TOWN WATCH
EAST ORANGE – Five people, including three East Orange Fire Department members, were treated for injuries after their truck, a car and a dump truck collided and hit a Brick Church storefront here June 7.
The three EOFD members plus the male driver of the dump truck and the female driver of the car were treated and released from Newark’s University Hospital later that Tuesday.
A preliminary investigation has the fire pumper truck turning north onto Lincoln Street after going west on Dr, Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard/Main Street at about 11:45 a.m. that Tuesday. City officials said that the truck had left its King Boulevard/Main Street headquarters on an emergency call.
An initial account has the driver of the black late model car somehow being in the fire truck’s path. The truck had its lights and siren on. Other motorists had pulled over to expedite the truck’s call response.
The pumper’s driver swerved west to avoid the car – which put it into the path of a southbound dump truck. The truck was empty, carrying no load, at the time.
The dump truck struck the pumper cab’s right front corner, sending the latter into the Lincoln Street side of Olive May Natural Foods. Olive May, which has been serving the area since 1924, had moved to its current corner site after its Prospect Street block made way for the Brick Church Shopping Plaza around 1972.
That store was closed for minor repairs the rest of June 7. No charges have been filed against any driver as of press time.
NEWARK – The University Heights Charter School community is hoping that June 24 will only be the last day of its 2021-22 school year – and not its last day of existence.
60 Sixth Grade students, chaperoned by teachers and cheerleaders marched from UHCS’s Elementary School at 66-78 Morris St. through the University Heights neighborhood and back early June 13.
UHCS Head of Schools Dr. Christy Oliver-Hawley was interviewed by “Spotlight NJ” June 6. “Audrey,” who identified herself as a school parent, brought up its scheduled closing to Gov. Phil Murphy’s WBGO-based “Ask the Governor” show June 7. A change.org “Save UHCS” petition, as of June 14, is 122 signatures away from its 1,000-signature goal.
The UHCS community is appealing to Murphy and Acting Education Commissioner Angelica Allen-McMillin to reconsider the state education department’s office of charter schools’ June 2 decision to revoke its charter June 30.
NJDOE, in its June 2 announcement, cited the school’s 2018-19 test scores as part of its reason to close. Oliver-Hawley countered that the scores did not reflect progress made with the May 2022 scores nor 10 other points of progress since her and other key administrators’ 2020 arrival.
UHCS members feel “blindsided” in such a late closure call, the school having held 2022-23 open enrollment. Gov. Murphy did say that he would ask Allen-McMillin to reopen Newark area school enrollment for the some 700 to-be-displaced students.
The Pre-Kindergarten through Eighth Grade independent charter school, sponsored by nearby Bethany Baptist Church in 2006, has grown to 700. It had opened a “Lower School” for PreK-Second Grade students at 74 Hartford St., and, on Sept. 4, moved its Middle School students to the second floor of 570 Broad St./Gibson Blvd. NJDOE, however, had placed it and the now-closed METS on academic probation for 2018-19.
IRVINGTON – The second annual Nashawn Brooks Day, held here on the Irvington High School field June 9, built on its newly-formed tradition.
The 2022 edition, like last year’s inaugural, started with a balloon launch and ended with a flag football game. That Thursday afternoon/night edition, however, tripled its football games to three.
Host Irvington FMBA Local 14 and Irvington BPA Local 29 squared off in the night’s first fire versus. police game. A men’s versus women’s game also debuted, although it was hard to tell on the May 10 poster which match that was among the other three games. The football program included “Leather Heads vs. Youngins” and “Pretty Good vs. Been Good.”
The program ended with the naming of four IHS Class of 2022 seniors who received the Local 14-sponsored Nashawn Brooks memorial scholarship.
It has been two years since Brooks, 20, IHS Class of 2019, died from his injuries from a June 9, 2020 car crash. He and two other young passengers were returning home from a Point Pleasant Beach pop up party when the Cadillac CTS they and two survivors were in crashed and burned along Newark’s stretch of US Route 22 East.
