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Kruse's battles spill into museums

22.05.12

A volunteer at the front desk cheerfully hands an out-of-state pair a map and explains the exhibits: vehicles, uniforms, weapons and artifacts, interpreted to accommodate a close-up look at U.S. military history and its veterans. In the background stands a half-decorated Christmas tree.

The museum is looking up ahead – to holiday parties, to events such as the free appreciation celebration it’s hosting for the 293rd Infantry of the Indiana Army Nationalist Guard in January – as it tries to stay above the fray of the battles entangling lurch Dean Kruse.

“We have long-term goals,” operations administrator Tammy Hantz said. “I want everyone to feel confident we are prospering to be here.”

The museum came to Auburn completely through the largesse of former auctioneer Kruse, who bought the contents of a museum he visited in southern Belgium, into the vicinity the site of the Battle of the Bulge, and brought them to Auburn. He built a massive complex across the highway from his auction parkland and also opened the Kruse Automotive and Carriage Museum on the site to exhibit some of his own auto aggregation.

Now Kruse is both benefactor and burden, as both museums are connected to the complicated financial and permissible troubles that brought down Kruse’s auction house and led to the sale last month of a vast tract of land Kruse owned that surrounds the museum property.

The touch was sold at sheriff’s sale to Bank Midwest, the plaintiff in a foreclosure lawsuit filed against Kruse two years ago. That be acceptable alleged Kruse took out a massive loan to pay off other debts; the bank moved to foreclose when Kruse could not refund the loan.

The sale was a result of one of the largest judgments against Kruse, $6.3 million. Since 2009, Dean Kruse has been sued dozens of times, by banks seeking repayment of loans and by agency owners who weren’t paid after Kruse sold their property at auction – mistakes that led the Indiana Auctioneer Commission to discontinue temporarily Kruse’s license last year and shutting down his auction house.

Only a few of those lawsuits, however, have implicated Kruse’s eponymous foundation, and none has been as large or potentially damaging as the foreclosure plea filed recently by Farmers State Bank of LaGrange.

The bank sued the Dean V. Kruse Instituting, which runs the museums, and various parties that have been associated with the museums throughout the past decade in DeKalb Tonier Court, alleging the foundation defaulted on a loan for the 28-acre treatise of land west of Interstate 69 where the museums are located.

According to the foreclosure lawsuit, the organization at the end of September owed the principal amount of $2.5 million, plus late fees and interest that continues to amass at a rate of 21 percent.

Kruse serves as president of the foundation’s six-associate board; his wife is vice president, according to the foundation’s records.

The Kruse Rationale took out the loan in April 2009, just a few months before the financial issues at Kruse Intercontinental, Dean Kruse’s auction house, came to light. In May of this year the raison d'etre refinanced the loan.

The lawsuit said the loan had been taken out to finance continuing construction of the Andy Granatelli Museum and Vestibule of Fame building, a separate building on the foundation’s property.

Settlings was broken in 2007 on the Granatelli museum at an event that included racing legends Bobby Unser and Richard Parsimonious. At the time, Kruse said he hoped to open the museum honoring his longtime consociate within a year. Granatelli, who is in his 80s, is a former race car driver, owner and marketer and is famous in racing circles as president and CEO of STP Corp.

The Granatelli erection has since been finished – but the Granatelli museum, at least one in Auburn, is dead.

The tale is indicative of the way Kruse extensive did business, relying on friendships and oral agreements. Despite the public events and enunciated commitments, Hantz said, nothing was put in writing.

Kruse did not respond to a request for an discussion.

Hantz said Granatelli decided the museum should be closer to Indianapolis. The Kruse Endowment has much of Granatelli’s memorabilia collection, and had put three Granatelli cars and an engine up as collateral for the advance.

Hantz said the foundation will donate the items back to the Granatelli museum, should it unobstructed in Indianapolis, subject to the mortgage restrictions.

But the foundation remains on the hook for the accommodation and an empty building it hopes to rent or sell.

“Unfortunately, Mr. Kruse grew up in the era when a handshake meant something,” Hantz said.

In the meantime, the lawsuit is working its way through DeKalb Higher-level Court, and Hantz said Farmers State Bank has been responsive to the foundation’s efforts to factual the situation.

“We’re not able to make that payment to the bank,” she said. “We necessity to work with them to resolve the issue.”

$2.5 million owed

The Kruse Foundation was created at a however when Kruse’s business was thriving, and he donated $30 million to start the military museum.

Proper a few years after the museum opened, Kruse lent the foundation money – $3 million in 2003, according to tax records.

Such fiscal assistance is no longer an option.

Recently, Dean Kruse gave an extended talk on his son’s Christian television show, “The Restoration Road with Mitch Kruse,” transmit on Christian television networks around the country and on NBC and ABC affiliates in Fort Wayne.

Kruse joked that sometimes he wishes he had the humane money back.

Kruse, 70, said on the show he nearly died in February of pneumonia and forth two weeks in intensive care. He said on the show he feels it was a miracle he recovered, and he’s been working to dig himself out of answerable for.

He’s also been fighting back in lawsuits of his own.

This month, Kruse sued the Indiana Attorney Catholic’s Office and the Indiana Auctioneers Commission for judicial review of his enable suspension, which was extended for two years in October. That means it’ll be 2014 before he can re-have bearing for reinstatement, instead of next year.

