As a former Tulare Cemetery District Board member and as a mother whose son is buried in the Tulare Cemetery I would like to say a few things about the current Tulare Cemetery District Board and management.
At the end of the last two months that we had financial reports, the cemetery was in the red by $204,162.24 according to the Tulare County Auditor Controller’s website – yet the cemetery’s financial reports presented by the Tulare Cemetery Manager Clara Bernardo, showed the loss to be about half that amount.
After 3 months, or the first quarter, the cemetery has a loss of over $213,000.
Besides appearing that someone is “cooking the books” the cemetery finances have never been so dire.
To think that Andy Hinojosa, to whom the cemetery pays $150 an hour to help with their book keeping, participated in this financial reporting is atrocious and unethical.
With that much discrepancy between the Tulare County Auditor Controller’s report and the cemetery’s financial report, he should have been on hand to the board or at the audit meetings to report why this is the case.
A CPA firm should provide oversight.
It is interesting to note that Tulare Cemetery’s last accounting firm, M. Green and Company, quit without saying why. The reason given to the public was that there was a “conflict.”
I spoke during Public Comments at the September 30 regular meeting and told the Board that they needed to Be Better, but in order to do that, they needed to Do Better. And not just on the finances.
I told the board they were ignoring the District’s Bylaws, the Health and Safety Codes, and the Government Codes. I said they needed to work together- that they had a fiduciary responsibility to do so, and not act like children.
I reminded the board of the considerable harm they had caused when Presant had trespassed on my property, peered into my windows and turned the water faucet – and announced it all publicly during a general meeing. He then proceeded to make a motion during the August 8, 2020 meeting to remove me from the Board for not living in the District. The motion could not get a majority so it failed.
Mr. Presant has also lead the effort, and wasted cemetery resources, to censure Board Member Alberto Aguilar three times.
Trustee Xavier Avila has caused the same, if not more pain and suffering, to clients of the cemetery, cemetery volunteers, or just anyone who disagrees with him. The result has been his being blocked from multiple personal facebook accounts and blocked from several media outlets. Everyone knows that Avila is a narcissist and has followed his own agenda since his appointment, spreading lies and untruths about me and a host of others, going as far as to threaten to sue an active community member as she tended to her dying mother.
I believe he has used Presant as his puppet to do his bidding, but that the final defamation had occurred when he went on the Hopper podcast and mentioned me 5 times, stating I had illegally served. He defamed 4 other upstanding citizens as well.
My final comment when I spoke at the September 30 meeting was to remind everyone how Presant accused Alberto that he staged a desecrated gravesite then accused Alberto of fabricating a customer’s complaint. Presant’s actions were upsetting and a slap in the face to the Fernandez family who had lodged the complaint and had their own photos to back up their claim. The gravesite in question was of Mrs. Fernandes’ father that the cemetery treated with extreme disrespect and caused the Fernandez family great distress.
Ms. Fernandez intended to be at the September meeting but had a family emergency. She still intends to continue to seek compensation for how disrespectfully the Tulare Cemetery treated her family and her father’s grave.
She thought her first order of business might be confront Xavier on his distasteful response to their concerns.
I suggested she get in line.