Brooks was a distinguished scholar-athlete, making more than 100 tackles as a football tight end and reaching the NJSIAA 2019 Wrestling finals in the 220-lbs. weight class. The graduating Blue Knight joined the Wagner College Eagles football squad whenever he was not pursuing a business administration degree and a minor in information systems.
ORANGE – A city man remains in South Kearny’s Hudson County Correctional Center since his May 19 arrest at the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office that day. Org man arrested, charged in October North Bergen hit-and-run.
Thomas Adedeji, 42, said Hudson County Prosecutor Esther Suarez, was taken into custody in relation to a July 3 hit-and-run in North Bergen. Adedeji is accused of striking a 50-year-old Fairview man on North Bergen’s Bergenline Avenue by 74th Street at 2:15 a.m.
North Bergen police and HCPO’s Regional Collision Investigation Unit detectives had been seeking the driver of a silver late model Dodge Ram 1500 pickup truck that kept going north on Bergenline. Suarez did not say how Adedeji and the pickup truck were linked.
The 50-year-old man was rushed to the Hackensack University Medical Center for treatment of serious bodily injuries.
Adedeji has been charged with third-degree charges of knowingly leaving the scene of a motor vehicle accident that had caused serious bodily injury and endangering the welfare of the victim. His first Superior Court-Jersey City appearance was initially set for late May.
Suarez also thanked the Cliffside Park and Guttenberg police for their parts in the investigation.
WEST ORANGE – A youth basketball team forfeited their participation in a Union County tournament last month when one of its hosts took exception to the words on their warmup t-shirts.
Sen. Richard Codey (D-Roseland) said he was coaching his squad of seventh graders when he was approached between games by Calvin Harper, director of tournament organizer Top Shelf Athletics. Codey’s team had been using the hour-long break to follow the tournament from the Clark Community Center to the Arthur L. Johnson High School gymnasium.
“We played the first game and there was an hour before the next one,” said Codey. “The person in charge of the tournament approached the (players’) parents and said we couldn’t wear them (the shirts.)
The light green t-shirts Codey’s team was wearing during warmups bore “End Racism” on one side and “Equality” on the other. Harper later told a reporter that he saw the shirts as a protest against Clark Mayor Sal Bonaccorso’s racist remarks recorded in April.
Clark Recreation and the Clark Board of Education rent out gym space for the likes of Englewood-based Top Shelf.
“I told them I didn’t want my event used for their protest,” said Harper. “Our event has no attachment to politics or to the mayor of Clark. Yet, it was intentionally used to fill an agenda, without concern for me, the other teams or the community of teams I’m trying to work with.”
Codey, an Orange native and former township resident, may be better known as being a longtime state senator and former governor than as a decades-long youth basketball coach. Bonaccorso, a Republican, is midway through his mayoral term.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – South Orange-Maplewood Superintendent of Schools Ronald Taylor’s May 16 report on the seven-month temporary moratorium on student suspensions and school removals, depending on the observer, drew good to fair grades.
Taylor, in his report to the SOMSD Board of Education, said that the moratorium decreased suspensions and removals among most student body demographic groups.
What suspensions that were made since the Oct. 18 moratorium amounted to 36, compared to the 115 made during the 2019-20 school year. (Suspensions were not ordered during the 2020-21 COVID-19 pandemic.) The 36 suspensions came from Columbia High School (17), South Orange Middle School (11), Maplewood Middle School (seven) and Clinton Elementary School (one).
A 20-member panel – including Taylor, principals and assistant principals from CHS, MMS and SOMS and two student representatives – implemented restorative justice and classroom community building in most cases.
The school board, in a split Oct. 18 vote, granted the moratorium as a means to correct a racial imbalance among suspensions. Taylor in his report, said that African American students who were suspended dropped from seven percent to three.
Taylor, however, noted that suspensions of Hispanic students rose 1.2 percent. The superintendent said he was examining the data to see how that happened.
Board member Courtney Winkfield, that Monday night, expressed concern that administrators will follow “the elastic band effect” and mete out suspensions as before 2020-21. The moratorium is to lapse June 30.
