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IRONTON, Mo. — In the early morning hours of Dec. 14, 2005, a wall of water roared down the western slope of Proffit Mountain.

The dam at the Taum Sauk Reservoir had breached after a mechanical failure in the hydroelectric plant run by Ameren Missouri. More than a billion gallons of water poured out, carving up the pristine natural beauty of Johnson’s Shut-Ins State Park.

It was an epic disaster. Tourism in southeast Missouri dried up as the state mapped out a plan to recover.

As part of that plan, the state set aside $7 million — calling it the Taum Sauk Fund — to revitalize tourism and development in Iron and Reynolds counties.

But as time went on, the plan languished. Locals complained the money wasn’t being spent, and there were disagreements about how to use it. In 2011, the Taum Sauk Fund was split in two, with $3.5 million going to each county.

Today, Iron County’s portion of the fund has been drained — with questions about how it was spent and who benefited.

Money has gone to businesses owned by people connected to the board of directors. There’s only a weak paper trail to back up some of the disbursements. Some companies had questionable ties to tourism or development.

The actions have drawn accusations of self-dealing and the attention of local law enforcement, in a controversy that has some folks in the Arcadia Valley asking questions and others choosing sides.

A ‘little Boulder’ in Missouri

David Mayer looks up and down Main Street in his adopted Iron County home and sees a future “little Boulder,� a thriving town like the more famous one in Colorado.

Tucked in the mountains and rolling hills of the Arcadia Valley, the city of Ironton has potential, the way Mayer sees it. He thinks it can attract busloads of tourists from all over, including St. Louis, which is 90 miles north.

There is Civil War history, including the cannonball still planted in the roof of the historic Iron County Courthouse. There are state parks, from to . There are rivers and lakes, and hiking and biking trails. There’s even a castle, built in 1846.

Mayer’s wife, Stephanie, has a similar vision, though she tamps down the rhetoric a bit. “Are we going to be Hermann? Probably not,� she says. “But could we at least be Caledonia?�

The Mayers say they want to be part of a solution that has evaded leaders in Ironton: How to revitalize the town after the Taum Sauk devastation in 2005.

Earlier this year, David Mayer joined the board of an organization — (ICEP) — created to fix that problem. Until late 2022, there had been about $3 million in the partnership’s bank account, money that originated from the Taum Sauk Fund.

The group had been slow to spend the money, with successive boards struggling to agree on the best projects to jump-start tourism in the area. There was money spent on an Amtrak station in Arcadia, preservation work at the historic Iron County Courthouse, and development of the . But not much else.

In late 2022, the partnership considered dissolving. But local residents, including the Mayers, had a different idea. In March of this year, they created a new board and took over the fund.

The new board soon found out that there was no longer $3 million on hand. In late 2022, the old board spent $689,000 on the bike park project. Then, shortly before handing over the reins, the old board sent the city of Viburnum $500,000 for a proposed day care center. Community members raised questions about that project’s impact on tourism and economic development.

The old board also sent $200,000 to three different local nonprofits. The balance sheet had been nearly cut in half.

A couple of months after the new board was formed, something odd happened. Mayer resigned.

His letter was typed but the resignation date, June 29, was handwritten. That’s the same day he registered a new company with the Missouri Secretary of State’s office, called Cocoplum Properties, LLC. Three days after Mayer’s resignation, his wife applied for a $395,000 grant from ICEP for a business she was starting.

Nearly a month later, on July 20, ICEP held a meeting. According to minutes from that meeting, which was closed to the public, David Mayer was in attendance as a board member, even though he was supposed to have resigned the prior month. The same day as the meeting, Mayer filed an amendment to his new company, adding Stephanie as an owner. And also that day, a $395,000 check was written by ICEP to Cocoplum Properties.

There’s no record of which board members voted for the grant; the vote appears to have taken place in closed session. It was the largest grant approved this year, and the largest given to a private business in the partnership’s 12-year history.

But it was far from the only six-figure grant.

In all, the new board handed out $1.14 million in grants to private businesses this year. There’s no record of how board members voted on any of the disbursements; minutes from the meetings say they were all closed. Other than basic contracts and application forms, there is little paper trail for the disbursements, like those typically found in a large government expenditure of public money.

And Mayer wasn’t the only board member, or former board member, to benefit. IRS regulations place several restrictions on private foundations, like ICEP, including prohibitions against “self-dealing.� The regulations also say that former board members can’t do business with the foundation for at least five years.

Also, most of the grants went to LLCs without clear links to tourism or development.

