Company behind on loan payments to Jeffersonville

By DAVID A. MANN
David.Mann@newsandtribune.com

May 16, 2008 11:59 am

— A company that opened a now-closed Jeffersonville eatery is months behind on repaying a loan received from the city of Jeffersonville in 2006.
Vicki Appleby — a town councilwoman in Clarksville — said she is not responsible for repaying the loan, because it was her husband, Steve Appleby, who sought it out. City records indicate otherwise.
The $40,000 loan in question was given to Stevick Properties LLC through the city’s revolving-loan program. Revolving loans are administered out of Jeffersonville’s Redevelopment Commission office and they are used as a means of spurring downtown commerce.
Stevick’s loan was received to help fund the opening of Appleby’s Cafe, a now-defunct restaurant at the corner of Spring and Market streets.
City records show that the loan was received in May 2006. Payments were made on time for about three months, before a few payments were missed during that autumn. A double payment was made in November 2006 and then, for nearly a year and a half after that, the city received no money from the company.
Much has happened since The Evening News and The Tribune began looking into the loan program. A few days after the first information request was made, Stevick Properties made two payments. Then, last week an additional $2,300 payment was made.
Gayle Robinson, the city’s redevelopment director, said that the $2,300 check was about half of the back payments the city is owed. Stevick also has given assurance that the rest would be paid up within the next month, he said.
During a telephone interview in April, Vicki Appleby said the loan had nothing to do with her personally. She said she was leasing the business from Stevick Properties, of which her husband is president.
“That has nothing to do with Vicki Appleby and it has nothing to do with Appleby’s Cafe,” she said. “I was not responsible for that loan.”
Jeffersonville City Council meeting minutes from November 2005, however, show that both she and her husband appeared before the council requesting the loan. A month later, she appeared before the council by herself to request the loan. Both Steve Appleby and Vicki Appleby also signed the mortgage note that accompanied the loan.
A phone call requesting a second interview — to explain the council appearances — was not returned. Steve Appleby could not be reached for comment on this article.
Robinson said penalties may be assessed once the loan is brought up to date or perhaps as a final payment. The agreement calls for the city to assess a $100 fine for each missed payment.
“I’m not in the banking business, nor is the city,” Robinson said. “We’re willing to work with people.”
Most of the nonpayment came prior to Robinson becoming redevelopment director. He came into office as a part of the Tom Galligan administration in January and first contacted Stevick Properties in late February regarding the tardy payments.
A lien or a lawsuit would be the avenue the city would have to take in order to get back such money. However, Robinson said, doing so would make it harder on loan recipients to do business, which would defeat the purpose of giving the loans.
There are six outstanding revolving loans under the program, and currently the Applebys are the only ones behind on making payments. However, downtown building owner Rita Fleming recently had been behind as well.
The same day a request for her loan documents was filed, the loan was refinanced and she’s now up-to-date. Robinson said he had been working with Fleming prior to that day, and the refinancing had nothing to do with the request.
The money loan recipients received did not come from tax dollars. The revolving loan program started with a $600,000 grant that the city received in the late 1990s, under the first Galligan administration. Then Redevelopment Director Phil McCauley started the program as a way for the city to provide seed money for individuals interested in doing business in downtown Jeffersonville.
Back then, Robinson said, “there were a lot of abandoned buildings, a lot of work to be done.”
Under the program, borrowers start businesses, then pay the money back, Robinson explained. That way, a new business is open downtown and the city has money to loan out to others.
“This was a way that we felt we could put it back into the community and make (the fund) evergreen,” he said.

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