CHICKASHA – The City Council huddled behind closed doors recently to discuss the Chickasha Economic Development Council’s spending practices, but took no formal action after emerging an hour later.
The council entered an executive session to consider a “pending investigation” into the CEDC “in conjunction with the use of Taxpayer Funds, including funds disbursed pursuant to grants.”
The council did not elaborate on who or what will conduct the probe, nor the specifics of who or what prompted the investigation. “It was just some information we received, that’s all that really was,” Mayor Chris Mosley said later.
Jim Cowan, director of the CEDC, did not attend the May 1 council meeting. Nor did he respond to a subsequent telephone call from Southwest Ledger, asking whether he wanted to comment about the matter.
The CEDC “serves as the official economic development representative for the City of Chickasha,” Cowan told the Ledger during an interview earlier this year.
The CEDC has 14 members; the mayor and city manager are ex-officio members.
“All we do is recommend” economic development projects, Cowan said. The City Council is the final arbiter. Every project the CEDC recommends is voted on twice by the City Council: first, to approve an economic development grant, and then to approve the payments.
The City of Chickasha collects the receipts from the local 8% hotel/motel tax, retains 10% as an administrative fee and sends the other 90% to the Chickasha Industrial Authority. The CIA “decides what to do with those funds” and appropriates some of it to the Chickasha Economic Development Council. “We have a one-year contract with the CIA to perform economic development services,” Cowan said.
The CEDC’s latest appropriation from the CIA was approximately $372,000, Cowan said.