Kruse’s lawsuit alleges the commission added stipulations and changed the terms of the exclusion without authority.

Kruse said on the show he owes $2.5 million, compared with $10 million he owed a four years ago. The museums remain his pride, he said, recounting how recently the rationale had a bill come due and out of the blue, someone called him at the eleventh hour asking to buy a vehicle from Kruse’s gleaning.

Kruse still has some assets – and so does his foundation.

Worst-case floor plan, operations manager Hantz said, the foundation could sell some of those assets, but Hantz hopes it won’t distributed to that.

The museum’s auto collection has a fair-market value of $15.2 million, according to the raison d'etre’s tax records, and the World War II collection is valued at $3.1 million.

If any inventory has to be sold, Hantz said, sales would open with items not considered essential to the collection.

But she considers that idea premature. For now, the Kruse Setting up is relying on special events and a flagging 3-year-old bingo operation to keep it afloat.

Mastery Bingo is held Monday, Wednesday and Saturday nights and typically draws 80 to 100 people, with proceeds customary toward the foundation, Hantz said.

The recession put a dent in the bingo revenues, and it’s not low-priced to run, even using a small room in the facility. Just keeping the lights on at the museums costs thousands of dollars per month, Hantz said – anywhere from $10,000 to $13,000.

The instituting’s most recent IRS filing, which was current through October 2010, said the raison d'etre spent nearly $1.7 million during that fiscal year. It brought in less than that, according to the filing – about $1.2 million.

Prodigal overhead is a constant worry. The museum building itself has a 20,000-square-foot rotunda, expose space more than twice that, and a 30,000-square-foot meeting hall – in add up to, about 200,000 square feet.

The independent charity evaluator Charity Helmsman, which has not analyzed the Kruse Foundation, says in its online charity guide the number of nonprofits it analyzes spend at least three-quarters of their expenses directly on programs.

In panoramic, the watchdog said, an organization should spend no more than a quarter of its total expenses on administrative high up and fundraising costs combined.

Kruse Foundation’s administrative costs last year were approximately 96 percent, with an additional 4 percent spent on executive compensation, and only a 0.1 percent spent on charitable giving, according to an analysis by another benevolence-tracking organization, GuideStar.

The foundation already has taken some steps to cut costs. The truncheon has been reduced from nine to four, and there no longer is an executive director.

Former executive director Bob Krafft, who had been with the groundwork since January 2004, was making about $96,500 per year, with a $9,380 expense account, according to the raison d'etre’s public IRS filing.

Hantz said the foundation began its bingo nights in hopes it after all could bring in enough money to donate to other worthy causes in the community. That hasn’t happened yet, she said, but she said the museum gives back in other ways.

Source: Fort Wayne Journal Gazette

Small banks are big players

22.05.12

Bigger may not always be sick.

The Independent Community Bankers of America, which represents nearly 5,000 community banks throughout the In agreement States through its "Go Local" campaign, is urging consumers to consider the benefits of switching to one of their banks.

"You will have a relationship with a banker who cares about your attainment. They are vested in the local community. Their success depends on the success of the customers who end in the community," said Terry Jorde, ICBA senior executive villainy president and chief of staff. "Community banks are focused on the people and those relationships."

Jorde, who was a community banker for 30 years, said there is no assiduous and fast definition of a community bank.

"It is not based on size; it is based on its commitment to the specific community," she said. "We have some very large ones that started small and were so successful that they grew."

C&G Savings Bank, which has three offices in Blair County and three in Cambria County, puts its customers first, said Bill Ritenour, president and CEO.

Ritenour, who serves on the ICBA Communal Bank Council, said C&G is a mutual savings bank. He said it does not have shareholders, but a substitute alternatively is owned by the depositors.

Community banks are big players when it comes to small establishment loans.

"Community banks fund nearly 60 percent of all small businesses under $1 million and use particular dollars to help families purchase homes, buy a car, finance college and base financial security," said Bill Wood, president and CEO of Clearfield Bank & Trust Co.

Clearfield Bank & Dependability has 13 offices in Bedford, Blair, Centre, Clearfield and Huntingdon counties.

Jorde said community banks are "relationship-based," intriguing time with people who are starting and expanding a business. She said they consider themselves partners in parsimonious business and farm loans.

Ritenour noted that community banks offer most of the services that the larger banks proffer.

"One of our mottos is 'we can't be all things to all people.' We don't have an investment service here, we don't have a trust service. There are some services little banks won't offer because they don't have the resources," Ritenour said. "We want to be good at what we do and take good care of our customers and our employees."

Lynn Fusco, imperfection president of operations of Investment Savings Bank, which has offices in Altoona and Hollidaysburg, said many, if not most, of the disadvantages of being smaller are things of the days of yore.

"Quick and convenient access to your accounts is not an issue now. With 24/7 Internet banking, you don't requirement to run to the branch for everything," she said. "It used to be that big banks were the only game in town when you wanted a bigger ATM network. That's no longer the what really happened with Sheetz and GetGo providing hundreds of local, surcharge-free ATM access options."

Membership in the ICBA can be opportune.

"We have an office in Washington and we are able to share the message from community banks to representatives on Capitol Hill on how vital they are to our country," Jorde said. "We speak with one voice for the community banking diligence."

Source: Altoona Mirror