NEWARK – A former Newark Parking Authority employee is serving his 30-month jail sentence for possessing narcotics with an intent to distribute plus illegal weapons possession as part of his May 6 plea bargain here in U.S. federal court.
Aughkay L. Green, 50, of Newark will also be on three years’ supervised release once he has served his time.
U.S. Judge Katherine S. Hayden sentenced Green after the latter pleaded guilty to the federal justice department’s three indictments. Those counts were possession of heroin and cocaine base with an intent to distribute and for being a convict in possession of firearms and ammunition.
Green, said Acting U.S. Attorney Rachel A. Hoing, was seen by law enforcement surveillance selling 38 grams, or 25 decks, of heroin to “Individual One” for $1,200 Jan. 12, 2017.
Green, also known as “K-Boogie,” sold 48.9 grams of crack cocaine to the same person for $21,250 March 22, 2017. Green was wearing his NPA uniform at the time.
Green, with “an unidentified male associate,” was further accused of being present when the associate sold two Smith and Wesson handguns and 50 rounds of hollow point bullets to Individual One for $1,360 in Irvington for $1,360. One gun was a Model 21 .44 caliber, the other a Model 15 .38 caliber.
IRVINGTON – Authorities are still looking for a motorist who had left a boy injured along a major West Ward street here May 5.
Irvington police and local medics were called to Lyons Avenue and Lincoln Place 4:42 p.m. that Monday – where they found the maimed youth, The boy and witnesses told IPD officers of a car that struck the victim and had kept traveling along Lyons.
The boy is expected to recover from his injuries after treatment at a local hospital. No further details were given as of presstime.
EAST ORANGE – Afternoon rush hour motorists and riders on NJTransit’s No. 41 bus route witnessed a picket like demonstration in front of 140 Park Ave. here May 13.
Workers of the Gardens Care and Rehabilitation Center – better known as Windsor Gardens – were protesting the pending sale to Complete Care Management.
They were joined by members and officials of SEIU Local 1199, The union had also held similar demonstrations at five other Complete Care nursing homes across the state April 15.
SEIU representatives, April 13, said that Windsor Healthcare Communities to CCM would include the decimation of paid time off plus the elimination of educational and retirement benefits and an affordable health insurance plan.
An arbitrator, since April 15, has issued an emergency order to block Windsor Gardens’ sale to CCM. CCM has meanwhile gone to federal court in Newark to have the block removed.
CCM, which is owned by a private equity firm, is the largest nursing home chain in New Jersey. Complete Care at Summit Ridge, of West Orange, is among its 19 Garden State centers with four more in Wisconsin.
An attempt to reach out to the Howell-headquartered CCM May 16 was not successful.
ORANGE – Registered city Democrats have some choosing to do who will represent them on the party’s city and county levels June 8.
What would normally be a formality in picking respective Essex County Democratic Committee or Essex Republican Party Organization district leaders, in Orange’s case, has up to three slates of candidates to choose from.
It does not get more politically local than a party district leader, where wards are broken down to neighborhoods. The party district leader becomes a liaison between the neighbors and at least the major party – or City Hall if the party has an elected member on the council or in the mayor’s office. The district leader helps set policies for the party. Some also become county or state committee members or, on convention years, even national party delegates.
In the North Ward – Fifth District ECDC candidates Kevin Hardaway and Tency Eason are being faced by “Community First – Not Politics” runner Elisha (or El’sha on campaign literature) Petite. In the East Ward-5, Tazewell Lacey and an open ECDC seat are faced by Community First’s Tyrone Jon Tarver and Germaine Tarver.
In the West-3 district, ECDC runners William Hathaway, Jr. and Melissa McKoy are challenged by Community First’s Malika Abdul-Zahir. In W-5, Shelley Alexander and an empty ECDC seat are being challenged by independent Dolores Sawyer.
