TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – How soon tenants here at 440 Washington St. will get their sorely missed heat back may hinge on three conditions between now and March 3.
Municipal Councilman Carlos Gonzalez, as the elders’ Tax Abatement Committee chairman, had granted 30 days on Jan. 30 for 440 Washington’s owner, BRP Properties, to restore heat and make other corrections on the former St. James Towers’ substandard conditions.
BRP’s co-founder, Meridith Marshall, promised Gonzalez and the panel that his company will replace GRC Management, with a new managing company as early as Feb. 2. GRC had abruptly vacated their ground floor office in December without collecting January’s rent.
Gonzalez, as of Jan. 29, had held off taking the city’s tax abatement status from the 1970s-constructed tower pending on how much progress BRP makes. The tax abatement – along with state tax credits, rental subsidies from US HUD and $11 million from BRP itself plus St. James AME Church – was granted as part of a 2018-19 renovation.
City Business Administrator Eric Pennington meanwhile has a Superior Court judge’s phone number on speed dial. Pennington, on Jan. 23, said he is waiting for the Council’s nod to take BRP to court and have the judge assign a building receiver. The receiver will be the one collecting rent and assigning contractors to make urgent repairs and bring the 200-unit building up to code.
Pennington, that Wednesday, told Newark’s elders that a team of code enforcers, engineers and other city officials confirmed Jan. 9-10 that conditions are as bad as the tenants have said they are: sub-50-degree heat, no security guards or maintenance workers, holes in the wall, irregular trash pickup et. al. They issued code violation tickets to BRP by the hundred.
BRP said its first New Jersey property has suffered from decades of deferred maintenance and neglect when they came aboard in 2015. The New York City company bought 75 percent ownership from St. James.
IRVINGTON – A township man has a February date with the South Orange-Maplewood Municipal Court to answer to two burglary charges lodged against him by the latter’s police department since Jan. 5.
MPD officers, according to the township’s Jan. 22 blotter, were called to a Millburn Avenue business on a commercial business’ break-in and ransacking on Jan. 5. While the officers were confirming the front door burglary, the owner of a nearby avenue business approached the investigators. The owner said that his business had also suffered front door damage.
Off. Christopher Beischer brought the surveillance recordings and noticed the same suspect breaking in or attempting to break in both businesses. He then identified the suspect as Michael Damiano, 59, of Irvington. How, where and when Damiano was arrested was not disclosed on the MPD blotter.
Damiano was arrested and charged on a pair of burglary counts and released with a court date. The identity of the two burgled Millburn Avenue businesses were left off the report.
It is not clear if the suspect was the same Michael V. Damiano who was Irvington’s police director before he was succeeded by Joseph Santiago in September 2008. Director Damiano, along with then-Police Chief Michael Chase and Mayor Wayne Smith, welcomed the only PROJECT VISION Gang Prevention Program in Northern New Jersey at the Grove Street Elementary School Jan. 11, 2006.
EAST ORANGE – It is to the understanding of “Local Talk” that the East Orange School District’s Board of Education intends to have community members on its next 2025-26 school budget committee.
The promise was made by EOSD School Superintendent Dr. Christopher C. Irving and BOE President Andrea D. McPhatter before a near capacity audience at the Administration Building Conference Room Jan. 27 – the first board meeting after 93 employees were laid off or transferred to lesser positions to fill a $25 million deficit in the current budget Dec. 12. The previous superintendent and board had passed the current $220,103,828 school year budget on March 28.
Dr. Irving, who came aboard as EOSD Superintendent last summer, informed the public and the New Jersey Department of Education the first month into the 2024-25 school year. McPhatter, a former two-term First Ward Councilwoman, was appointed to a four-year BOE term by Mayor Theodore “Ted” Green in 2024. (The six-member public school board is the last mayor-appointed panel in “Local Talk” land.)
What remains unanswered is whether NJDOE will loan the district $25 million, repayable through a 30-year municipal bond issue. The Trenton-based educators had done so for $7 million in March for Nutley and Belleville for $4.2 million in 2014. Both loans came with a state-appointed monitor who supervises and has veto power over those school districts’ budgets.
No one has uttered “T,” as in “Takeover,” by the state of EOSD.
No one has said how the community member-added budget committee will be implemented – but their training time will be short. Their goal is to introduce a proposed 2025-26 budget March 24 after the board’s scheduled Feb. 24 and March 17 regular meetings.
ORANGE – City residents who are concerned about the future of the Orange Memorial Hospital site have been invited to the municipal town hall meeting here at Shiloh Baptist Church, 424 Main St. (the former First Presbyterian Church of Orange) 6-7:30 p.m. Feb. 19.
Mayor Dwayne D. Warren and his administrators are to unveil the hospital and former Ippolito Funeral Home site’s redevelopment, including this project’s overview, scope and projected timeline. City elders are hoping that this third redevelopment proposal since Orange Memorial Hospital’s 1993 closing will really happen.
