PEARISBURG -- Last month, the Concerned Citizens of Giles County called for Supervisor Howard Spencer to resign. Thursday evening, the group called for the supervisors to invite the Virginia State Police, the attorney general and the Internal Revenue Service to investigate two nonprofits connected to Spencer.

"I think it's only fair to clear up all the rumor and everything in town," said Vernon Kelly, group's vice president.

The board didn't respond.

"Action doesn't happen right after someone comes before you," Chairman Richard McCoy said after the meeting. "You look at what you've got."

On Friday, Spencer said: "What they said last night wasn't true."

The group's real concern centers on Cumberland Park, a project that's putting 254,000 cubic yards of coal ash along the New River. The land is owned by the Giles County Partnership for Excellence.

Spencer is the executive director of the partnership, which oversees a program called Hammering in the Hills. He is town manger of Glen Lyn, home of the power plant generating the coal ash. He was chairman of the board of supervisors when Cumberland Park was planned.

Spencer has said the land will eventually be a building site, which will be sold to generate money for vocational education. The concerned citizens worry about all that toxin-laden ash being in the New River's flood plain.

Group member Ellen Woodyard asked whether the county had any accounting of the money it has spent on Hammering in the Hills, which provides work for people completing their GED. Woodyard said the county employs a part-time worker to free another county employee to work for Hammering in the Hills. The county is paying that employee's salary, too.

Carleena Blankenship asked a series of questions about Cumberland Park, including why the partnership wasn't charged for a building permit connected to the $5 million project.

Danny Melvin wanted to know why -- when a reassessment increased the assessed value of some property in the county by 28 percent -- Cumberland Park's assessment was unchanged, even after more than $100,000 in improvements were added.

"You're talking about hundreds of thousands of tax dollars that flows through this organization that has no oversight," Kelly said. "The county needs to address this and let the proper authorities address this. If they come in and give them a clean bill of health, fine."

Spencer says the project has already done good, saving Appalachian Power's customers more than $700,000 -- the difference between putting the ash there and hauling it to a disposal site in West Virginia. The project hasn't generated any money yet, he said, because the fees for dumping the ash haven't yet covered the costs of creating and operating the site.