Resigned board members are questioning finances at the Virginia Museum of Transportation, and are calling for an audit to clear any smoke from the old train station in Roanoke.

Meanwhile, executives at the museum on Norfolk Avenue say there is no substance to the former board members’ claims, and the derailment is merely a matter of personal disagreement.

Six people on the 17-member museum board of directors resigned during the annual meeting in June. For executive vice president and museum board spokesperson Tom Cox, it was an unexpected turn of events.

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“In my eyes, you need to have an audit,” Miller said. “It really needs to be undertaken by an outside party.”

Cox said the museum is either audited or reviewed by Anderson & Reed accountants on an annual basis, although it’s been a few years since the last audit.

“Generally we alternate… just because of the expense involved, and the time,” Cox said. “The review, it’s a whole lot more than a cursory examination… The review, as I see it, it stands for itself.”

He said the board at its next meeting will decide whether to conduct a review or a full audit for the fiscal year that ended June 30.

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Between the six board members’ resignations – read aloud during the annual meeting in June – and hundreds of pages worth of meeting and financial documents provided by the museum to The Roanoke Times on Friday, a lot has come forth in the past week.

“There are discrepancies between the financials provided to the media and the financials obtained by the board,” Miller said. “They may not be major discrepancies, but there are discrepancies.”

Miller showed places where financial numbers allegedly differed, such as with a large order of merchandise placed ahead of the Norfolk & Western J Class 611 steam engine excursions that happened in Goshen last fall. The museum owns the engine and organized the event on the property of its departed president, Will Harris.

Among the 611 merchandise, museum staff ordered roughly 6,000 hats themed to the beloved steam engine, but sold fewer than 1,000 hats during the excursions, according to documents. Miller showed documents where the museum’s cost to purchase each hat varied by almost $6 per piece, depending on which document.

But Cox denies any issue, and says all the numbers add up. The financial situation for nonprofits is a lot more complicated than what shows on a few forms, Cox said.

Here’s a different opinion on this story.

I’ve been a board chair three times in my volunteer life.

If I am president of a non profit board, joined by five of my colleagues with concerns listed here, I’d be holding an executive session with the board and the staff and taking steps to correct the underlying issues.

Wesley