WASILLA — The executive director of Matanuska-Susitna Community Transit resigned Wednesday in yet another transition for the financially embattled non-profit van service.

Louis H. Friend III tendered his immediate resignation at the November board of directors meeting, claiming MASCOT needed a different skill set to “get them through the these tough times,” board president Charles Parker said.

Friend could not be reached for comment. What Parker is referring to is the huge operating budget deficit that caused MASCOT to cut routes and half its workforce in September. Questions remained, however, as the drivers joined the Teamsters less than a month before, and eight of the nine employees fired were union card holders.

Now, the Teamsters have filed a grievance with the National Labor Relations Board because “they did not give us ample notification or an opportunity to negotiate the terms and conditions of their labor contract,” union organizer Derick Musto said.

At the time, Friend and the MASCOT board claimed the firings were a result of $400,000 in cuts the group had to make to its operating budget because of a lack of grant funding.

At the board meeting Wednesday, Parker said the group was dealing with these issues when “(Friend) said it would be in MASCOT’s best interest to resign.”

Parker said the board has been in the process of reviewing the management structure of MASCOT even before Friend’s announcement. It has been determined the organization needs a stronger accounting staff, he said.

“The board was having internal discussions. What skills do we have? What skills do we need?” Parker said. “That’s when he volunteered to step down. No motion was ever made to ask him to step down or remove him.”

The yearly financial audit required of MASCOT as a recipient of federal funds is coming up next month, Parker said.

“By resigning now, we will have new management in place for that,” Parker said.

Based on the past audits, Parker said he has never seen money that he could label “misspent.” However, Parker said there were some decisions made that were perhaps not the best given the financial situation the group was in.

“These are the questions we were in the process of asking,” Parker said. “If there were questionable decisions in the past year, we will find them in the audit. Hopefully, we can learn from that.”

Additionally, the Mat-Su Borough is giving MASCOT money to access existing federal funds that require matching contributions. As a stipulation, the group has to undergo an internal management audit, Parker said.

“It’s hard to speculate how (Friend) viewed this,” Parker said. However, he said, “We think this is a great opportunity for something we were looking at anyway.”

Parker said the group has responded to the labor complaint and feels positive that will be resolved soon. The board has never been hostile to unions, he said, and just finished contract negotiations with the Local 302 operating engineers. Besides, he said, the union employees could not have been targeted because the management did not know who had unionized and who had not.

With an interim executive director, Parker said bus service should continue without any problems. He is actually hopeful the routes will expand with the new money from the borough.

The interim director, LaMarr Anderson, worked for MASCOT before he left earlier this year because of “circumstances I thought weren’t going to change.” He would not say specifically if these related to Friend’s management.

“We just want look forward. We are confident. We have really good people and really good drivers.” Anderson said. “There’s a need for us in the Valley, and with the board helping to continue to work the funding, I think we will continue to gain ground.”

Contact Todd L. Disher at todd.disher@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.