In South-1, ECDC’s Clifford Ross and Mamie Green are being challenged by Edward B. Marable, Jr. and Karen Wells. In S-2, ECDC’s David K. Armstrong, Lawrence Gaunt, Jr. and a vacant seat are being challenged by “Demand Progress-Every Vote Counts” April Gaunt-Butler plus independents Ernest Lydell Carter, Deborah Bartley-Carter, Shawn Hunter and Jairam Kissou. In S-4, ECDC’s Stacey Martin is vying with Community First’s Brenda Daugherty.
WEST ORANGE – Mayor Robert Parisi may present details of his administration’s purchase of almost a third of the Crestmont Country Club during his remarks at the Township Council’s May 18 meeting.
There was no listing of the Township-Crestmont Country Club transaction on the council’s agenda as of 3 p.m. Tuesday.
Those details that the council and the public want to know includes the purchase price.
Mayor Parisi announced May 7 that the township had agreed to buy 95 of CCC’s 300 acres. The acreage had been rumored to be on the market and could have been the site for a townhouse development.
“The Township, with the help and support of the Council, agreed to terms with CCC for acquiring 95 acres of undeveloped land that had been slated for development,” said Parisi. “The acquisition will permanently preserve the land while protecting the surrounding neighborhoods.”
Crestmont started off as an 18-hole golf course by August Sipple in 1913. Although the Pleasantdale section course has since changed hands five times, its 248 members have built a wedding reception area, a track and field oval and a polo course.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – Although the South Orange-Maplewood School District is well on its way to full in-person learning, nearly 24 parents, on May 10, want the former learning model to happen sooner than later.
The 20 parents asked Schools Superintendent Dr. Ronald Taylor and the Board of Education that Monday night to bring back full in-person learning before the current 2020-21 school year ends.
Full return soon advocates cited declining infection rates and improved student learning.
“We haven’t given up” on a five-day in-person week, replied Taylor. “We’ll make sure we’re still vigilant” by talking with local and state health officials.
SOMSD, since April 26, have made in-person learning available to all grades. Grades Six-Eight students, however, are allowed in-person learning five days a week. Students from the Sixth Grade up are on a hybrid learning model; both students and teachers on half-day schedules.
BLOOMFIELD – Mayor Michael Venezia came to Broadacres Office Park to walk a picket line with Planned Companies cleaning workers and SEIU 32BJ members May 4,
They are asking Broadacres new owner, ERCT Capital Group, to either restore the cleaner’s lost wages or replace Planned Companies with a union contractor. Workers told 32BJ, Venezia and the public that Planned had slashed their hourly wages from $16.10 per hour to $12.50 an hour and reduced their health benefits.
Former Broadacres owner, P3 Properties, fired the unionized Raritan cleaners and replaced them with Parsippany-based Planned Companies after it sold the four-building office park to ERCT April 1.
Broadacres – at 1455 Broad St., and 200, 300 and 400 Broadacres Dr. – is located in the North Plains neighborhood, close to the Clifton border. The sale was conducted without advertising.
The Montclair-based ERCT holds various commercial and residential properties in New Jersey, including those in East Orange, West Orange and Montclair.
“We won’t stand for the abusive treatment by the Planned Companies, or anyone else, much less our essential workers who day to day keep us safe and protected,” said Venezia. “We urge the building owners to reject these practices and hire a union contractor who’ll pay workers a fair wage, give them back their family healthcare and treat them with dignity.”
MONTCLAIR – The owners of the Bellevue Theatre have set a deadline to have the Upper Montclair landmark reopened to the public on or before May 13, 2022.
That date was when the two-story theater first opened on May 13, 1922. It had been continuously run until tenant BowTie Cinemas let its lease expire Nov. 30, 2017. BowTie, which still runs the Clairidge in the Bloomfield Avenue Business District, took most of the motion picture projection equipment with them.
Theater President Doreen Sayegh, speaking on owner Jesse’s behalf May 13, 2021, stood outside 260 Bellevue Ave. to announce that renovation work will soon begin, “once we have the paperwork filed.” That work is to be completed this autumn or no later than May 13, 2022.
