Arlington officials say they’ve exhausted all options to settle up to half a million dollars in debts from Arlington Independent Media (AIM) after the organization’s operational collapse.
Local leaders have “spent a lot of time and energy” to make sure there is no replication of the situation with other grantees, County Manager Mark Schwartz said at a Jan. 22 meeting of the county’s Audit Committee.
But after pulling in about $59,000 by seizing and auctioning off AIM’s equipment last summer, Schwartz said he has called off the search for more repayment.
“The county has pursued every one of the areas it could, and this is where we ended up,” the county manager said.
A county audit made public in February 2025 detailed significant problems in accounting for about $2 million in county funds given to AIM for both operating and capital expenses. At the Jan. 22 meeting, a figure of $600,000 was used in discussing county funds that had been accepted by AIM but not properly justified through required documentation.
“That still leaves a whole lot of funds” still owed, said John Vihstadt, a former County Board member who served as a citizen appointee to the Audit Committee at the meeting. Vihstadt pressed several times for explanations as to why more had not been done to recover the funds.
County Board member Maureen Coffey, who serves as co-chair of the committee, suggested there was no more money to be found.
“They barely exist,” she said of AIM. “We explored all options available to us, and this is where we are.”
It was not the answer Vihstadt wanted to hear.
“That’s kind of a damning and unfortunate conclusion, it seems to me,” he said.
Schwartz and other staff said the $600,000 figure was not necessarily all improper spending by the nonprofit organization. Some may just have been a result of paperwork that was never recorded or disappeared in the chaos of the organization’s tumultuous final years.
“I can’t get into any of the details of pursuit of potential criminal charges,” the county manager said, when pressed on the topic. “If I could go into more detail, I would.”
Schwartz said the downfall of AIM didn’t occur with the county government asleep at the wheel, but was the result of a succession of problems unfolding over time.
“This is not something that we were unaware of and simply fell on us at the last minute,” he said. “There were a lot of conversations that took place all along the way. We were aware of a lot of this as it was happening.”
Coffey said that, for now, it is a better strategy to focus on the future than dwell on the past.
“We are now at the point that everyone we give money to has a contract. That is critically important,” she said.
However, Coffey said the county had erred in not having those financial controls in place in an earlier, “looser” era. She also acknowledged county oversight of AIM may have been lax because the organization had operated without outward problems for many years before its downfall.
“It was never expected, given the length of the relationships and how successful it had been previously,” she said of the demise.
“This is one glimpse of where it would have been good to have had a contract [in place] earlier,” said Board member Susan Cunningham, the committee’s other cochair.
The county government’s office of independent auditor came about through the efforts of then-Board members Vihstadt and Libby Garvey, and was shepherded through the legislature by Del. Patrick Hope (D-1).
Established about a decade ago, the post had several occupants until it seems to have stabilized under Wayne Scott, who was appointed in 2024.
The position, and the office, has experienced “some ups and downs through the years,” said Vihstadt, whose term as a public member of the audit committee concluded with the Jan. 22 meeting.
In valedictory remarks, Vihstadt praised Scott, and said he would keep paying attention to audit-related issues.
“I’m not going far,” he said.
