Wasilla chamber moves in the right direction

Amid some recent internal turmoil, the Greater Wasilla Chamber of Commerce has taken the first steps to making it a viable community asset again.

While some are still calling for Quentin Algood to step down, there is an essentially new board of directors in charge and seemingly those individuals know what can happen if one individual is given too much rein without oversight. So problems can be corrected immediately and not left to fester in the darkness of no oversight.

The election of Chris Abernathy, who told the crowd Tuesday he had just moved here, seems an unlikely choice. On the other hand, maybe is the right choice, given he hasn’t been here long enough to have been tainted by influence.

All in all, the action taken this week shows the chamber members are ready to move forward while awaiting an independent audit of the books to see if there has been wrongdoing recently, or in the past.

Obviously, the sooner that audit is completed, the better for the whole.

If individuals suffer, then so be it. The chamber should never come under fire for the misdeeds of one or two people.

Suspending executive director Cheryl Metiva until the audit is complete was the right move.

She comes under scrutiny because former misunderstandings regarding chamber credit card purchases indicates she did not understand the card was not for personal use — which seems unlikely — or she deliberately hoped those purchases wouldn’t come up under examination of the books.

In response, via a press release, Metiva said those issues have been cleared up. Which, reading between the lines, probably means she reimbursed the chamber for the purchases and her wrist was slapped. She should have been fired.

In the press release, she intimates, those charges are all that have occurred.

Perhaps that is true. However, if there are questionable purchases, such as travel to events, then those expense accounts should be carefully checked. She has now put herself in a position of not being trusted.

At the Tuesday meeting, she read her brief press release and then abruptly left.

For a lot of people, her fall from grace has been disturbing because she has been a friend, or acquaintance, to many in the Valley and those folks feel like they’ve been used to some degree or another by a gland-hander.

All this should also be a lesson for the chamber when it hires someone to run the show in the future. Perhaps hiring someone locally who has a track record of honesty and integrity would be better than to hire an unknown who, “blew us away,” as was reported during the hiring of Metiva.