Board members of a local museum have resigned en masse.
Members of the Founders Museum, including Oliver-Paipoonge mayor Lucy Kloosterhuis, quit last week.
"We discovered that there's a possibility that the board might be financially or legally liable for some of the things that happened previous to us being on the board" she said. "To protect ourselves personally we all resigned."
Those things include $45,000 in unpaid bills as well as some missing artifacts.
Kloosterhuis said she couldn't comment on what happened in the past two years that would have put the museum in such trouble.
The recently resigned board along with more than 30 members are reviewing financial statements and taking an inventory at the museum in order to find out what happened.
"They're working everyday in the cold because we have hydro but we don't have the money for heat,"
Koosterhuis said of the volunteer efforts. "We're looking into all of these things before we go any further."
There's also a matter of whether the board, which represents Founders Museum Inc., or trustees for the late Fred Goodfellow actually own the museum. Lawyers are currently looking into that matter Kloosterhuis said.
Despite all of the setbacks the museum does plan on being open again in the spring.
"It's a treasure that we don't want to see disappear," Kloosterhuis said. "It would be just a disaster to see that."
