By Steve Smith
There are three email exchanges regarding ESOPs in my email history. ESOPs are programs that allow employees to own the company. The emails are from November of 2021. The Board was exploring the idea of the employees having an ownership stake in EWUA in order to assist with employee retention.
Those discussions were between all Board members and included Dan Burke. As you can see from the emails, in 2021, Joe Cohen took the initiative to call an ESOP specialist to see if the idea of employee membership was worth exploring. It was determined that EWUA was not large enough to justify the cost, and that made sense. The idea was not discussed again, and I was fine with that.
Three years later, Joe Cohen has fabricated a couple of quotes he attributes to me and gives a narrative that does not match his actions as shown in the emails. The purpose of Joe’s publication is to discourage the Members from voting to recall his friends who have been blocking access to the financial records of EWUA.
Joe Cohen was EWUA Treasurer when Dan Burke wrote checks to himself. It was under Joe’s watch that $286,000 of credit card charges were made. Joe participated in blocking Tenar Hall’s access to the financial records. Why would he do that? Why is Joe trying to distract you from the recall that, if successful, will open up the financial records?
In the following month, Joe Cohen nominated Steve Smith to the Board as member representative for Jim Nelson. See page two of December 2021 board minutes. If Cohen and Nelson found my participation so offensive, they would not have acted to not only keep me on the Board but also keep me as president.
There is one additional email that was in the mix; but, because it was between an attorney and Dan Burke and myself, it is subject to attorney-client privilege. The email was a referral from one attorney to another law firm who might be able to talk about an ESOP. Neither law firm had the expertise to answer any questions.