texasjq2

I have found that it is not easy to raise funds when you really need those funds to accomplish your goal. In September of 2019, I became the commander of American Legion Post 26, Uvalde TX. We, my officers and I, were sworn in by our District Commander, and then the membership of the Post was asked to vote on closing the Post, which did not pass. Then a motion was made and seconded, that we move the Post from its present location in Uvalde County, to Brackettville TX. This was a dying Post in Uvalde simply because there was not enough people (veterans) for 2 active Posts. Brackettville was outside of Fort Clark Springs, where there was a plethora of veterans, as well as the veteran population within Kinney County.

The vote was taken and it was passed unanimously, and there begins the saga of trying to raise funds to help with the move, and the sale of the property in Uvalde County. Firstly we had to change the location of the Post from Uvalde to Brackettville, that took a number of weeks. We first had to get a copy of the minutes from that September meeting, then send a copy of the resolution stating that we would move the post to Brackettville from Uvalde. It was actually easier to change the Bank account information over to the new officers, than it was to get that taken care of. We accomplished it with Department in October, but it took until December for National Headquarters to also change our address.

Then we began the work toward selling the existing property, we had to have a vote at a monthly meeting to sell the property that was accomplished. Then we had to send certified letters to all members of the Post to have them all return a vote card to us, which had to be notarized and signed. Now it is February and we have held that vote, with our District Commander present to insure the accuracy of the vote. Then send to Department with an assessment of the property and the hiring of a realtor to sell the property. One problem, well actually two problems, we had to wait on the assessment until March, and then send the paperwork to Department and wait for the executive committee to meet and approve the sale of the property. OOPS – Coronavirus, now no meetings could be held.

We asked if the Commander could give us permission as this was an emergency situation. The Commander could not come in to his office in Austin, due to the virus, and meanwhile, we ran out of money and had to pay $2000.00 to the firm that did the assessment on the property. So we had to submit paper to Paypal/GoFundMe to prove we are a 501c3 as well as a tax free entity in Texas our home state.

Well, we were OK with the IRS as our 990N’s were filed every year on time. Now comes the nightmare. We filed our 802 form with the Secretary of State’s office, and were rejected. The rejection was because we had to be reinstated with the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts because no one had filed the proper papers with them for a number of years and the Post had been involuntarily closed out. We then got all of that in order and on March 12th were able to climb that hurdle.

We then again filed our 802, with the letter from the Comptroller’s office showing we were again legal. We were again rejected, because we had not listed our Board of Directors, nor made a statement that our members were the management. Actually we had to state that Our Post has vested management in our members. We then resubmitted our 802 only to be rejected again, we had not changed the date to reflect that we were filing on the date that we were sending the documents. On 3-16-2020 we had our approval.

We are now a legal entity in the State of Texas once again. I would ask that you go to our website where we have a donation button and make donations in any amount as we work to finish this saga. For those of you who may not be up to date on your 802 filing with Texas Secretary of State, you might want to get right with them before you too will find yourselves in a nightmare.

Our website is http://www.americanlegionpost26.us

John C. Quigley II, Commander, American Legion Post 26, Brackettville TX PO Box 344, 78832

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