By Walter Elliott
ORANGE – The string of bribes, kickbacks, false invoices, no-work contracts and no-show jobs involving seven people that had occurred out of City Hall 2012-16 are far from being victimless crimes.
The cost can be counted in taxpayer money lost, services unfulfilled and the erosion of trust between Orange’s citizens and the government that is supposed to serve them.
When high Orange public official Willis Edwards III, for example, sent a pair of voucher payment requests to Essex County in March and May 2015 it was to pay for the Orange Public Library’s Saturday Literacy Program. The county was holding the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Community Block Development Grant that was awarded to OPL.
The county drew from the HUD grant for the library. OPL’s then-director, Timur Davis, sent $36,000 of the reimbursement in April and June to the literacy program’s operator, Urban Planners LLC.
The problem, as Essex County would later learn, was that Urban Planners never held a Saturday Literacy Program class.
Franklyn D. Ore, 51, of Jersey City, had incorporated Urban Planners in early 2015 with an advance from Edwards. Ore passed phony invoices to Edwards that the Business Administrator/”Deputy Administrator”/Mayor’s Chief of Staff attached to his voucher requests to the county.
Two federal grand juries in Newark had indicted Edwards, 51, now of Lithonia, Ga., on this and 30 other counts July 8 and Sept. 20, 2020. Edwards, who stepped down as chief of staff on a separate court order Dec. 31, 2015, was indicted on counts ranging from wire fraud to “bribery in connection with the business of a federally funded local government.”
Edwards, who was given the BA, Deputy Administrator and Chief of Staff designations by Mayor Dwayne D. Warren, has not entered a plea to date.
Ore pled guilty Jan. 13, 2020 in Newark federal court to a count each of aiding and abetting the fraud of an organization that uses federal funds and wire fraud. He is currently serving an up to 20-year prison sentence.
Davis pled guilty to making false statements to HUD Feb. 13, 2020. He was scheduled to be sentenced that June to up to a year’s imprisonment and a $100,000 fine.
The above trio are among seven men and women who were part of several corruption schemes uncovered by the FBI-Newark Office and federal justice department attorneys after a five-year and continuing investigation.
The feds’ probe includes executing search warrants on Orange City Hall and OPL going back to July 22, 2016. Four of the seven indicted have pleaded guilty and one pleaded not guilty. Edwards and a seventh person have not entered pleas.
Orange’s children who could have used the Saturday Literacy Program, however, had to go to another institution for reading help.
Edwards, Ore and Davis, said court documents, had conspired to defraud a second, $48,000 HUD grant over a prospective HVAC chiller unit in 2014-15.
HUD, through Essex County, awarded the $48,000 grant to OPL in 2014 so it could replace its heating and cooling system. Edwards allegedly put Ore and Urban Planners on as the installer of an air conditioning chiller unit in 2015.
Ore drew up phony invoices and work progress reports which were sent to and approved by Davis and Edwards. Edwards then sent a $48,000 voucher request to the county. The county sent the $48,000 to OPL – $36,000 of which was diverted by Davis to Ore and Edwards.
The chiller, which was meant for the library’s 1905 main building and 1978 southwest wing, was never ordered – let alone installed.
Anthony Puglisi, Public Information Officer for Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo, recalled that a county employee had asked OPL for an invoice from the chiller’s installing contractor when it did not receive it with a reimbursement request in 2015. The library then said it was abandoning the HVAC project.
Essex County then demanded that it be repaid the $18,239 for the chiller within 90 days. Puglisi said it took 216 days to get that money back and repay HUD.
At least Essex County and HUD got some of their money back.
OPL could have used that chiller three times the last two summers. The library closed due to excessive heat – denying patrons access to its services.
Edwards and Ore tapped the City of Orange Township’s discretionary fund, under the guise of YWCA/Orange Recreation, Education and Cultural Center redevelopment planning, in late 2015.
Ore created a false invoice, claiming that Urban Partners took part in a study on converting the YWCA at 395 Main St. to the Orange REC Center. Prosecutors said that Edwards, before he left City Hall Dec. 31, 2015, cut a $16,800 check to Urban Planners – and Ore kicked back a portion to Edwards.
The ill-gotten $16,800, on one hand, was directly drawn from the city’s Calendar Year 2015 municipal budget. The loss, on the surface, may seem minute among an average $60 million annual city budget here.
Orange, in Calendar Year 2021, had a 5.78 percent tax increase on its property owners on an average $9,957 2020 tax bill. The increase was the second-highest among Essex County’s 22 municipalities.
Orange was second to Irvington’s 5.979 percent increase last year. East Orange ranked third at 5.541 percent.
Meanwhile, Orange’s median household income in 2020 was $42,966. The city struggles with a 21.4 percent poverty rate.
An indirect cost of the $16,800 is an impression of where the money allocated to the Orange REC Center is going.
Warren announced in May 2016 that he had obtained a State Legislature allocation of $2.5 million toward the purchase and conversion of the 1971-built YWCA of the Oranges to the REC Center. Half that amount, $1.25 million, was used to purchase 359 Main St.
The special allocation was not a grant or a loan. Some may remember Warren holding a celebration of 395 Main’s pending rebirth at its front door.
Some of the other $1.25 million was spent on a study – that found the YWCA building’s asbestos, plumbing and other internal problems make rehabilitation cost-prohibitive. The city has since switched to replacing 395 Main and the 1876 Rossi Paint headquarters with a five-story mixed-use Orange REC/apartment building in a public-private partnership.
The $72,000 bilked from OPL’s non-extant literacy program and chiller have some residents asking about a $250,000 N.J. Historic Preservation grant’s status.
The DEP office had awarded the grant a decade ago to help the library restore its rotunda and other infrastructure. Although the office had extended the grant’s life, the library had suffered a train of neglect, key personnel turnover and funding issues.
NJDOT had awarded Orange around $200,000 towards restoring and reopening the Valley’s Highland Avenue Railroad Station in 2019. There has not been any physical work other than NJTransit maintenance since.
It is not known as of press time whether a prospective lease from NJTransit is a precondition for using the grant.
