Who Was Eating, Drinking, and Golfing on Big Canoe’s Tab?

By David Hopkins | BigCanoe.news | April 10, 2026

Big Canoe members may have just uncovered one of the most revealing clues yet about how money disappears inside the POA — and it starts with a single account name that no one ever asked about publicly until now: Food & Beverage Comp (0090030).

That is not a real lot. It is not a member account. It is a nonstandard internal account sitting inside what is otherwise a lot-number-style account structure — mixed right in among entries that are supposed to represent real property owners. And it is called Food & Beverage Comp.

Every property owner in this community should stop and read that again.

A Structure That Raises Immediate Questions

Normal Big Canoe lot numbers follow a recognizable pattern. Real lots look like real lots. But mixed into that structure are entries that plainly do not represent actual property-owner lots at all. Food & Beverage Comp (0090030) is one of them. Others include Golf Department (0090015), Golf Maintenance Dept (0090028), and Golf Merchandise (0090020) — nonstandard internal-style accounts sitting inside a system that otherwise appears tied to owner accounts.

The existence of these accounts is not rumor. It comes directly from BCPOA’s own account structure. And the moment you see the label “Food & Beverage Comp,” the question writes itself: what exactly has been flowing through that account, and who authorized it?

The F&B Losses Were Already Known — Now They Look Worse

BCPOA’s audited financial statements have already shown repeated Food and Beverage losses over multiple years. The monthly financials have also reflected continuing losses tied to Clubhouse and Amenity Management. Members have been told, year after year, that the restaurant operation loses money. That alone is a problem worth demanding answers about. But the discovery of a specific account labeled Food & Beverage Comp changes the nature of the question entirely.

It is no longer just: why does the Clubhouse lose money?

It is now: how much of that loss was real business weakness — and how much of it was the result of complimentary charges, insider freebies, loose write-offs, or expenses getting buried where ordinary members would never see them?

What Sources Are Saying

My reporting has only deepened those concerns. Sources familiar with POA operations have described the historical use of this account area as loose, poorly controlled, and susceptible to abuse. I have been told that complimentary activity was not always tracked with any real discipline — that servers did not always keep up with it, and that people who knew how the system worked understood how to reference it. Sources also described Food & Beverage more broadly as functioning, at times, as a dumping ground for miscellaneous expenses that did not receive clean public visibility.

These are source-based reports. They are not yet final, documented conclusions. But they are serious, they are consistent, and they are more than sufficient to justify what should have happened years ago: a formal demand for the accounting records behind these accounts.

The Demand Has Been Filed

That demand has now been sent. On April 9, 2026, I submitted a formal statutory accounting records demand to BCPOA pursuant to O.C.G.A. §§ 14-3-1601 through 1604 and 14-3-1620 — Georgia’s nonprofit inspection statutes — seeking production of detailed accounting records tied to Food & Beverage Comp (0090030), related Clubhouse and Amenity Management accounts, Golf Department (0090015), Golf Maintenance Dept (0090028), and related golf cost centers. The demand seeks general ledger detail, monthly trial balances, journal entries, payroll allocation schedules, vendor-payables records, interdepartment allocation schedules, and reconciliation records — the full set of records that would allow a member to evaluate what has actually been flowing through these accounts.

Account Demand Letter Link -> (6Pg Pdf; <1mb)

The Board, management, and finance staff have all been formally placed on notice. BCPOA has five business days to confirm the date and manner of production, with full production requested by April 20, 2026.

What the Response Will Tell Us

Here is the straightforward reality: if these accounts were clean, controlled, and properly documented, BCPOA should have no difficulty producing the records quickly. Legitimate, well-managed accounts come with supporting documentation. That is the whole point of maintaining accounting records.

If the response is delay, deflection, a narrowing game, or silence — members should draw the obvious conclusion. Because at this point, the Board knows what has been asked, they know exactly which accounts are under scrutiny, and they know the public is watching. Any evasion from this point forward is a choice, and it will speak for itself.

Why This Hits Every Member — Not Just Clubhouse Regulars

This is not a story about who ordered a sandwich. This is not a complaint from someone who had a bad dining experience. This goes directly to whether BCPOA has been operating with clean internal controls, honest financial treatment, and equal accountability to the people who fund this place.

If a special class of people could eat, drink, comp, discount, or route charges through shadow accounts while the rest of the community paid assessments and absorbed the reported losses — that is not bad optics. That is a betrayal of trust. It is a governance failure. And it is exactly the kind of thing that inspection rights under Georgia law exist to expose.

The losses in Food & Beverage and across the Clubhouse did not occur in a vacuum. They have real costs, borne by real property owners. Those owners are entitled to know whether those losses were purely operational — or whether some portion of that bleed was the product of a culture of comps, weak controls, and selective privilege operating beneath the surface of what was ever reported to the membership.

The question is now public, it is specific, and it is not going away.

Who was eating, drinking, and golfing on Big Canoe’s tab — and how long have members been paying for it?

David Hopkins is a property owner at Big Canoe and editor of BigCanoe.news. He can be reached at themtnsvoice@aol.com.