WELDON — For the past several months, participants in the Golden Leaf Community Assistance Initiative have met to discuss how best to spend $2 million in grant money.

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With more than 50 people participating in the debate at some meetings, they narrowed the focus to three areas — economic development, education and infrastructure.

Thursday night, the group began examining 20 specific proposals on how best to invest the money in those three areas.

Surprisingly there were no submissions dealing with infrastructure. Two of the project submissions, though sent, had not been received by the organization.

Golden Leaf President Dan Guerlach, having already read all but those two submissions, offered insight about strengths and weakness in the projects by providing questions he and the Golden Leaf team wanted more information on before they are submitted to the board. He said this would help applicants strengthen their submissions before they filed full applications.

One project was outside of the priority issue areas. At least three projects were from organizations which didn’t yet have their nonprofit status. Others were submitted from outside Halifax County and there were questions as to how applicants figured they would benefit Halifax County citizens if they got the money.

Twelve applications for Economic Development were submitted. Of those, five were for studies. Guerlach reminded participants the Community Assistance Initiative generally doesn’t fund studies. He suggested applicants investigate funding from the UNC System in Chapel Hill.

Strong contenders for the funds came from Halifax County for the Halifax Corporate Park Site Improvements ($400,000) and Halifax Tourism for the Roanoke River Low Country Tour ($133,844).

While other applicants weren’t out of the running, Guerlach had several questions as to their feasibility and how they would have a positive effect on the county.

The city of Roanoke Rapids submitted two applications concerning the Main Street Program. Guerlach posed several strong questions for the group, but reminded everyone no one is out of the running. They were informed they just needed to justify their applications in the weaker areas.

Strong contenders in education were the Roanoke Valley Early College Enhancement Plan and the Roanoke Rapids City Schools submission, representing the three school districts asking for technology and professional development. The submission was called Three Districts, One Goal — Student Achievement and asked for $975,000. “We’d have to look at teacher development as a precondition,” said Guerlach. He added the foundation had seen this kind of project before and many times the program didn’t succeed because students new more about the computers than the teachers.

“This represents a lot of hard work on your part and a lot of other people’s. I know we’re playing the devils advocate with these questions, but we want to give people a chance to clarify,” said Guerlach.

After going over the submissions, participants discussed with Golden Leaf’s Vice President of Programming Pat Gabe the next steps in the process. She said the Golden Leaf team would give a more thorough review of the applications and contact applicants with the questions posed about their proposals. They will go out by Oct. 15.

Applicants will have the opportunity to answer those questions on a one-page addendum, which should be received by the Golden Leaf team by Oct. 22.

Then the applications will be sent to the review team of nearly 50 citizens who attended at least three meetings before July’s meeting. They will score each application based on a rubric developed by the review team in an earlier meeting. Members will score applications individually then meet as a group to go over their scores Nov. 19.