Among the disbursements:

• In August, $127,000 went to a campsite company, Arcadia Valley Outdoors, owned by Michael Flieg. He, like Mayer, joined the board in March, resigned on June 29 and applied for his grant a few days later. Flieg told the Post-Dispatch he joined the board to benefit his campsite project.
• A company called Farmer’s Daughters Bakery and Deli was awarded $106,000. That company wasn’t started until July 8, 2023, according to the Secretary of State records. One of the owners is related by marriage to Leah Sitzes, who was board president of ICEP at the time.
• Hillside Powersport Repair, which fixes small engines, won a $90,000 grant. The owner, Bradley Anderson, wrote in state records that the purpose of the LLC is: “To shield my family and myself from any liability that the business may occur.â€�
• A metal-working and sign-making company called Southern Oak Customs, which formed July 8, won $151,000.
• A woodworking company called Jon Jones & Sons won $111,000. It filed state paperwork on Aug. 18 to form as an LLC — a month after it applied for the ICEP grant. The money was intended for new woodworking equipment and to expand a building. Jones wrote in his application that he wanted to turn his woodworking “hobbyâ€� into a business, and that the grant would help him “leverage what I already have invested rather than burden the business immediately with loans.â€�
• The smallest amount, $88,000, went to Positive Energy Electrical Contractors, owned by Matthew Ursch. He wrote in his application that most of the money would go to a work van and the equipment inside it. “When we decided to relocate from St. Louis to Arcadia, I decided my focus was on building our glamping business,â€� he wrote. “Now that business is up and running and I’m returning my focus to electrical work.â€�

A flood of money

In September, ICEP drew attention when it publicized the grants on its Facebook page. Soon after, Erich Jett started filing Sunshine Law requests for documentation surrounding the disbursements of the money. Jett was a former contractor of ICEP, and he had previously sounded alarm bells about the organization’s spending.

Sitzes, the board president, at first denied the organization had to follow the Sunshine Law and rejected Jett’s requests. When Jett sent her a copy of the board’s own bylaws, she told him the documents wouldn’t be available until a yearly audit was finished.

But then, on Sept. 13, she abruptly resigned.

“I would like to state for the record that, I have not received any funding from ICEP, and have no intentions of applying for a grant,� she wrote in her resignation letter.

In an email to the Post-Dispatch, Sitzes said the job became too much and was taking time away from her family and business.

Even if she did plan to seek a future grant, it would be a moot point. After this year’s spending spree, there is about $165,000 left in a fund that a year ago had more than $3 million. There are now only two board members left, not enough to form a quorum.

The spending has led to heated arguments on Facebook.

“It would be nice to know WHAT each recipient is using the money for,� wrote one local resident in a comment. “How are the funds they are granted putting money back into our county?�

Wrote another: “People are for sure wanting to speak to you about this, and conveniently you have no public meetings.�

The connections between grants and board members has caught the attention of Iron County Prosecuting Attorney Brian Parker. He was a longtime adviser to ICEP, going back to 2011, when the organization first received the money from the Taum Sauk Fund.

“It concerns me very much,� Parker said of the recent spending.

He declined to comment when asked if he planned to launch an investigation.

For their part, the Mayers say they’ve done nothing wrong.

“If we didn’t step up, there would have been no money going to local people,� Stephanie Mayer says.

That’s an argument some locals have made about ICEP since its inception — that the old board only handed out pennies on the dollar, often to cronies and insiders.

The Mayers say they purchased the old State Theater on Main Street with the help of the money they received from ICEP. They plan to remodel the empty building and convert it into a “boutique collective,� where small businesses can display their goods. They call the concept

The couple also is developing a “Pickleball Café� in a building they bought. That is their own investment, they say, separate from any ICEP money.

The Mayers — David is 40, Stephanie is 38 — moved to Iron County in part to live on a family farm owned by Stephanie’s grandfather. The couple has seen the criticism from what they call “keyboard warriors� on Facebook. They suggest the controversy over this year’s spending is a battle for the heart of Ironton — old guard vs. younger people with a new vision for the community.

“It’s our town, too,� Stephanie says. “How is (the ICEP money) not mine over anybody else’s?�

That question has been debated since the Taum Sauk Fund was created years ago by former Attorney General Jay Nixon.

It turns out, the recent controversy was not the first time the partnership board was accused of self-dealing.

Coming next: Grants for a campground and a coffee shop raise questions. And a weak trail of paper, with confusion about open records.