By Silas Allen
Stillwater NewsPress
STILLWATER, Okla. —
The business partner of Stillwater Mayor Nathan Bates says legal issues - including an OSBI investigation - hampered the pair’s plan for the use of money from an Oklahoma State University grant over the past several months.
OSU asked for the money back because the plan had not been carried out. Bates has paid back part of the money but he and his partner missed the mid-August deadline OSU set for repayment.
A letter to Bates from Glenn Freedman, OSU’s vice president for research and programs, indicates that the university received one receipt for $600 spent during the grant period. In the letter, dated July 25, Freedman requests that Bates return the unspent $4,400 by Aug. 16.
Rasoul Ezzat-Ahmadi, Bates’ partner, said he and Bates would have made more progress on the project had they not experienced delays over the summer. In many cases, the delays were due to legal issues, said Ezzat-Ahmadi, of Jenks. Bates refused to answer the NewsPress’ questions about the grant.
Payne County District Attorney Rob Hudson last April asked the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation to look into Bates’ grant, saying a fraud statute might have been violated because the mayor applied for and received a $5,000 grant that was funded in part by the city.
Bates and city councilors voted to appropriate $25,000 to the Stillwater Chamber of Commerce to be spent on the E-Basic program and other economic development grants. OSU says Bates’ grant didn’t come from the city’s funds.
Larry Brown, then president and CEO of the Stillwater Chamber of Commerce, contended the Center for Innovation and Economic Development improperly handled Bates’ application. The chamber dropped affiliation with the E-Basic program in February.
Bates and Ezzat-Ahmadi received the $5,000 E-Basic grant from the university’s Center for Innovation and Economic Development. Included in the terms of the grant was a deadline to spend the money. Any money left unspent by June 30 was to be returned to the university.
Included in the grant proposal was an idea to purchase a vacant building in downtown Stillwater and turn it into a restaurant with loft apartments.
When Bates registered his company, Icon Properties, last November, he listed his address as Tulsa, though he was Stillwater’s mayor, and the business address as Jenks.
The $5,000 in grant money was divided in half, with $2,500 being awarded to Bates and $2,500 to Ezzat-Ahmadi. OSU spokesman Gary Shutt said Bates had agreed to return the unspent $1,900 of his half of the money, and had already returned about $1,700.
Shutt said the university was still discussing the matter of Ezzat-Ahmadi’s unspent money. Ezzat-Ahmadi said he was not involved in the discussion, and wouldn’t comment on how it was proceeding.
Ezzat-Ahmadi also would not comment on how much of his portion of the funding had been spent, and what the expenditures included.
Ezzat-Ahmadi said he and Bates still intend to follow through with their original business plan, with or without the grant funding. He and Bates are looking for alternate sources of funding for the project, he said.
“We’re still going through with everything that’s outlined in the E-Basic plan as we submitted it,” he said. “We just might have to do it with a little bit less.”