The current proposal – as presented to the Orange Planning Board by redeveloper SYMREC Orange JV LLC at their Nov. 22 and Oct. 23 meetings – calls for the former Mary Austin Hall nursing school dormitory along Henry Street be turned into the new City Hall. The present City Hall at 26 No. Day St. dates back to 1871 as the second Orange High School. While providing space for a new City Hall made the SYMREC project a public-private partnership, whether the city will pay rent to SYMREC remains unclear as of press time.
The Boiler Plant & Power House off the southwest corner of South Essex Street and Central Avenue be converted into apartments. The modifications will adhere to the New Jersey and Federal Registers of Historic Sites restoration standards. All buildings are to have asbestos, lead and any other hazardous material remediated and removed prior to conversion or demolition.
Five other buildings on the block bordered by Henry, South Essex, Matthew and South Center streets, Central Avenue and Ivy Court – including the main 1929 building – will be demolished. SYMREC will replace those buildings with 1,005 new apartment units, 30,000 square feet of retail space, an ice skating rink and an amphitheater. A spokeswoman for the developer Oct. 23 said that the other buildings’ patient rooms are too small to be made into dwelling units.
A majority of OPB members approved the SYMREC plan Nov. 22, 7-0, with member Enock Faustin abstaining. Most of the 24 residents who spoke at Dec. 18’s meeting public speaker segment, however, questioned the application’s traffic management plan and to what degree the projected new tenants will add to the Orange Public Schools system and received limited answers.
The SYMREC application, however, needs approval from the State Historic Preservation Council to proceed – but the Department of Community Affairs office does not have it on its Feb. 21 meeting agenda. Preservation New Jersey Executive Director Kelly Ruffel, on Jan. 25, urged that such a Section 106 review be held before any shovel be turned.
WEST ORANGE – West Orange High School Junior Erin Feeney more than received a prestigious rank of Cadet Captain from a Dec. 17 local Civil Air Patrol ceremony.
Feeney, 16 and two of her fellow Curtiss-Wright Composite Squadron New Jersey Wing cadets received that rank as part of being bestowed CAP’s Amelia Earhart Awards at the North Caldwell Fireman’s Community Center. CAP said that only five percent of its 32,000 cadets nationwide. She was also awarded the 2024 Cadet of the Year.
Feeney, who is also co-captain of the WOHS Mounties swim team and a softball team member, is the only “Local Talk” area awardee. She received the award in the presence of State Sen. John McKeon (D-West Orange).
The Earhart Award is bestowed after a cadet has completed 11 achievements and has successfully passed a “comprehensive exam on aerospace topics, leadership and staff duties.” The award and rank promotion allows Feeney to enlist with the USAF as E3 Airman First Class.
The honor commemorates the pioneering efforts of Amelia Earhart (1897-1937), including her completing the first solo transcontinental flight by a woman at the then-Newark Municipal Airport in 1932.
Prospective Earhart awardees are to first receive the Gen. Billy Mitchell Award for “excellence in aerospace, character, fitness and leadership.” Mitchell (1879-1936) demonstrated that aircraft can bomb naval ships and advocated a separate air force branch. Feeney received the Mitchell Award Nov. 7, 2023.
The CAP Curtiss-Wright Combined Squadron has 52 cadets and 21 adults mainly from West Orange, Caldwell, Cedar Grove, East Hanover, Fairfield, Livingston, Morristown, Parsippany, Roseland and Wayne. The squadron – named after former rivals Glenn Curtiss and the Wright Brothers – and their combined company – flies out of West Caldwell’s Essex County, Lincoln Park and Morristown airports.
SOUTH ORANGE – Village police officers said on Jan. 27 that they have identified and are seeking protestors who defaced a synagogue, among other crimes, the day before.
Members of the Oheb Shalom Congregation and witnesses said that the pro-Palestinian party of around 10 were demonstrating on the sidewalk in front of 170 Scotland Rd. Jan. 26. That Sunday was the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day – the 80th anniversary of when Soviet troops liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp.
Rabbi Abigail Treu said they were holding a presentation by two members of the Israeli Air Force Search and Rescue Unit plus their regular Hebrew Sunday school. There was an SOPD squad car packed some 50 feet up the driveway for crowd control.
Several neighbors said that they were harassed by the marchers, including being shouted at with “baby killers.”. One protester was seen throwing red liquid, presumably fake blood, at a passing vehicle. Parents said they had problems picking up their school children.
One of the protestors wrote “Terrorists This Way” and an arrow in chalk on the driveway. A neighbor washed away the writing with a garden hose after the group had left. The on-duty SOPD officer, when alerted by the temple’s cantor, found a briefcase holding chalk left behind.
