TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – Owners and/or landlords have 120 days – from April 6 to July 2 – to register their rental units with the city’s Economic Housing and Development.
The owners and/or landlords are to include up-to-date contact information of themselves and those who do their units’ maintenance and supply heating fuel and 24/7 emergency response. Those who are outside of Essex County are to give a designated within-county contact to receive tenant and legal notices.
The landlords or owners are to pay $50 per unit in exchange for receiving a good-for-three-years certificate of habitation from EHD. The per unit fee is to cover unit inspections for local and state code compliance at least once during those three years or when there is a change of a tenant – whichever comes first. There are no fees for owner-occupied units.
Mayor Ras Baraka signed the rental unit registration act the day after the Municipal Council passed the measure April 5. The legislation would give city departments contacts in case of emergencies and to prevent “zombie” housing owned – but not maintained – by banks or corporations.
“We want to ensure that Newark residents have affordable, quality housing; a direct process to address emergencies and repairs; and the peace and security of a stable residence that allows them to enjoy other aspects of life in our great city,” said Baraka upon signing. “This ordinance not only streamlines interaction between tenants and landlords in working towards solutions, but is also part of our strategy to counter corporate investors who buy up owner-occupied homes, fail to maintain them (and) attempt to hide behind anonymous LLCs.”
Failure to register on or by July 1 will cost owners/landlords $100 per unit plus a $50 reinspection fee. The certificates may be revoked should the actual number of tenants exceed the application’s maximum limit. Each ordinance violation can reach $1,250 in Newark Municipal Court. Details are found at www.newarknj.org.
IRVINGTON – The Union County Prosecutor’s Office, acting on the ECPO Special Victim Unit’s March 24 call, arrested a Fanwood man for the Match 17 kidnapping and March 18 sexual assault of an Irvington girl.
The girl, 12, told Irvington police and county SVU detectives March 24 that she was approached by a man in a car while walking home from the movies around 10 p.m. March 17. The driver coaxed her into his car and took her to his Fanwood residence – where she was sexually assaulted March 18.
Essex County SVU detectives called their Union County colleagues – who launched an investigation. The latter detectives identified the suspect as Keith Ashley Drake, 52, and arrested him March 31.
Drake was extradited to Newark’s Essex County Correctional Facility. He is being held on UCPO-file charges of first-degree kidnapping, first-degree aggravated sexual assault, second-degree sexual assault and third-degree endangering the welfare of a child.
The NJ Department of Corrections said that Drake was released from their custody May 22. Drake had been serving a 17-year sentence for the March 30, 2005 second-degree sexual assault of an 18-year-old neighbor while both were at his mother’s house. While Drake was supposedly on lifetime parole, he was not required to register as a sexual predator.
Drake’s detention hearing was scheduled for April 5. The joint investigation is continuing.
EAST ORANGE – Anyone who still have an unpaid parking ticket received here from Jan. 1, 2017 through Dec. 31, 2021 are in for an amnesty from the City of East Orange.
Mayor Theodore “Ted” Green announced on City Hall steps April 6 that the city will be offering amnesty to unpaid ticket holders for an unspecified time period. Green – flanked by East Orange Police Director Malcolm Boyd, Police Chief Phyllis Bindi and East Orange Parking Authority Commissioner Tyshammie Cooper – estimated that they, the City Council and Municipal Court judges are forgiving an estimated over 300,000 parking tickets.
The city, based on $54 a ticket, is waiving $16 million in fine revenue. Green’s estimate does not include interest and other parking-related charges that a city judge may also waive.
“We issued 40,000 tickets in 2017 and that number went up every year (since),” said Green that Thursday afternoon. “Then COVID hit, whose effects are with us to this day; people lost jobs, got behind on their bills. We, as a team, wanted to do something that would be right for our residents.”
The mayor said that he and the city’s elders and law enforcers decided that losing $16 million in revenue will not affect the 2023 Calendar Year Municipal Budget.
“Those who have unpaid tickets don’t have to duck and dive or sweat when they get pulled over,” added Green. “They do have to go through the municipal court process and have a hearing before a judge.”
