Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Okolona backs out of grant application

The City of Okolona has withdrawn its $15,000 grant application with the Arkansas Department of Rural Services because of a technicality.

Mayor Joy McElhannon had applied for the funds through the Arkansas Rural Community Grant Program to renovate the town's old elementary school and use it as a community center.

"I am withdrawing the Okolona grant application and will submit it during the next cycle," said McElhannon in a letter to grants coordinator Jean Maxwell.

Clark County Prosecutor Henry Morgan said Tuesday his office would investigate McElhannon and the City of Okolona for filing a potentially fraudulent grant application with the state rural development agency. Morgan said his office would "look into" the matter.

The grant application was withdrawn, Maxwell said, after it was determined a resolution authorizing the mayor to submit the grant request was not actually passed by the town's city board this year, as is required by law. She said McElhannon notified her by telephone late Tuesday afternoon the grant application would be withdrawn.

"She explained to me that the resolution that was submitted in the grant packet was relating or referring back to a previous resolution that was passed in 1998 that authorized her to apply for any future matching grant," Maxwell said. "Basically, a resolution she said authorized her to apply for matching grants for this project."

Maxwell said grant authority resolutions must be passed by city boards in the current calendar year and must specifically refer to the grant being applied for.

"I explained to her that just didn't work for our grants. It's not going to go through. That is going to be pulled and it's not eligible. We do not have a resolution that was passed for this specific project."

She said McElhannon understood following their telephone conversation that the grant authority resolution was insufficient.

The resolution Maxwell received from McElhannon "states it was adopted in regular session on March 6, 2002 ... this resolution was not adopted on that date, from what she said."

"I don't even know if there was a meeting on March 6, 2002," Maxwell said. "I'm just not sure whether this particular project was discussed at that meeting."

Okolona resident James Paul, who has questioned the operations of McElhannon and the Okolona city council, said he videotaped the March 6 meeting and the grant was not discussed at that time.

In a related matter, Morgan said his investigation into the operations of the Okolona city council and McElhannon will continue despite the grant application having been withdrawn.

"We're looking into it  I need to see some more things," he said. "We'll stand back and see what surfaces on this thing."

He said he has asked Paul to provide him with a variety of documentation regarding the grant application. Paul has filed a request with Maxwell under the state's freedom of information act for copies of the Okolona grant application.

Morgan said the Okolona grant was likely withdrawn because "they probably realized they had done something that was not right and they withdrew it to get it right." If there is wrongdoing determined in the case, there are several avenues in which his office could proceed.