FAIRVIEW — Major County District Attorney Hollis Thorp has opened an investigation into allegations of fraud involving the city of Fairview and one of the city’s contractors.

Thorp said he has assigned an investigator to look into the circumstances of a contract between the city of Fairview and Minton Construction, of Yukon.

The contract in question was for Minton Construction to clean out an area of the Lost Creek tributary, a watershed on the north end of Fairview that overflowed during a September 2008 flood, damaging more than 100 homes.

Thorp said he opened the investigation after receiving allegations from “a concerned citizen” that the contractor had been paid for work that never was completed.

“I did receive some allegations that the contractor had billed the city for hours that he didn’t work,” Thorp said.

George Eischen, who identified himself as a businessman and concerned citizen of Fairview, brought those allegations to Thorp’s attention.

“We didn’t get half of what we paid for,” Eischen said of the 2009 clean-out project.

City Manager Dale Sides said Friday he had not been made aware of the particulars surrounding Eischen’s allegations or of Thorp’s ongoing investigation. He declined to comment further on the matter.

Steve Minton, president of Minton Construction, said Friday the drainage clean-out job was completed in accordance with orders he received from Sides and Fairview City Council.

“They signed off on the project at the time of completion, and we satisfied both the city manager and the board for said work to be done” Minton said. “You have to satisfy the city manager and the board to get paid, and we did what we were told to do.”

Minton declined to comment on any specifics of instructions he received from Sides or the council on how to complete the project, or on specifics of how the project was completed.”

We weren’t paid for any work we didn’t complete,” he said.

A January 2010 survey of the drainageway was conducted by Myers Engineering. A copy of the city’s survey, provided by Eischen, shows portions of the drainageway were not cleaned out to the original engineer’s specifications.

“The city’s own survey shows distinctly that the work wasn’t done to their own specifications,” Eischen said.

Eischen also said the contractor did not remove dirt excavated from the drainage area. Instead, the dirt was placed along the edges of the creek bed.

“By not hauling the dirt off and building it up like that, he actually made the flooding worse,” Eischen said.

He said the contractor “was doing even less work and making more profits” by not hauling off the dirt that had been excavated.

The Lost Creek tributary clean-out project has long been a point of contention between residents of the city’s northeast quarter and the city council, Eischen said. That contention was expressed in a collection of tort claims filed in September 2009 against the city by the owners of 17 residences. Those tort claims, valued at more than $1.7 million in damages from the 2008 flood, were rejected by the city in 2009.

Eischen said he took his concerns over the project and the survey results to the city council in January.

“I never got an answer from them about the results of the survey,” Eischen said, “and after seven months of waiting I asked for my copy of the survey back and took it to the D.A.’s office.”

Thorp said Friday he had assigned investigator Steve Tanio to look into the allegations Eischen brought forward. Thorp said the contractor is the focus of his investigation, “but the city could be responsible, too, if they knowingly overpaid the contractor.”

“I don’t know the facts of the case right now,” Thorp said, “which is why I have my investigator working on it.”

This is the second time in the recent past an investigator from a district attorney’s office has been called on to look into the city of Fairview regarding contracted work.

Garfield County District Attorney Mike Fields completed an investigation in April into city of Fairview bidding practices in a street-paving project. Fields filed one misdemeanor count of official misconduct against Sides in that case. Sides pleaded no contest, and in accordance with a plea deal was given a one year deferred sentence, fined $500 and charged court costs.