It is up to the city municipal judge to also waive any interest or related parking penalties. The amnesty does not cover other motor vehicle fines, most of which is handled by the NJ Motor Vehicle Commission. Outstanding parking ticket holders are also subject to the MVC’s suspension of driver’s licenses.
ORANGE– Details are still pending, as of press time, on the identity and circumstances of the Orange Police Department lieutenant who had fatally shot himself while in police headquarters here April 8.
A local EMS ambulance crew and other first responders were called to 29 Park St. that Saturday on calls of an employee injury.
Responders arriving at the Freddie Polhill Law & Justice Complex were ushered to the lieutenant’s second floor office – where he was found. Medics had declared him dead at the scene.
It is believed that the OPD supervising officer’s suicide is not connected with the April 8, 1999 fatal shooting of Insp. Joyce Anne Carnegie. Carnegie was shot by while questioning an armed robbery suspect at Freeway Drove West and North Day Stret that Thursday night.
Anyone who is having suicidal or despondent thoughts are to call the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. 988 is live 24/7.
WEST ORANGE – The Township Council, under legal advice, voted April 4 to rescind the township attorney’s contract and related legislation it had approved on a pair of split votes here March 28.
The council approved Resolution 144-23 April 4, which puts Township Attorney Richard D. Trenk’s four-year, $42,500 per year contract, a second $175 per hour contract for related services and a third service contract for his Trenk Isabel Siddiqi & Shahdanian PC firm on hold for now.
Mayor Susan McCartney had cast the tie-breaking vote between council members March 28. to approve those new contacts with Trenk. A re-reading of the state’s Faulkner Act, however, reveals that West Orange’s governmental structure prohibits the mayor from breaking split votes.
The March 28 tie votes, had they first stood, meant that the township’s contracts would not have been approved.
Trenk and his Livingston-based firm are getting paid on their previous contracts’ terms. McCartney reappointed the 25-year municipal lawyer when she assumed the mayor’s seat on Jan. 1.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – A Pre-Kindergarten teacher has been suspended since March 27 after a family of a 4-year-old autistic boy’s family accused that instructor of holding him outside the window by his ankles. The family has since taken their boy out of South Orange’s Montrose Early Childhood Center.
The family, who took their boy to RWJBarnabas Health Cooperman Barnabas Medical Center for an injury evaluation later that Monday, is asking the South Orange-Maplewood School District to pay for the child’s out-of-district schooling. The boy’s mother and grandmother told a reporter April 6, while SOMSD was on Spring vacation, that they got a call from Montrose Principal Bonita Samuels at 4:30 p.m. March 29.
The principal said that the boy was in a classroom with five teachers and a teacher’s aide near 2:30 p.m. dismissal. One witness said that the boy, after failing to follow an instruction three times, had bitten one of the teachers, triggering a time out. The teacher, when the time out ended and in Samuel’s words, “went over to him and he kicked his legs upwards into the air to her; that’s when she had the chance to pick him up by both legs and hold him in the air, then picked the boy by his ankles for at least 15 seconds,” turned him upside down and shook him.
One of the other instructors, saying, “I have it from here,” interceded. That same teacher told the principal at 8:30 a.m. March 28 – who then alerted the state Department of Children and Family Services and, on that Thursday, the family.
The family and the boy’s pediatrician met at Livingston’s Cooperman Barnabas hospital, where bruises were found on one of his ankles and both arms. The family added that their child now shakes while sleeping. They have also called the South Orange Police Department, which has filed an incident report and conducting an investigation.
SOMSD Superintendent Dr. Ronald Taylor said that the district is “cooperating with the appropriate authorities,” that it takes “the health and safety of its students its highest priority: and not further elaborate due to student confidentiality and personnel matters.”
MONTCLAIR – The Township Council may have one hand on the municipal wallet and one eye on the calendar when it comes to resolving the status of currently suspended Town Manager Timothy Stafford.
Councilman Robert “Bob” Russo, in responding to a member of the public’s question, at the March 27 council meeting accused Stafford and his lawyer of postponing an employment hearing before them that was set for March 28. That hearing, which was not announced under the state Public Open Meetings Act, was postponed to an unscheduled date days before.