Public officials – from Mayor Sheena Collum and Police Chief Ernesto Morillo up to Cong. Mikie Sherrill (D-Montclair) have decried the incidents – which the ECPO Special Victims Unit and the N.J. Attorney General’s Office are treating as a bias case. News of the defacement has since traveled to Israeli media.
Oheb Shalom started out as an Orthodox temple in 1860 on Price Street and High Street (now Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard) but became a Conservative synagogue by when it moved to South Orange in 1958. They welcomed Orange’s Cong. Beth Torah in 1983. They still maintain a cemetery along Newark’s South Orange Avenue.
MAPLEWOOD – The South Orange-Maplewood Adult School will celebrate the life of Eva Samo, 103, here at The Woodland March 24 during their “Likely Stories” biennial event. Her funeral was held at South Orange’s Cong. Beth El Jan. 13.
Samo, who pioneered several SOMAS programs in her 51 years with them, died in Winchester Gardens Jan. 10. She helped create the Children’s Summer Program in 1974, the After School Program in 1983 and, into the 2010s, the South Orange-Maplewood First Night celebration.
Samo, who an adult school trustee called “an idea engine,” held various positions through 1996, including registrar, executive secretary, assistant director and associate director. She and her late husband Harvey jointly received the Maple Leaf Award for community service in 1993.
Born Nov. 1, 2021, Samo and husband Harvey moved into 35 Washington Park in 1961. Eva had retired to Winchester Gardens in 2002, after Harvey’s passing.
The adult school had also renamed its lecture series after her in 2020. The almost annual series began here in 2014.
BLOOMFIELD – Township police detectives are working with their East Orange and Belleville colleagues and U.S. Postal Inspectors in pooling circumstantial information of a stolen car, armed robbery of a USPS van and a collision Jan. 25 and 29.
Patrolling Bloomfield officers were informed by the Belleville police dispatcher at about 11:45 a.m. Jan. 29 that a Nissan used in the stickup of a postal van in their township may be coming their way. BPD Chief George Ricci said that one of his detectives soon noticed the speeding suspect car – and that it matched the description of one reported as stolen here in Jan. 25.
“One of my detectives saw the car in Belleville and tried to pull it over and the suspects took off,” said Ricci. “Our officers were entitled to chase, given that this was a felony (armed robbery of a USPS worker).”
BPD officers pursued the wanted car into Newark and East Orange neighborhoods until the pursued car crashed into two others along the latter city’s Summit Street. While it is not clear whether the struck cars were parked or occupied in the accounts, there were no reported injuries.
Four people then bailed out of the now-disabled car and fled on foot until they were apprehended. Ricci said one suspect was found while hiding between two other curbside parked cars.
The foursome have been so far charged with third-degree receiving stolen property and fourth-degree resisting: Tarik Dunbar, 23, of Newark; Shakir Tinney, 22, of North Greensboro, N.C., Conna Richburg, 19, of East Orange and Jaylissa Varnor, 19, of Orange. Richburg and Varnor have also been charged with second-degree eluding. It is not clear which pair are also being held on outstanding arrest warrants.
All four, as of press time, are also subject to being charged on federal counts of robbing a USPS carrier.
MONTCLAIR – Authorities are looking for the person or persons who called in a bomb threat during a Wellmont Theater concert here Jan. 6. The threat emptied the theater off Bloomfield Avenue and had its section between its Five Points and South Willow Street for an hour before the incident was deemed a hoax.
MPD Capt. Robert Romito said that the theater informed them of the called-in threat just after 10 p.m. that Saturday. Rapper-singer Destroy Loney was performing at that time as part of his Forever tour.
MPD officers, with backup from the Essex County Sheriff Bomb Disposal Unit, told the theater to evacuate 5 Seymour St. and cut the concert short. Neither the agencies nor the theater said how many people were sent to Seymour’s pedestrian plaza although the 1922-built performance space has a capacity of 2,500.
Mayor Dr. Renee Baskerville and Fourth Ward Councilwoman Aminah Toler put out and advisory, telling people to avoid the Wellmont Theater area until MPD could search for explosives. Traffic – including buses on NJTransit’s 11, 28, 29 and 34 routes – were detoured.
MPD, unable to find a bomb, declared the object “a hoax” and informed Baskerville and Toler. The two township elders posted an “All CLEAR!” notice at 11 p.m.
GLEN RIDGE – The older half of a former borough couple who owned an East Orange-based school bus company was sentenced to a five-year prison term and fined $500,000 in a Newark courtroom Jan. 24, closing the six-year case of F&A Transportation and Smart Choice.
State Superior Court-Newark Judge Mark Ali sentenced Ahmed Maghoub, 66, to five years in a state prison, pay $500,000 in profiteering penalties and is barred from doing business with the state or its administrative or political subentities for 10 years. The sentence is the result of a March 4 plea bargain Maghoub struck with the OPIA Corruption Bureau.
