City asks judge to consider ‘true cost’
Council supports tough sentence for nonprofit director
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Stealing from the vulnerable and putting a public project at risk requires a sentence that reflects the full scope of the harm, according to a letter the Minot City Council plans to submit at the sentencing of a former nonprofit director charged with misappropriating federal funds.
Elizabeth Larsen Meyers, also known as Elizabeth Larsen Myers, is scheduled to be sentenced in U.S. District Court in Bismarck on Sept. 23 for embezzling more than $61,000 intended for the Broadway Circle project while serving as executive director of Project BEE.
According to court documents, she stole from U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Community Development Block Grant National Disaster Resilience funds through the City of Minot between during 2023. She resigned from Project BEE in December 2023, and the organization closed several months later.
Larsen faces up to 10 years of imprisonment and a fine of $250,000, along with supervised probation. The prosecution recommended a sentence of two years’ probation and that she pay full restitution.
City Attorney Stefanie Stalheim told the Minot City Council on Tuesday, Sept. 8, there's still discussion on the agency to which the $61,000 in restitution would go, but it doesn't encompass the city's losses. It is the amount prosecutors have indicated they believe they can prove she misappropriated for rent, child care and other personal expenses, she said.
"Some of the funds that the city is out are not necessarily things that they can provide in a criminal matter. Some of them are simply poor business decisions," she said.
Council members stressed the need for the letter to impress on the judge the dollar value of the cost to the city to preserve the Broadway Circle project and the dollar value of staff time invested in saving the project.
Stalheim said the amount of staff time invested in the project is ongoing and significant but difficult to quantify as a dollar figure.
"We tried to capture all the work that city staff invested in this project, all of the investment that the citizens of MInot had to invest in this particular process," Stalheim said. "We do encourage the judge to use a sentence of incarceration, which may be a steep ask in these particular cases. A lot of times these federal sentences are reserved for crimes and violence and things of that nature."
Council member Stephan Podrygula said it's important to ask for incarceration.
"The jail sentence is an expression of our outrage and the community's outrage for stealing from the most vulnerable," he said.
Council member Mike Blessum asked that all seven council members sign the letter rather than just the mayor and that the city have a representative at the sentencing.
The council plans to sign the letter at a special meeting that includes a budget hearing Wednesday, Sept. 9.
The letter asks for conditions that prohibit Meyers from serving in positions of financial management or leadership within nonprofit organizations or any group with which she would be entrusted with public or charitable funds.
"While we recognize that the recommended sentence may be consistent with sentences imposed in similar cases, we respectfully urge the Court to consider that this case involves consequences extending far beyond the theft of federal funds. The collateral damage to this community has been extraordinary," the letter states. "Justice in this matter should recognize not only what was stolen, but what was lost; the time, resources, opportunities, and trust that our community can never fully recover."
The letter calls Meyers' conduct "deliberate, calculated, and sustained over time. She abused a position of trust for her own personal gain." Her actions contributed to the collapse of a nonprofit organization and forced a municipality to spend reserve funds to preserve a federally funded housing project and avoid the possibility of repaying the entire federal grant or losing an important community asset, the letter states.
"To ensure the Broadway Circle project could be completed and the federal investment preserved, the City of Minot was forced to divert significant taxpayer resources, staff time, and attention away from other pressing community priorities," the letter continues. "The true cost includes years of diverted effort, delayed initiatives, exhausted public servants and opportunities that can never be recovered."