LAURINBURG — The county’s Industrial Development Funds Committee held its first “official” meeting on Thursday to discuss the discrepancies of the Edwards Wood Products grant that was lost, and there are still many questions left unanswered.
The committee is made up of County Commissioners Whit Gibson, Tim Ivey and Clarence McPhatter. Together the group is embarking to dig in deeper to find out what actually went wrong, not once but twice on the same grant project.
The three commissioners are hopeful they will eventually find the answers after taxpayers were ultimately left to foot the bill in the amount of $575,000 over 10 years.
“There are a lot of emails missing from the packet we have received for today’s meeting,” said Ivey. “One of my questions is, are there missing emails that could help fill in the blanks, or was there no communication between any of the parties involved at the time? If the latter is the case, I am curious as to why.”
The emails Ivey is referring to are communications between Economic Development Director Mark Ward, Grant Writer Emily Miller, the company TRACK, North Carolina Department of Commerce, County Manager Kevin Patterson, Edwards Wood Products and any other entities that may have been involved in the process.
The group agreed to speak with County Manager Kevin Patterson, as well as the IT personnel to see what emails can be retrieved.
“I would also like for us to speak with the County Attorney Ed Johnston so we can set up a meeting with the auditor that looked over this grant process, as well,” said Gibson. “We will wait to schedule our next meeting based on when they can meet with us and explain their findings and thoughts.”
The meeting adjourned with all three agreeing that the missing conversations and information from the auditor will help them continue with their quest for answers and that it is clear that there are some important factors missing.
Each committee meeting is open to the public and the date and time of the next one will be made available as soon as the committee has it scheduled.
JJ Melton can be reached at jmelton@laurinburgexch.wpenginepowered.com.