“Can I ask why we can’t say anything to the public?” asked Russo to Acting Township Attorney Paul Burr, Assistant Attorney Gina DeVito and Deputy Mayor Councilman/First Ward William “Bill” Hurlock. “Can’t we tell them, like: ‘the man didn’t want a hearing, then didn’t want one, then he wanted one again, that we postponed two weeks?”
Stafford, who the council put on paid administrative leave since Oct. 27, is an at-will employee and subject to firing without cause. Under the state Civil Service’s Faulkner Act, however, an under-the-firing-gun employee may request a show cause hearing before a governing body within 90 days of the latter’s declared intention.
That countdown apparently began when the Montclair council passed two introductory resolutions on Feb. 7-8 that would lead to Stafford’s dismissal. Those measures would put Stafford on unpaid leave and would state a show cause for his firing. That window, accounting for holidays, closes on April 19.
Russo’s remarks were in response to what Burr and DeVito presented to the council in a March 14 closed session. Four council members told a reporter post-session that Stafford’s attorney had asked for $500,00 in exchange for reinstatement – or be given $1.2 million to leave.
It is not clear whether Russo was among the four council members who talked with the reporter on anonymity. Stafford was put on leave in the wake of accusations of bullying and creating a hostile work environment made by the current CFO and the retired deputy municipal clerk. Hurlock was presiding March 27 for absent Mayor Sean Spillar.
GLEN RIDGE – The borough’s elders, residents and Montclair Water Bureau customers received good and bad news from the Montclair Township Council March 27 regarding its water supply charges.
The bad news is that the Montclair Council approved charging Glen Ridge transmitting water at $1,204.41 per million gallons April 1, 2023-April 1, 2024. This more than doubled the last rate of $598/MG set May 1, 2015.
The good news is that the 10-year water contract will hold annual use reviews by Montclair and Glen Ridge to set annual rates for each of the nine next years.
Unanimously passed by the Montclair council as Resolution 1-23-078, the contract would prevent a lack of communication over water rates between the township and Glen Ridge.
The former $598/MG rate was agreed to in 2015 by then-Borough Administrator Michael Rohal and then-Town Manager Marc Dashield. Their agreement, which had boosted the rate from $543/MG, included “additional increases over the next few years.”
The problem, as presented by Montclair Utilities Director Gary Obszarny, was that the respective administrators, managers and attorneys in 2015 have since retired or otherwise moved on. The current said officials were not reminded to check costs and adjust rates.
Montclair contractually supplies part of its water from the North Jersey District Water Supply Commission to Glen Ridge. The borough is dependent on Montclair for its water supply and delivery.
BELLEVILLE – Motorists who are to park curbside alongside the new “smart” meters along Washington Avenue should be advised to take their plastic and/or their app-accessible cell phones.
Township employees have installed the new meter heads over the winter that can take credit or debit cards. Motorists can also pay through the Parkmobileapp that Belleville has contracted with.
The $125,000 worth of bond-issued smart meters do not accept coins. This is the latest twist in a recent trend for businesses to go “cashless.”
“Local Talk” had encountered “No Cash Accepted for Same-Day Tickets” signs at the current New York International Auto Show. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s refreshment stands, during last May 29’s 500, would only take plastic cards or apps.
Some may have found “no cash” stores in New York City in 2021-22. That city’s council has since banned cashless stores.
Mayor Michael Melham, when the matter was brought up at the Feb. 14 Township Council Meeting, admitted that “we’re still getting complaints” about the coinless meters. The mayor said that the new meters – by not having parking enforcement officers not having to extract coins four counting and bank delivery – was more efficient.
NUTLEY – Area police are on the lookout for a silver Chevrolet Equinox, and its four masked occupants, who allegedly held up an Avondale area Dunkin’ Donuts early Easter Sunday.
Responding Nutley Police officers came to the store on 177 Washington Ave, said Public Safety Commissioner Alphonse Petracco, on a robbery report just after 5:40 a.m. April 8.
Employees there said that three males and a female walked into the store. The female “allegedly displayed a handgun” and demanded cash.
The foursome left with $750 cash and boarded the Equinox, which had no rear license plate, and was last seen heading north on Washington towards Clifton.
“This kind of behavior will not be tolerated in Nutley,” said Petracco April 10. “We’ll exhaust all resources in this investigation to apprehend the people responsible.”
