CORBIN — By Carl Keith Greene / Staff Writer

The London Police Department politely turned down a $30,000 stimulus grant offered by the Justice Department after it decided there was too much red tape involved.

About a year ago, the department got a notice that the grant was available.

First, it looked pretty good, said Lt. Stewart Walker, the department’s public relations officer.

The grant, the department decided, would be used for tracking down sexual predators.

But before the money even arrived, the federal stimulus program had contacted the department asking for reports from two separate boards that were to oversee how the money was used, Walker said.

The grant, said Mayor Troy Rudder, was to be used over four years, with monthly reports from one board and quarterly reports from another separate board.

After some consideration, Rudder said, it was decided to turn down the offer.

But somehow the word never got back to the people who would take the police department’s name off the list as having taken the grant.

Now, London along with a dozen Kentuckiana businesses have been called “two-time losers” by the stimulus program’s oversight panel.

Rudder called the incident “a burr in our saddle.”

“It would take so much time to follow their stipulations and we already had much of the sexual predator program up and going. We felt that for that small amount of money for what we had to do it really wasn’t worth the effort we had to put into it,” he said.

“We sent them notice that we looked at the stipulations and at this time we were refusing the grant,” Rudder explained.

“Then we started getting e-mails that we hadn’t turned in our report.’

They would send back e-mails telling them the city had never gotten the grant, we refused the grant, he said.

Rudder said it would take time away from officers whose jobs it would be to keep track of the funds and submit the reports, for $30,000.

It started with the stimulus program called the department and essentially said, “All you have to do is apply. If you want it, you’ve got it, and that’s all it was,” Rudder said.

Then they were told the grant must be used in conjunction with another department. And so much had to go here and so much there.

“And we told them we were already doing sexual crimes investigation with great success and at this time we felt that they should just let someone else have it.”

He recalled, “I don’t know how many letters I’ve sent to them and we have talked with them,” but it seems word never gets to the right place to get the department off the list.

Bob Combs, the department’s retired grant writer, explained Tuesday that the department got word that the grant was available and decided to not take it.

But after the deadline for applications, got a call suggesting that they apply for it.

“We applied for it for a pilot program that we could do,” he said.

“We didn’t hear anything about it and the date for the grant was March, 2009. I didn’t think any more about it and nobody else thought anything about it.

“In September, we got a notice that the grant had been awarded. That was nice, we were pleased to get that. Every federal grant has requirements, reporting requirements and that sort of thing,” he recalled.

They had already begun getting nasty e-mails about reports.

“They wanted a finance report but we hadn’t accessed the money or anything. I sent a report all zeros. A couple of weeks later we got one for the second quarter, April, May and June. We hadn’t spent anything, hadn’t done anything, hadn’t accessed the money. We really hadn’t decided we were going to take the thing.”

They had not completed the paperwork accepting the grant.

“So, I sent another report, all zeros,” he said.

“I sent a letter signed by the mayor that we had chosen to not accept the grant. Each one of the e-mails got a little worse being late on reports,” he noted.

And still the problem continues.