As of June 2026, the City of Jasper is still paying approximately $30,000 a year to insure a building it has been trying to give away. The company that is supposed to receive that building — Provalus — has yet to complete the transfer. And nobody seems to be asking the most obvious question: if you did everything right, if you met every requirement, if you held up your end of a contract that earned you a multi-million dollar building — why would you drag your feet on accepting it?

That question matters. Because in the world of business, you don’t walk away from something you earned. You don’t delay taking ownership of a $3 million asset that belongs to you. Unless, of course, the situation is more complicated than the people approving the transfer want to admit.

In April 2026, the JEDCO board voted to deed that building to Provalus. Three board members — Angel McCroskey, Pam McDonough, and Tena Wright — voted against the transfer. Their reason was straightforward: a forensic audit completed in September 2025 found that Provalus had failed to provide the employment documentation required by the contract. The records that were supposed to verify years of reported employee numbers were largely nonexistent.

The board’s own attorney, Mike Getz, told the members they had “no option but to deed Provalus the building” because prior officials had not challenged the company’s records while the project was active.

Let that sink in for a moment. The legal argument for handing over a multi-million dollar public asset — despite documented failures to meet contractual documentation requirements — is essentially: nobody stopped it then, so we can’t stop it now.

That is not how contracts work in the private sector. If this were a private business deal and the other party failed to deliver the documentation they were legally required to provide, no businessman worth his salt would say “well, nobody caught it at the time, so I guess we just hand over the building.” A contract is a contract. The people of Jasper deserve the same protection in their public dealings that any private party would demand in theirs.

And the people making this decision call themselves businessmen. No actual businessman would hand over a $3 million public asset to a company that couldn’t produce basic payroll records. That isn’t business sense — that’s the opposite of it. This board had an opportunity to change the way things have always been done in Jasper. They had the audit. They had the documented gaps. They had every reason to demand answers before signing anything over. You don’t get to call yourself a businessman while making decisions you would never make with your own money.

Something doesn’t add up — but you decide.

It Started With a Promise

On January 31, 2019, Jasper United — a joint venture between the City of Jasper and JEDCO — signed an Economic Development Agreement with Optomi LLC, doing business as Provalus, a Delaware limited liability company. Daniel L. Walker signed as JEDCO Board President. Mayor Gary Gatlin signed on behalf of the City.

The promise was straightforward: Provalus would bring jobs to downtown Jasper. In exchange, the public would provide the resources to make that happen. What Jasper United agreed to provide was substantial:

• A facility at 101 E. Houston Street, purchased and fully renovated at public expense
• A temporary location at 534 S. Wheeler with free rent, utilities, maintenance, and cleaning
• Up to $360,000 in monetary incentives — $1,800 per new full-time hire — paid over five years
• Up to $20,000 to cover relocation expenses for Provalus management
• Temporary housing for Provalus leadership for up to six months
• Assistance obtaining Skills Development Fund grants and Texas Workforce Commission support
• And ultimately, the deed to the building itself once all job creation requirements were met

In return, Provalus agreed to grow its Jasper workforce from a minimum of 50 full-time employees in Year 1 to 100 by Year 5. And critically, the contract required Provalus to submit monthly reports with certified payroll records, W-2s, and IRS Forms 940 and 941 — so that Jasper United could actually verify the numbers before cutting checks.

That verification requirement wasn’t a formality. It was the only accountability mechanism built into the deal.

Five Years of Numbers Nobody Checked

According to Provalus’s own reports, the company exceeded its job creation requirements every single year:

• Year 1: required 50 employees — reported 57
• Year 2: required 70 employees — reported 103
• Year 3: required 80 employees — reported 194
• Year 4: required 90 employees — reported 204
• Year 5: required 100 employees — reported 258

Based on those reported numbers, $354,825 in public incentive money was paid out over the five-year term — just under the $360,000 cap. The numbers looked good. The trajectory looked impressive. Nobody looked behind them.

When the forensic auditors from UHY Advisors finally did, here is what they found on file:

• Year 1 (57 reported employees): 45 W-2s. No payroll reports. No IRS forms.
• Year 2 (103 reported employees): 12 payroll reports, 2 W-2s. No IRS forms.
• Year 3 (194 reported employees): No payroll reports. No W-2s. No IRS forms.
• Year 4 (204 reported employees): No payroll reports. No W-2s. No IRS forms.
• Year 5 (258 reported employees): No payroll reports. No W-2s. No IRS forms.

In the final three years — when Provalus was claiming between 194 and 258 employees — there was not a single piece of supporting documentation on file. Not one payroll record. Not one W-2. Not one IRS form. And not one annual report was ever certified by an authorized Provalus officer, as the contract explicitly required.

“Due to a lack of documentation, the Provalus reports were not validated for accuracy and completeness by the City.”

UHY Advisors MidAtlantic, City of Jasper Forensic Audit, September 30, 2025

The contract also spelled out what was supposed to happen if Provalus’s records proved false or if documentation requirements weren’t met — those were listed as events of default, carrying real financial consequences including repayment obligations and monthly rent penalties of $7,500. Those enforcement mechanisms were never used. They may as well not have been written.

What the Public Actually Paid

According to city records, the total cost of the Provalus project was $4,790,651. The City of Jasper, holding a 70% stake in Jasper United, contributed $3,136,337. JEDCO contributed $1,654,314 at its 30% share. The building was purchased for $267,000, and the renovation blew past the City Council-approved budget of $2,954,238 by $206,124 in change orders — with documentation provided for only $48,918 of that overage. Most of the project costs were funded through Cambridge Project funds, rather than going through City Council approval.

But that $4.79 million figure only reflects what was captured in the records reviewed — fiscal years 2019 through 2023. It does not account for the carrying costs since then: the insurance, the maintenance, the legal work, the years of ongoing expenses. At this point, there is simply no telling what the true total actually is. What we know is the floor. What we don’t know may be considerably higher.

The Audit

On September 30, 2025, UHY Advisors MidAtlantic released its forensic audit of City of Jasper financial records covering fiscal years 2019 through 2023. The audit stated it did not find fraud. But here is what that conclusion rests on: auditors could not validate the employee numbers because the documentation to do so was never provided. And you cannot clear what you cannot examine.

It is worth stepping back and understanding what kind of documents were missing. W-2s, payroll reports, and IRS Forms 940 and 941 are not special requests created by this contract. They are records that every legitimate employer in America is required by law to produce and maintain — monthly, quarterly, annually. If you have employees, these documents exist. There is no legal way to operate a business with 258 workers and not have them. The contract didn’t ask Provalus for anything out of the ordinary. It asked for the same paperwork the IRS already requires.

So the question is not complicated: if those employees existed, where are their records? And if the records exist, why were they never provided — not once in the final three years of the contract, when reported employee numbers nearly tripled?

Where Things Stand

As of June 2026, the building deed has still not been transferred. Board President Bill Grant noted at the June meeting that the building is valued at approximately $3 million and is costing the city around $30,000 a year in insurance. His stated position: “The risk they are running is that they don’t get the building. It is time to get it on the tax rolls.”

With respect — that framing puts the risk on Provalus. But the city has been carrying the cost of this building for years. The public has already paid nearly $5 million into this project, and there is no telling how much the city has actually put out at this point. The company that is supposed to take ownership of a building it claims to have earned is in no apparent hurry to do so.

If everything was done right, accept the building.

If everything was done right, the documentation to prove it should exist.

A contract is a contract, and this is not the way it would be handled in the real business world. This project, from start to finish, stinks.