The City of North Little Rock has doggedly been pursuing federal stimulus program money for conversion of the existing Central Arkansas Transit (CAT) bus fleet and City fleet to natural gas. Big surprise, the consultant paid by a natural gas company recommended converting the fleets to natural gas. Despite the consultant's glowing support, several CAT board members have expressed significant concern about the conversion to natiral gas.

Now Mayoir Hays and his Stimulus Director Michael Drake will be putting together a financial proposal that reportedly will not impact the city's budgets. How can that be? The millions of dollars in bus and fleet conversion costs will be paid for with an annual rebate from a Federal program that will give CAT about $21,000 annually for each natural gas bus. So the financial plan will undoubtably involve floating bonds by CAT or the cities.to raise the initial millions of dollars in conversion costs with the bonds paid off with the annual rebate.

But what if next year or the next President or Congress decides to discontinue the natural gas rebate? Will this turn into another financial folly by Stimulus Director Michael Drake? It can happen and has happened. Argenta only exists because the Federal government over thirty years ago stopped funding the Urban Renewal program and the demolition of downtown historic structures stopped unexpectedly at 4th Street, saving everything in Argenta to the north.

Click on Read More to learn about previous financial follies involving Mr. Drake that don't bode well for this project.

North Rock's Stimulus Director, Michael Drake, does not have a particularly good public history of successful public financial projects, except in terms of benefiting consultants, bankers and bonding companies.

Most recently Mr. Drake was the Executive Director of Main Street Argenta (MSA) when it withdrew from the Main Street Arkansas program saying in a letter prepared by Mr. Drake and signed by the Board president that MSA's role downtown had diminished. However according to a report in yesterday's Dem/Gaz MSA is still sitting on over $2.3 million of unused funds and financing. Click here for the story. Perhaps if MSA had actually spent the money to benefit downtown, MSA's role would not have been diminished and would still be the force that other Main Street programs are in their downtown areas.

Before that when Mr. Drake was Executive Director of the Main Street Argenta program they redeveloped the Smarthouse Way property and hundreds of thousands of dollars were paid to contractors and consultants for the clean up of the property. These funds were primarily borrowed from a revolving loan fund at the County, which was to be repaid from the sale of the property. The property is still sitting empty and all work including utility relocation has been stopped since no sale is on the horizon. There is no revenue from the sale of the property for the loan repayment.

Several years earlier, Michael Drake was involved in a group in Little Rock that wrote a report to justify a $43 milliion bond boondoggle to help families obtain housing. Ultimately this boondoggle (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 helped organize a non-profit that was paid $50,000 to do a 14 page study (over $3500 per page) that apparently was used to justify the bond program Click here for a link to a story with more details on this folly.

Going back to the mid 1980's, if you Google "Michael Drake" and "Lasater Company" and look hard and long enough on the internet, you can find interesting reports on state bonds and "funny busnness" about the purchase of state police equipment when Mr. Drake was Executive Vice-President of Lasater and Company, one of the largest bonding companies in the southeast that later went belly up.. Perhaps Mr. Drake still has buddies in the bond business with other firms.

So where is the green going with a natural gas bus conversion? Is this going to benefit the taxpayers or friends, bankers, consultants and contractors? And who assumes the risks and costs if the financial plan fails? Prior history with Mr. Drake would suggest the taxpayers would assume the risk and given that history is that a risk we should accept?

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