A Nashville television news investigation has raised accusations of excessive spending at the Upper Cumberland Development District on the “Living the Dream” project, as well as allegations of agency money being used for gifts, and a political fundraiser being financed on the UCDD tab.
Minutes of a UCDD board meeting were apparently improperly modified as well.
Not only are auditors from the state  scheduled to investigate, but the UCDD board has hired the Nashville law firm of Walker, Tipps, and Malone, PLC to look into the claims, and the board has called an emergency meeting Friday to discuss the matter.
State Representative Mark Pody has also called for a panel of legislators from the Upper Cumberland area to investigate the situation.
At the heart of the debate is UCDD Executive Director Wendy Askins.
Askins, who apparently lives on the grounds of the Living the Dream property rent-free, is facing questions about misappropriation of funds, checks she wrote to herself or cash, and receipts for the purchase of birthday gifts, bottles of wine and liquor, and a political fundraiser that she reportedly charged largely to the UCDD account.
The million-dollar “Living the Dream” development, a facility on an 11-acre property in rural Putnam County, was intended to become a retirement home for needy seniors.
According to the minutes of a UCDD board meeting at the time the property was purchased, it was a foreclosure property purchased at auction specifically for the purpose of developing the retirement facility.
The main house was already constructed at the time of purchase, as was a horse barn and fencing.
Apartments for the elderly residents were built behind the main house after the project began.
The main house was apparently intended to be a common area shared by the residents, but Askins has said that she moved in to help get the project off the ground since the facility only had a few  occupants and there was not enough cash flow to hire 24-hour staff.
The home is designed to accommodate  20 residents when filled, and the rent is income-based, ranging from $500 to $2,000 monthly.
As chairman of the UCDD, DeKalb County Mayor Mike Foster also finds himself embroiled in the controversy.
Foster met with the Review and WJLE Friday morning to discuss the subject.
Although Foster could not comment in detail because of the pending investigation, he did say that he feels some of the spending at the facility might be considered "lavish," but that the UCDD board did not oversee the day-to-day operations of “Living the Dream.”
"I do believe there has been some lavish spending,” Foster said, “but I'm on the committee that has been appointed to investigate this and until we have more details, I don't think we need to point the finger at anybody.”
Foster also said that the constraints of the investigation have led to embarrassing situations with the media.
“Some of my statements look kind of goofy because we were told (by attorneys) immediately before doing the interview (with NewsChannel 5) that we should not make any negative or even positive comments about anyone in particular or any behavior they might have had until the investigation is over,” Foster said.
The investigation is underway, and is coming from more than one direction.
“We've got two sets of accountants looking at it,” Foster said. “The comptroller is looking at it and the attorneys are looking at it.”
Foster said that even though “Living the Dream” is a UCDD project, a separate board oversees its day-to-day operation, and that until recently, he knew very few little about the details of the facility.
“Living the Dream” is a separate corporation, a 501C3 that was set up to build housing for elderly and disabled people,” Foster shared. “It was set up to be a group home for residents who have to be ambulatory.
“Sometime in the last couple of years LTD (Living the Dream) bought the house that a contractor had built and had lived in while he was building it. He later became disabled and died. The house then became vacant for a while. It was sold at auction and the LTD corporation purchased that existing home which was a pretty good sized, elegant looking house, but in reality is not very big on the ground floor especially. It's a very moderate-sized house. But it had a big white fence around it and it had a barn built back behind it and it looks very luxurious,” Foster said.
“They were asking $700,000 for it but it brought around $370,000 to $390,000 at public auction,” he continued. “So the LTD corporation bought that house to use as a home similar to the Fiddlers Manor that we have here in Smithville and some of those kinds of retirement homes. Then they were going to build on living quarters, about 20 rooms, behind it with an atrium that connects them. The main house would be used as a common quarters where all the people who live there would come into that area to eat and do community type functions,” Foster noted.
“The board that I'm on, we never saw anything about it until 2011,” said Foster.
