My comments at the Republican Women of Incline Village and Crystal Bay Lunch October 8, 2024.

Good afternoon I am Harry Swenson, and I would like to thank the Republic Women of Incline Village and Crystal Bay for inviting me to discuss my candidacy.

 Since most of you have heard me talk previously, today I will just briefly discuss my background and rationale for running. Then compare my views with my triad competitors we learned at the Candidates Forum on September 30th.

 I have lived in Incline full time for the last 10 years and have been coming to this area since the late 1960s. My bride of 42 years, Mary Jane, and I have been very active in our community since we first arrived and have made more friends in our first year than the 35 years we lived and worked in the Bay Area. We have two fantastic children who are making a life of their own, our son William is a master electrician in the Bay Area and he and his wife Maria recently purchased a home in San Jose, our daughter Stephanie is a pediatric nurse practitioner and she is the director of nursing at her current company and lives in the San Francisco Marina. We are extremely proud of them.

 I am a graduate of Cal Poly in aeronautical engineering, I joined NASA in 1982 and developed advanced technologies, NASA gave me a fellowship to Stanford University where I received a graduate degree in Aerospace Engineering. I retired from NASA with 32 years, I developed and ran highly successful multi-million-dollar projects providing me with extensive skills in management and finance. I was awarded 3 NASA medals for my leadership and technical acumen. I decided to run for Trustee because I got tired of complaining how IVGID has been so poorly managed and allowed its finances to become a disaster.

 In my time left I want to compare some my positions with those candidates that are running as some sort of Bizarre Chicago Style Slate. Though, as they said in the Candidates Forum last week, they really don’t know about the PAC that is supporting them. I find it very strange that a PAC which is spending thousands and thousands of dollars on Signs and sponsorship of many meet and greets, and they know nothing about it but are happy to have the PAC’s support. You have to ask yourselves what’s the PAC’s real motivation, if it was me, I would want to know a lot about them before I would allow them to support me at their current financial level. I have been running a self-funded campaign, no PAC or STRs supporting me, though recently when I started meet and greets some of my new friends have donated to my campaign.

 You also heard last week that two of the candidates, one an existing trustee and one that was briefly on the IVGID audit committee were against the Forensic Audit because it was a waste of time and money and showed nothing that we didn’t already know. I beg to differ; I have been well informed on IVGID and had no idea that we have 44 observations of risks of fraud with 16 considered high risks. Of our full-time employees almost two thirds have an IVGID credit card that can be used without prior approval, justification, or post usage accounting. Our books are months if not years out of date. We have individuals that represent both sides of major IVGID financial transactions. Wow, I knew our finances were in poor shape, but if these facts were known from previous audits, and if I was on the audit committee, I would be yelling it from the rooftops and if I was a trustee, I would have stopped these egregious practices.

 You heard from another member of the three, that the reason the new accounting system isn’t in place is due to lack of staff. This is false, in 2020 the previous GM, Winquist and then Finance Director DeFasio recommended the purchase of the financial automation software without a contract for implementation. During public comment many folks questioned the wisdom of this decision, and when trustees questioned Winquist and DeFasio about this decision, they indicated that they had it handled. Now here we are some years later with a staffed finance department still not using the system fully. I believe the current interim GM is recommending the purchase of an implementation contract at the next board meeting, a full two years since the accounting software arrived.

 What I learned in my highly successful NASA career is that oversight and responding to problems early when they are small is critical to success. It will be a disaster if you put your head in the sand and don’t address problems when they are small, because they will fester and eventually blow up.

 Thank you for your time and I hope that you found another reason today to hire me as your trustee.  Please feel free to pick up a sign and my brochure that describes more about my campaign more fully.

 Please Vote Harry Swenson for IVGID Trustee