Maghoub, whose last address was in East Hanover, pleaded guilty to a second-degree count of false representation on a government contract. He had confessed to falsifying inspection records of T&A’s school buses and for failing to make background checks on the school bus drivers and aides he had hired 2016-20.
Faiza Ibrahim, 51, Mahgoub’s wife, is meanwhile serving a pretrial intervention program on a third-degree count of public records tampering. Ibrahim has also been barred from doing business with the state and its subdivisions for 10 years but is paying a $75,000 fine.
Maghoub and Ibrahim were renting from a borough apartment building when they started the Smart Choice medical van company in 2013 and, later, T&A school busing from 134 Evergreen Place. in East Orange. They had $3.5 million worth of school bus contracts from Newark Public Schools and other districts in Essex, Passaic, Morris and Union counties.
The spotlight first turned on the couple and T&A after one of its drivers had passed out and crashed a minibus with 12 special needs children aboard in Newark Feb. 20, 2019. Newark police had charged Lisa Byrd, 57, with DWI and endangering children’s welfare. Maghoub claimed that Byrd was an aide and Byrd said she had a medical condition. NJMVC inspections in April and August that year failed almost the entire T&A fleet and found that criminal background and sobriety checks were not made on some of its drivers.
It is not clear whether Ibrahim remains in Glen Ridge or East Orange. All of Smart Choice and T&A’s vehicles have been parted out. Miller Pipeline now uses their former lot at 134 Evergreen for vehicle and equipment storage.
BELLEVILLE – Count Mayor Michael Melham among those officials who are skeptical of President Donald J. Trump’s Jan. 28 statement on the drones that have appeared in and around New Jersey airspace last month.
U.S. Press Secretary Karoline Levitt read the following statement, who said came directly from Trump before the White House Press Corps that Tuesday:
“After research and study, the drones that were flying over New Jersey in large numbers were authorized by the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) for research and various other reasons. Many of these drones were hobbyists, recreational and private individuals that enjoy flying drones. In time, it got worse due to curiosity. This was not the enemy.”
There were up to a dozen drones flying at a time above various residential, public and private locations, including several supposedly reported from Maplewood. Some of the sightings were encroaching on air lanes in and out of Newark Liberty International and Linden airports. Two of the sightings were near Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in Central New Jersey and Morris County’s Picatinny Arsenal.
Trump, while President-Elect said that he would look into the drones and speculated that the outgoing Joseph R. Biden Administration “knows more about them.” Melham, who first said that the drones may be linked to radioactive material missing from a Central New Jersey processing plant, said Tuesday that he still sees the drones flying “all over the place.
“Frankly, it was disappointing. It sounds like a cover story because they have no cover story,” said the mayor. “You’re flying around in urban areas, in densely populated areas, 100 feet above homes. You see red and green blinking lights when they get over you, they look like small aircraft; they’re fixed drones.”
Some critics, including Monmouth County Sheriff Shaun Golden, asked why the FAA had not explained their authorization early in the sighting process. The FAA had issued drone flight bans Dec. 31 over 60 New Jersey and New York municipalities through Jan. 18 – including the Trump National Golf Course in Bedminster.
NUTLEY – A Clifton police officer’s apprehending a Bloomfield shoplifting suspect by Park Oval here Jan. 23 almost made the tackle on Nutley High School’s Tangorra Field. It was still impressive that CPD Sgt. Andrew Mulick followed the suspect some 1.5 miles south from the Nutley-Clifton border.
Sgt. Mulick was one of several CPD officers, said Lt. Robert Anderson Jan. 24, who responded to the report of a shoplifting at Kohl’s at about 9:30 p.m. that Thursday. The store’s loss prevention officer showed the officers a security recording of a man taking an estimated $1,500 of clothing.
Mulick said that he had spotted someone appearing to be the suspect at Franklin Avenue and Kingsland Street in Nutley – about a block south of where Main Avenue becomes Franklin.
The sergeant followed the suspect on foot through backyards and alleys and scaling over fences until the suspect – identified as Daniel Battalie, 35 – surrendered by the oval.
Battalie was charged with shoplifting, given over to Passaic County Sheriff’s custody and was remanded to that county jail in Paterson. It is not known whether Battalie had any of the stolen clothing on him. Mulick was meanwhile treated at a local hospital for hand cuts.
Battalie apparently is no stranger to Northeastern Essex County area police. Bloomfield police officers had arrested the then-Hackensack resident Jan. 30 on outstanding shoplifting warrants. He has been accused of boosting groceries and clothing from its Franklin Square shopping plaza Stop & Shop and Marshall’s June 20 and 1, May 14, 13 and 8 and April 22. He was earlier arrested for stealing groceries Jan. 22, 2024 and Feb. 16, 2023 from Stop & Shop supermarket there.
