TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – The Newark Public Schools and the Newark Teachers Union, with two strokes of a pen here Feb. 11, have a new five-year teachers contract.
NPS Superintendent of Schools Roger Leon and NTU President John M. Abeigon, signed the pact in a ceremony that Tuesday under the watch of Newark Board of Education Hashani K. Council and members of their respective negotiating teams. The 2024-29 collective bargaining agreement takes retroactive effect from July 1.
Teacher salaries will retroactively annually increase by 4.5 percent. New annual teachers’ salaries will start at $65,000, step up to $67,000 the next school year and rise to $74,000 for 2028-29. Instructors who hold masters and/or doctorate degrees and those who have been teaching at least 15 years will also receive commensurate increases.
Teachers will be instructing for five periods per day with the option to voluntarily take on a sixth period. NPS administrators said that, should five teachers add a sixth period, a teaching vacancy would be filled. Administrators, due to a national shortage, may assign teachers to a sixth period.
Instructors will be teaching elementary (Pre-Kindergarten through Eighth Grade) students 10 minutes more daily and high school students 15 minutes more daily. That daily increase translates to 7.5 more days’ instruction per school year. Students will have available 30 more hours of tutoring time.
The contract revises “School Leadership Councils.” The SLCs now have teachers, school principals, “non-instructional support staff,” parents/guardians and community representatives on their panels.
Although the new contract was approved by NTU’s rank and file members June 4, details on some of the pact’s finer points had to be sorted out before the NBOE would fully approve.
IRVINGTON – The Newark Police Division has put out an all points bulletin since Feb. 22 for an SUV and its occupants – implicated in a Feb. 21 armed robbery in Irvington – who engaged law enforcement in a two-town chase before escaping.
The white Range Rover with license plate P25-MLC had already been on an Irvington police Be On the Look Out notice that Friday, and said it was headed east into Newark, when patrolling NPD officers noticed a vehicle matching the description along Frelinghuysen Avenue and tried to make a traffic stop.
The Range Rover driver, ignoring NPD cruiser lights and sirens, began the pursuit by speeding into Elizabeth. The chase re-entered Newark’s South Ward into the Central Ward’s University Heights section.
NPD and NJIT units followed the suspected car into Warren and Norfolk streets, where it then evaded its pursuers.
Details on whether Irvington and/or Elizabeth police took part in the pursuit and the Irvington armed robbery were not available as of press time.
EAST ORANGE – East Orange School District named at least six community members on its 2025-26 School Budget Task Force.
EOSD Superintendent of Schools Dr. Christopher Irving said that Shantel Harrison Bullock, Danna Dennis, Loretta Onyeani, Jazmine Parker, David Sharp and Mayor Theodore “Ted” Green liaison Melody Scott have had their first meeting here Feb. 13.
Bullock had been the Third Ward’s representative on the East Orange Water Commission. Dennis is policy vice president of the EPSEPAG group for special needs students’ parents.
Onyeani has retired from EOSD as a nurse and as its Adult School Principal. Parker, a former district student, is studying to become a social worker at Montclair State University.
Sharp is MOET’s coordinator. Scott may be best known as a real estate agent.
The task force intends to hold public review meetings on the prospective school budget, provide “accessible financial reports” and talk with the EOSD, the larger community and its stakeholders.
The task force was created to prevent the chain of events that led to the 2024-25 School Year Budget’s $25 million shortfall. The district had to layoff or transfer 93 instructors and staff members on Dec. 15 to plug that budget gap.
ORANGE – The Orange Planning Board, on January 22, approved the replacement of a 149-year-old South Ward house at 551 Lincoln Ave., with a three-story, 17-unit apartment building that includes 27 parking spaces on the .343 acre lot.
Applicant NkeChris Property Management LLC, of East Orange and Inglese Architect & Engineering, of Cedar Grove will be replacing a house that was damaged by fire April 18, 2022. Their drawings intend to reflect the former three-story and 10-room house’s Tudor style. The four-alarm fire was put out by 13 units from Orange and 11 neighboring departments.