“There was a loan approved by the Cumberland Area Investment Corporation (CAIC). It was just approved by the committee that I am on. Other than that, we didn't know much about the operation of this other than some transfers and a couple of loans that they had made. We had seen pictures of the house. But there is another board, the LTD corporation which is a 501C3 that sits on that.
“The only thing that we as the UCDD board did was approve some of the money that had been approved by another board and just acknowledge it. That's really all we knew about it. We started hearing about these questions in December.
“Channel 5 was there at a meeting and several of us went out there to see the house. That was the first time that I had ever seen it. At that time, it was still not complete. It’s my understanding that the LTD board had received a transfer of $300,000 of unrestricted money to do the start up and they had borrowed something like $730,000 from a bank in Putnam County. I think they had also borrowed like $225,000 from CAIC to get it all up and going. It was to provide living quarters for about 22 people. The total was to be about $1.3-$1.4 million and it would be self supporting. It would refund the debt itself,” Foster said.
Askins reportedly transferred the first $300,000 from UCDD to LTD two years ago.
Meanwhile, the UCDD board called a special meeting recently to retroactively approve that $300,000 seed money after they could apparently find no documentation in the official minutes that the board had ever actually voted on it.
According to NewsChannel 5, however, Askins' office provided a bogus set of minutes from February, 2010 to their reporters showing that the Living the Dream money had been approved at that meeting.
Foster did say that the problem of the falsified minutes concerns him.
"He asked me before this interview (with Channel 5) if I had anything that concerned me. I said yes I am concerned about some minutes that appear to have been changed. We talked about specifically what minutes they were. I don't know who changed them, but there is a set of minutes that we approved and there is a different set of minutes that have been inserted," said Foster.
Concerning reports that LTD funds may have been spent on alcohol, dinner parties and political events, Foster said he was not present at any of events in question.
“I was not at any of those things. I have attended some functions at DelMonaco, which is a winery, but it’s also a meeting place,” Foster said. “In fact, I've been there probably three times with our county commission with the County Technical Advisory Service (CTAS). I guess they rent that and have the CTAS training sessions there. I have been there to that. There's also been some comments about me saying I had never seen any of the UCDD board members drink a lot. We're never in that situation. We're either at a meeting in the UCDD building or at Leslie Town Center or at maybe one of the counties here. I won't say never, but rarely are we ever in a setting to where there is alcohol," Foster revealed.
Foster said he is also puzzled by the fact that none of these problems registered on the recently released UCDD audit.
Foster said the auditor noted no findings and made seven recommendations in his perusal of UCDD records.
Among the auditors recommendations was the suggestion that "consideration be given for requiring board approval of special projects to be undertaken by the agency. At the present time, the executive director (Askins) has the authority to engage in these projects as long as they comply with the purpose of the development district as defined by Tennessee Code Annotated."
According to Foster, the board is expected to appoint a chief financial officer to keep them updated on such matters in the future.
“One of the things we have talked about that I think you will see happen, will be a CFO appointed or hired, a financial officer that will handle all the financial aspects of this organization and report directly to the board,” Foster said.
“Right now we board members are there maybe an hour-and-a-half every two-to-four months. By law, we have to meet four times a year. We're volunteers. We are a part time board and receive no pay. We serve a legal or technical purpose but we don't have access to any of these papers. We just don't do it. We don't have time to.
“If there are as many gross things wrong as Channel 5 says,” Foster continued, “why didn't the auditor pick it up, and why did he not tell us?
“If there's this many obvious things wrong, it should have been picked up and reported. That's all we have to go by. We can only go by what the audit says because we all have things to do in our home counties,” Foster said.
UCDD was set up by the legislature to create jobs and help the poor.
Its board is made up of local elected officials from 14 Middle Tennessee counties.
The agency serves Cannon. Clay, Cumberland, DeKalb, Fentress, Jackson, Macon, Overton, Pickett, Putnam, Smith, Van Buren, Warren, and White counties.