BASS RIVER - Members of the Community Credit Union in Bass River will know for certain by next Friday whether a proposal to keep the facility open is approved, CEO Darrell Kuhn says.
"Absolutely," he said when asked by the Truro Daily News about whether an ultimate decision on the fate of the village's only financial institution will be known following an annual general meeting planned for next Friday in Amherst.
The credit union is planning to close the Bass River branch at the end of September after management reported financial loses totalling more than $1 million during the past decade.
The board of directors has also said that there is not enough lending activity in Bass River to make it feasible to keep the branch open.
A committee of community members has been established, however, in an effort to try to convince the credit union otherwise and that the facility is needed in the community. The committee has provided a proposal to the board, which Kuhn said contains "significant activities" that could help keep the branch open and which will be discussed at next Friday's meeting.
Kuhn said on Wednesday afternoon that he had only received the proposal a few hours earlier and had not yet had an opportunity to go through it.
"Our hope is that after we assess that, if it is a viable option or not, what we hope is that we can sit down with the committee representatives to go over it and give them our views on this proposal," he said.
Committee chairwoman Valerie Meredith said she too is hoping the group can meet with Kuhn in advance of the meeting so they can get to the bottom of the problems surrounding the branch's financial details.
"We were very pleased to get the financial information we did get," she said, of recent correspondence. But the group still does not have all the answers it feels it needs, she said.
"It did raise a lot more questions and we have been trying to get those kind of sorted out so you can really analyze where the problem lies."
Kuhn said at the request of the Bass River members, PriceWaterhouseCoopers has reviewed and approved segregated financial statements for the branch and he said the committee now has all the information that is available.
"All of the information has been provided to the committee," he said. "They have everything."
hsullivan@trurodaily.com