NkeChris 551 Lincoln Ave. LLC’s approval is the fourth recent case where the planning board is replacing Victorian and Edwardian era houses with multi-unit apartment buildings along Lincoln and Highland avenues.
The board had approved construction of PEEK’s Highland II for 178 units and 243 parking spaces at 407-415 Highland Ave., in 2022. It also permitted Highland Park at 394- 416 Highland Ave., for 131 units and 213 spaces. The board’s latest plan approval for the old Tremont Avenue School and Orange Police Station at 593 Lincoln Ave.’s was in 2023.
Public speakers at the Jan. 22 session voiced their concern over curbside parking along Lincoln becoming scarcer. The city had held a parking space lottery at 407-415 Highland Ave. over the Year End Holidays.
The house at 551 Lincoln, which predates 1900, was the remnant of J. Ralston Grant’s estate. Grant used part of his treasurer salary from the Jersey City-based Woodstock Lumber Company to construct a mansion set inside 123 Tremont Ave.– and 551 Lincoln either for staff or guests.
WEST ORANGE – Township elders and Lakeside Avenue residents received word that their neighborhood, as of Feb. 18, made this year’s list of 13 Brownfield Development Area sites.
State DEP Commissioner Shawn LaTourette announced that Tuesday that Gov. Phil Murphy had approved 13 BDA site memoranda of understanding with West Orange and nine other municipalities. It is a revival of a program which last announced its list of BDAs in 2009.
West Orange and Orange were last awarded a BDA designation for its shared Central Valley District in 2006. That project covered the 15 sites among the 10.5 acres between them to remediate and redevelop residential and commercial space and opened a new park.
Awarded towns are now open to receive up to $5 million in individual Hazardous Discharge Site Remediation Fund grants covering up to 75 percent of the cleanup expenses. The Lakeside Avenue BDA will get a designated Office of Brownfield and Community Revitalization officer who will coordinate cleanup and redevelopment among the municipality, stakeholders and Licensed Site Remediation Professionals.
The Lakeside Avenue BDA is centered on 55 Lakeside Ave., where the township’s DPW calls home. 55 Lakeside dates back to 1912, when Thomas A. Edison Industries built his phonograph works there. Rebuilt after a 1914 fire, it became McGraw-Edison property in 1955 and was demolished in 1974. A two-story Barton Press plant was built there and is now the DPW garage and yard.
The 12.2 acre BDA site includes a house on Babcock Place to the former Edison factory site’s north plus 1 and 25 Lakeside Ave. The township had transferred the parcels to Matrix Development Group, Co., of Monroe Sept. 24, 2024 towards construction of up to six movie and video production studios with the intention to generate 300 to 600 full time jobs.
SOUTH ORANGE – When township voters cast their choice for the three Township Committee seats open for the Nov. 4, 2025 General Election, Councilwoman Karen Hartshorn Hilton’s name will not be there.
Hilton, whose current term expires Dec. 31, announced on Feb. 13 that she will not be pursuing a third Village Council term. She and her husband Jim, who first moved here in 1995, will be returning to Massachusetts on April 15.
Hilton, who also raised their four children with Jim here, was first elected in May 2017 and re-elected in 2021. She was elected onto the then-Village Board of Trustees – whose name was changed with State Legislature blessing in 2024.
That same state permission gave village elders the option to move their municipal nonpartisan election from May to the November General Election – which now-Village Mayor Sheena Collum and the council exercised on Nov. 25. Hilton, Bobby Brown and Bill Haskins had their June 30 terms extended to Dec. 31.
Neither Brown nor Haskins, who ran together in 2021, have indicated as of press time on whether they will seek re-election. Hilton’s seat may remain vacant April 15-Dec. 31.
MAPLEWOOD – The Democratic Committee club here is looking for letters of interest in filling an impending Township Committee seat this year on or by March 3.
The MDC is more than making their regular appeal for Township Committee candidates for the now-June 10 party primary and Nov. 4. general election. They are looking for a candidate to succeed Deputy Mayor Deborah Engel, who announced her lame duck status on Feb. 4.
