City of Utica may have to provide details regarding Gro West
UTICA, N.Y. (WKTV) - New developments have come forth in the civil end of things in the Gro West investigation. The City of Utica is trying to recoup money it feels is owed by those people it believes ran Gro West into the ground.
Now a court date has been set where it must provide further details regarding what it says former Executive Director John Denelsbeck did. Denelsbeck's attorney, Mark Wolber of Utica, says he has filed a motion for summary judgement in the civil suit filed in 2009 by the City of Utica against Denelsbeck. New York State Supreme Court Judge Samuel Hester is scheduled to hear the motion on March 22 in Rome. On that date, Wolber will argue why he thinks the civil suit should be dismissed. Wolber says it's because the civil lawsuit does not specifically say what his client, Denelsbeck actually did, in detail. The lawsuit claims Denelsbeck was involved in bid-rigging, misuse of purchase orders, as well as filling out time sheets incorrectly, thus getting paid when he really wasn't working. Wolber says all these allegations are not true, and that he has tried to get the City of Utica to provide explicit details from the city for two years, but so far has been unsuccessful. He said "They were claiming that bids were rigged, we wanted to know which bids were rigged, how they were rigged and how much was involved. They said there were purchase orders that were misused, we wanted to know which purchase orders were misused, by how much and in what respect they were misused. They claimed time sheets were not accurate, we want to know which time sheets are not accurate and in what respect they were inaccurate." Denelsbeck is just one of a number of people who had dealings with Gro West whom the City of Utica has filed civil lawsuits against. Wolber says Gro West was a corporation that was set up that primarily administered grants. Gro West would fund projects and then later would seek reimbursement from the city and the reimbursement came from a federal program that would rehabilitate homes within the city. Wolber says the problem was that many of the homes that were supposed be rehabilitated weren't getting done. That led to the discovery that Gro West was basically bankrupt, and that led to an investigation by the City of Utica which paid an outside consulting firm, the J.K. Hage lawfirm here in Utica, $177,000 to complete. From those findings, the city filed civil lawsuits to recoup the cost of the investigation as well as about $2 million. Wolber says because the City of Utica is the entity doing the suing, legally he is not allowed to talk to the new mayor, Robert Palmieri, even though he'd like to. Wolber said, "I'd assume that he is probably going to take the position that I am asking them to take, that if we've got something, we've got something, and if we don't, let's not waste a lot of time and money going through something we don't have any basis for." Palmieri told NEWSChannel 2 on Saturday that the city does intend to move forward. He said, "The city's Corporation Counsel is currently working on this and has plans on pursuing the civil lawsuits and things will move forward. As far as the criminal end of Gro West goes, that is all being handled by the FBI." |
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