BLOOMFIELD – Neighbors and NJTransit Route 94 bus riders, after seeing the former Watsessing Methodist Episcopal Church and School buildings get demolished last winter, are awaiting the Dodd and Lawrence streets corner lot’s next use.
The 135-year-old sanctuary at 49-55 Lawrence St. – including its 50-foot steeple, and its 98-year-old school building – plus an adjoining house on 22-24 Arch St were taken down Feb. 27 – March 28.
The just over one acre lot has been cleared so that 3X Dodd LLC can build a four story residential-commercial mixed use building. The Passaic developer received Bloomfield Planning Board approval Dec. 17, 2020.
It is doubtful that those who get onto 3X Dodd’s roof will get the same view that celebrants had in 1894. WMEC, as part of a three-day sanctuary opening, charged people 10 cents to climb the steeple for a lookout.
Nathanael Lawrence donated the corner lot for a chapel to be built there in 1871. “The Little White Church in the Woods” was a mission of the now-Park United Methodist Church. The chapel was eventually replaced with a school building in 1924.
WMEC’s membership, however. declined from 806 members in 1928 to 378 in 1966. The sanctuary and school were sold to Living Water Church – who then sold it to Bethel Church of Love and Praise by 2000. Bethel, which had apparently moved to Shrewsbury, sold it to 3X Dodd in 2017.
MONTCLAIR – “Nothing’s official until the paperwork is completed,” may well sum up Ascend of Montclair’s June 7 false start in recreational adult cannabis sales.
Ascend, which had been selling medicinal marijuana products since taking over the former Greenleaf Compassionate Care store in April 2021, ended its recreational sales by 1:30 p.m. that Tuesday.
Interim Township Attorney Paul Burr told Ascend’s owners at 1:15 p.m. that its application process has not been completed. Tuesday’s rec sales were unlawful and must cease; continued sales may bring on township code enforcers and police.
Ascend, which also has a similar store in Rochelle Park open since April 21, had been striving to expand their Cannabis Based Business since last August. Its owners targeted June 7 for rec sales after receiving a resolution of support from the Township Council May 17 and a conditional township permit on May 24.
The problem, however, lies with the availability of a final township application that was to have been posted on its website June 6. That application form was not posted until after business 7 p.m. that Monday. Montclair Communications Director Katya Kwok, on June 8, said that a software vendor’s problem had caused the late posting.
Ascend of Montclair meanwhile delivered a copy of its paperwork, two $15,000 checks for CBB and business licenses and a note to Burr of its intention to expand June 7 in the Municipal Building night drop box.
Ascend, which is still open at 395 Bloomfield Ave. for medical sales, may have to wait until mid-summer to start its rec sales. Its owners have learned that it has to seek Montclair Planning Board approval at either its June 20 or July 11 meetings and wait for that panel’s memorialization 30 days later.
BELLEVILLE – A family is in mourning over the June 7 death of their 13 year old son while law enforcers are investigating his fatal circumstances here.
A Belleville police spokesman said that officers, township firefighters and local EMS responded to a 5:30 p.m. Tuesday call of a motorcycle accident at Joralemon Street and Garden Avenue.
They found an unconscious boy at the T-intersection, a dirt bike and damage to a utility pole. The boy was rushed to RWJBarnabas Health Clara Maass Medical Center, where he later died.
A preliminary investigation has the rider losing control on the dirt bike and striking the pole. Details, including whether the bike was registered or whether the rider was wearing a helmet, were not immediately available.
NUTLEY – A delivery van fire was the likely reason why some local United States Postal Service Customers did not get their mail June 11.
Nutley Fire Chief Henry Meola said that his firefighters had responded to a car fire report in front of 558 Franklin Ave. earlier that Saturday. They found a USPS Ford Transit delivery van parked in the northbound curb lane with its engine compartment fully engulfed by fire.
NFD firefighters quickly extinguished the blaze, which was restricted to its engine bay. There were no injuries reported. Local traffic, including buses on NJTransit’s No. 74 route were detoured.
USPS sent one of its tow trucks to retrieve the late model van. What mail that was on board was delayed but not damaged.
