete. Ecklund currently works for the town of Moffat as a consultant.
In a letter written to the board in 2018, BGPOA member Lisa Cyriacks detailed the “bad dept’ reported by the BGPOA over the years as follows:
• 2016 Budget – bad debt estimated at $284,742 (reduced by $255,000 by auditors)
• 2017 Budget – bad debt estimated at $390,835
• 2018 Budget – bad debt estimated at $360,928
On Jan. 1, 2017, Cyriacks also noted, the beginning reserve fund balance stood at $1,023,471. Then on Oct. 20, 2017, the membership voted overwhelmingly for any surplus funds to be transferred to Reserves.  In her 2018 letter, Cyriacks chastised the board for not honoring that membership vote, commenting, “this explains why an increasing number of members believe that the Board is not acting in good faith. These funds need to be accounted for. State law and the IRS provide guidance for how that should be done.
“In the interest of transparency, the members are owed a truthful accounting of what is being done with our money. Transparency would be having this discussion in a public meeting, announcing any changes and the justification for why.”