Legal Tangles: The Disappearing Roof

Reflections by Brother Luke

            There is an old proverb: “What you don’t know can’t [or won’t] hurt you.” One intention behind this statement is that by concealing something from someone you are protecting that person from being hurt by it. Another implication is that somehow ignorance protects us from harm. By bitter experience, many people have discovered that things don’t always turn out that way.

            The deterioration of the Transfiguration Temple roof reached a point in 2004 where we had to make a critical decision. If we did not at least fix the roof, leaks damaging the interior would begin to undermine the integrity of the building. So a crossroads was reached: if we wanted to keep the monks’ original worship temple, we had to replace the roof. Obviously, much more work remained to be done to restore the space, but that could be put off until we could raise the funds for the larger project. The new roof would give us time.

The brothers discussed this and agreed to invest in a new roof. Of course, to get to that decision the conversation ranged across a wide variety of related topics: should money be put into that church, which was not used all that often, rather than using the funds to repair the other monastery roofs; if we are fixing up the church, some brothers wanted to move the library into it, while others thought the gift shop should go there, and some quite frankly thought it would be best to simply tear the old temple down. Repair the roof and keep our options open for the future was what won the day. But then we had to find a competent and reliable roofer. From my days on the Board of Trustees at St. Nicholas Cathedral in Washington, DC, I remembered that finding a good roofer was not so easy. 

Brother Marc took up the task to find a roofer. He found one with the necessary credentials, and we negotiated the price. During those discussions the roofer asked if we also planned to replace the roof on the Holy Wisdom Temple.  We knew that it also needed to be replaced and to get the best price for both we could wrap the two projects together. Even better, we were able to delay the Holy Wisdom project by a year, which made the whole project more manageable financially for us.

So in the summer of 2004, the roofing crew came and installed the new roof.  We made a switch from wood shingles to an asphalt material to control costs and enhance its durability. The crew members were hard workers, and the job was completed very efficiently. We were once again able to have services in that church without water dripping on our heads, although the rodents were still playing in the ceiling!

In May 2005 we decided to go ahead with the second phase of the roofing project: the Holy Wisdom Temple roof. So we contacted the roofer and set a date for the project to begin. We made a good-faith down payment of half the cost. However, the date was missed. We re-scheduled; again it was missed. Finally a date was agreed to, and when the day arrived, so did the delivery truck with the roofing materials.  Our roofer was also there, and he wrote out a check for the shingles. The driver called his company to make sure the check was OK. It wasn’t. The roofer assured us that he would solve the problem by the next day. Meanwhile, we watched as the shingles disappeared with the truck. The next day came, but the problem was not solved. As it turned out, the roofer had financial problems connected with personal problems, so our money was gone. There was no money to pay for the shingles. We asked for a refund of the advance, but none came. When we finally had to arrange for the debt to be collected, the roofer had left the state.

So we at that point had just lost $11,000 and realized that the roof project was not going to be completed under our original agreement. We waited, hoping that the roofer would finally return the advance. While waiting we decided to find another way to finish the Holy Wisdom roof. We turned to our maintenance man, and he bid on the project. We accepted his bid, and the roof project was completed.

A few years later our original roofer returned to New York and was arrested. Several brothers had to testify at the court proceedings here in Cambridge, New York. The ultimate outcome: our $11,000 was returned. We understood that a member of his family made the restitution, since he still did not have the funds.

When we originally engaged him to do the work, we had no idea about his personal problems. What we didn’t know did hurt us, but this time we ended up being lucky: a lesson we tried to keep in mind as we engaged other contractors in the future. It was only later that we learned about the business concept of “best practices.” 

In a future reflection I will write about the project to re-gild the church domes. It might be more correct to say “finally gild the domes,” since that was supposed to have been done when they were installed, but it wasn’t done. What little hair I had left at the time was gone by the end of that escapade!