“Most of the work will be cosmetic,” said Sayegh in a press conference with Mayor Sean Spillar and Deputy mayor/First Ward Councilman William “Bill” Hurlock. “We’ve renovated theaters or built theaters from the ground up.”
Sayegh was referring to the family’s most recent effort, renovating the Cranford Theater.
The Sayeghs are keeping the Bellevue’s four screens although one screen would also double for performing arts and stage plays. They have taken on the work since they pulled the lease on Bellevue Theaters/Highgate Hall LLC in January for “breach of contract.” Provision will be made, however, for future addition of residential and retail space.
GLEN RIDGE – The borough has a new “Top Cop” since Sheila Byron-Lagattuta has officially turned over the chief of police office to Sean Quinn here May 1.
Byron-Lagattuta, after serving the GRPD for 39 years – including the last 12 as chief – announced her pending retirement April 23, The Borough Council, on April 26, promoted Capt. Quinn as their 12th chief.
Byron-Lagattuta was promoted from captain on the recommendation of then-Chief John Magnier March 26, 2010. Magnier, a 25-year veteran, retired to join the US Department of Homeland Security’s Vermont office.
Byron-Lagattuta became the borough’s first woman chief after “working every position of the department.” The Denver-born Bryon was introduced to police work when a Glen Ridge High School guidance counselor told her of a dispatcher’s opening in 1982.
She was a junior detective when she worked the 1989 “Our Boys” case, where several high school boys sexually assaulted a mentally deficient girl in a home basement with a bat. Capt. Byron-Lagattuta created the department’s Domestic Violence Response Team in 1996.
The wife of retired Cedar Grove Police Det. Charles Lagattuta, however, had been the subject of two workplace harassment suits since 2016. Both cases were settled out of court by August.
Chief Quinn has also gone up through the ranks, including as head of GRPD’s Internal Affairs Office since 2015.
BELLEVILLE – The township’s Silver Lake riders were the first to know about a signal problem that had affected NJTransit’s Newark Light Rail Mainline during May 19’s morning rush hour.
The seven Newark Penn Station Silver Lake passengers knew something was wrong when train No. 107 stopped by the outbound, or Grove Street, Bloomfield-bound platform at 7:26 a.m. Tuesday. The unusual stop also caught the three outbound passengers.
No. 107’s train operator motioned the inbound passengers to go around, get seated – and wait for word from a NLR dispatcher.
“I told the dispatcher and they’ll be sending a crew here soon,” said the operator. “We have signal problems at (Newark’s) Branch Brook Park; if you need to make alternate transportation, you may do so while we wait. I apologize for not having an external PA system to tell you.”
No. 107 was still “on the wrong track” when another train came from the Grove Street yard to pick up inbound passengers at their intended platform five minutes later. NJTransit announced at 8:20 a.m. that, while the signal problem was corrected, riders on “the Grove Street Extension” can be up to 15 minutes late.
The Newark Light Rail handles an average 18,000 daily riders pre-pandemic. Its Grove Street Extension was added Sept. 1, 2001 as part of NJTransit’s renovating the former Newark City Subway. NLR’s Broad Street Connector, in downtown Newark, was unaffected.
NUTLEY – Nutley’s Township Commissioners, pending the outcome of a June 1 public hearing here, are looking to close the door to most Cannabis-Based Businesses.
The Commissioners had set up the public hearing and final vote after approving Ordinance No. 3473’s introduction at their May 4 meeting. R-3473 calls for banning all six classes of CBBs permitted by the state – with the exception of residents receiving products from an outside delivery service.
Nutley, should R-3473 pass, would close – but not lock – the door to CBBs here.
State CBB regulations, drafted after a majority of registered statewide voters approved a recreational marijuana public question referendum Nov. 2, allow municipalities who ban CBBs to reconsider on or by this time 2026.
Nutley, pending passage, would join 15 other Garden State municipalities in saying “Not Now” to CBBs. A majority of Nutley voters, or 64.67 percent, approved the Nov. 2 question.
