Fun with numbers at Fort Knox

Randall Poulton’s op-ed in last Thursday’s Bangor Daily News contained the type of creative accounting that would make any Enron executive jealous. Readers deserve better. Let me respond to each of his statistical claims:

“Fright at the Fort” -Poulton [interim treasurer of the Friends of Fort Knox] says the annual Fright event has “generated less than 7 percent” of total gross revenues “since its inception in 1999.” For the first three years the Fright charged no special admission and was a daytime event. It raised no money. I finally convinced the board to make it a nighttime event with a special admission charge. It took off and by 2004 it raised $47,000, or 23 percent of operational income for that year. As a result, the Friends of Fort Knox for the first time in its history put $20,000 in operational reserves. Sadly, the Fright was canceled this year, and the Friends’ board has killed the goose that would have continued laying golden eggs every October.

Compensation -Poulton suggests my compensation as executive director was $58,000, not $45,000. I pulled out my last paycheck and saw that it still showed an annual salary of $45,000. Where was the missing $13,000? I then realized that Poulton included in that number the cost of health insurance, the employer share of social security taxes, and a one-time $5,000 performance-based bonus paid for the work I had done in 2004 in securing the Friends’ financial future. I had actually declined a raise and requested a one-time bonus. I continued working seven days a week during the operational season, even after I suffered a heart attack in May of this year.

Friends’ income – Poulton bemoans that I had raised only “about $1.35 million” over six years and that, after expenses, “substantially less than $1 million” was left to fix the fort. The $1.35 million appears to be a reference to restoration project money, only. If Poulton included gift shop revenue, special event revenue, membership dues, and unrestricted contributions not dedicated to a specific project, the gross money raised over my six years at the helm is well over $2 million.

2004 revenue “decline” -Poulton compares 2004 revenue with 2000 revenue and says “this is a trend we need to reverse.” When a real accountant talks about trends, he doesn’t cherry pick his years. Fund raising in 2000 was focused on a capital campaign designed to transform the visitor center. No nonprofit runs a capital campaign every year, and all non-profits distinguish between capital and operational fund raising. Operational fund raising was so successful that the Friends gave me a $5,000 bonus, hardly a sign of “a trend we need to reverse.”

Visitor “drop-off” -Poulton claims that “not including the Fright, visitation during 2004 was down by more than 10,000 people as compared to 1998,” which year he claims to have been the all-time high for visitors with 56,254. This is like a merchant saying “not including the Christmas season we had a bad year for shoppers.” The Maine State Parks Public Use Report shows that in 2004, Fort Knox had 56,566 visitors. This was slightly higher than the 56,254 visitors in 1998, which Poulton claims to have been the Fort’s “best year.” Because of the great success of the Fright, the Fort had a record year in 2004, despite a statewide slump in tourism. In that same year Acadia National Park recorded a 15 percent drop off in visitors. Maine state parks experienced a 4.1 percent drop off in visitors. That same report shows that Fort Knox bucked the trend and had a 14.3 percent increase.

The Rosy Future – Poulton finally claims that, with $122,000 in cash on hand, the Friends can rest on their laurels and are in no financial danger. This is like saying “although we had a bad harvest, we can always eat the seed corn.” The board cancelled the Fright and the $50,000 to $75,000 it would have garnered. It has probably spent $5,000 to $10,000 in legal fees to delay a membership meeting that could have been held in September. It still owes approximately $12,000 for the long-delayed Battery A roof restoration project, that Poulton was overseeing. In reality, the Friends are within two months of eating into their emergency operations reserve accounts, unless the Friends intend to close the doors to the visitors’ center.

When one considers that the largest annual fund-raiser has been cancelled, that gift shop volunteers have resigned, and that this week members of the Friends have been turned away by a locked office door, one wonders whether Poulton and his allies on the board have cut off their noses to spite their faces. Such self-destructive behavior must end.

Leon Seymour was executive director of the Friends of Fort Knox from August 1999 through August 2005. He lives in Frankfort.