So what qualifications are necessary to be the Executive Director (ED) of the non-profit Main Street Argenta (MSA)?  Apparenlty it helps if you were involved in a previous for profit company that worked with the County obtaining a $43 milliion bond boondoggle to help faimilies obtain housing.  Ultimately this boondogle (others descrption, not mine) helped only six families obtain housing at a cost $2.1 million. The fees paid to consultants, financial advisors and banks totalled over $2.5 million. Mr. Drake the current  MSA ED helped organize a non-profit that was paid $50,000 to do a 14 page study that apparently was used to justify the bond program . 

Here are a few excerpts from a July 26, 2007 article in the Dem/Gaz on this boondoggle

How the Dream to Own bonds came to be issued and what went wrong is a labyrinthine tale. It includes a Little Rock church whose elders set up a corporation that received $50,000 to produce the 14-page housing analysis that justified the eventual $43 million bond sale.

 Click on the Read More button below for more of this post 

In search of participants for a Pulaski County project, Menz approached Michael Drake, a minister-in-training at Total Outreach for Christ in Little Rock. Drake was a former investment banker, and the members of the inner-city church had experience helping families withtheir finances.

Menz thought the church could work with the families that would be moving into the houses to get their credit in shape so they eventually couldtake ownership.

The church leaders prayed on it, Drake said. Then they created a for-profit corporation. Their New Creation Capital Corp. agreed not only to work with the Dream to Own families but also to analyze the Pulaski County housing market to see how big of a bond issue the lease-purchase plan could support.

New Creation determined that there were plenty of frustrated home-buyers to soak up all the money the county intended to borrow. In fact, its study suggested, the county’s limit was far too modest

Drake’s for-profit corporation was paid $50,000 for the study and as compensation for its other contributions to the planning. Besides writing the report,New Creation had helped lay the groundwork for the lease-purchase program by preparing a curriculum to help families make good financial choices, get their credit in order and learn how to become responsible homeowners.

Even though New Creation ultimately didn’t get the job of advising the Dream to Own families, Drake said his group had helped get the program off the ground, in part by meeting with more than 30 Pulaski County churches to identify candidate families and stimulate interest in the program.

Drake said New Creation put in a lot of “time and treasure” for its $50,000 fee. However, that was money that the corporation couldn’t have collected if the bonds ultimately weren’t issued by the Quorum Court and sold.

Is that a conflict of interest?

“I guess you could say that,” Villines said, “but that’s the common practice.”

To read the full article from the Dem/Gaz click here and make sure you read it to get everyting in contet.

So why bring this up now?  Because this previous bond boondoggle Mr. Drake was deeply involved iin getting started has been under investigation by the IRS as reported recently in the Arkansas Times .  As a result of the investigation, the IRS has proposed a $60,000 settlement with the County.  

So are these the qualifications for a good ED for a non-profit?  Does this give you concern over the millions of dollars MSA is managing with the Smarhouse Way property which also invvolves County  brownfield clean up loans?  There are those with serious concerns over the IRS implications with the way the money and potential proceeds will be handled from the sale of the Smarthouse Way property.  Hopefully, NLR will not end up in settlement with the IRS like the County has. If you were an IRS auditor would the words "Michael Drake" and "non-profit" raise red flags with you?  I will leave  these important questions to be answered by you the readers. 

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