Party committee chairman Ian Grodman had put a Feb. 19 public information session on YouTube. The recorded-live meeting discussed serving on the Township Committee, candidacy requirements and the election process. The Party will be hosting a post-March 4 public candidate forum here March 10.
Maplewood operates on a party primary and partisan general election calendar. The township operates on the committee format, where each member is also the head of an administrative department. Committee members also annually choose a mayor and a deputy mayor from among themselves.
There is no word as of press time on whether the Maplewood Republican Committee will be fielding any candidates this year.
Prospective township committee candidates are to send their letter of interest and resume to iangroadman@gmail.com and/or hello@maplewooddemocrats.org on or before March 3. Petitions – which need at least 25 signatures on or by March 10 – are available from Grodman and/or the Township Clerk’s office.
BLOOMFIELD – The last of the Bakelite buildings here on the DPW yard and recycling facility at 230 Grove St. has been leveled about a month ahead of the township’s Feb. 29 contract completion date.
Workers and equipment from Caravella, of East Hanover, began demolishing the three-and-four story building abutting the former Erie Railroad Orange Branch right-of-way Dec. 4 and left an earthen mound on the site by Jan. 31. It was awarded the $100,000 demolition contract from the township last summer.
Caravella could not move in its excavators until another contractor had removed asbestos and any other hazardous material. The demolition and remediation were covered by a $1.4 million grant from the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs. The council had used a $58,305 remediation grant on the site in 2011.
Although the township received the buildings and the yard from Bloomfield College in the 1950s, the discovery of asbestos in the 1990s prevented its use. The township demolished the other eight Bakelite office and factory buildings for temporary DPW bays and office trailers.
The Bakelite Company gave the complex to Bloomfield College for science lab use before moving to Bound Brook in 1939. Its founder moved into 230 Grove St. to produce resin-based plastic materials – from resistors to napkin rings – in 1920.
MONTCLAIR – The township, since Feb. 13, has two institutions supporting the “LGBTQIA2S+” community here: OutMontclair and, now, the Pride Center of Montclair.
“The Pride Center of Montclair will be a vital resource hub for the LGBTQIA2S+ community, offering a safe space amidst a shifting political landscape,” said its founding executive director Marie Cottrell that Thursday. “The Pride Center will serve as a lifeline to the community, fostering resilience, hope and action.”
The Pride Center does not have a physical space but a Facebook page. That page includes a Feb. 26 3-4 p.m. Lambda Legal workshop for transgender, gender nonconforming and nonbinary people – followed by a 7-9 p.m. bingo fundraiser at Just Jake’s.
Cottrell left OutMontclair and its president, Lenore Horton, after the latter issued a Feb. 7 post on its transition. Horton explained that OutMontclair is moving from a paid administration team to a volunteer board to direct its events and outreach. OutMontclair started talking with its June MontclairPride 2025 festival in Feb. 14.
Horton is meanwhile urging Cottrell and the Pride Center to change its name to prevent confusion among the two groups and MontclairPride. The OM president said she is concerned that those wanting to donate to MontclairPride will get confused. She said that Cottrell started creating The Pride Center while she was still on at OM.
OutMontclair’s structural changes were in response to MontclairPride2024 ending up in debt. One of the older group’s founders, Councilman Peter Yacobellis, resigned there and from the Township Council in 2023 and moved to the Pacific Northwest.
GLEN RIDGE – The Glen Ridge Congregational Church will celebrate Shrove Tuesday March 4 with dates and rose syrup instead of pancakes and maple syrup.
GRCC and Peace Islands Institute, for the first time here, will be holding a “Multi Faith Iftar Dinner” 6-8 p.m. that Tuesday. Diners will be sharing the nightly Ramadan Iftar dinner with invited area Muslims and those of other faiths.
Practicing Muslims will be into their sixth of 30 nights of Ramadan, the period of daytime fasting, prayer and almsgiving. This year’s period overlaps the 40 days of Lent which many Christians are to practice from March 5 – Ash Wednesday – through April 17 – Holy or Spy Thursday. This confluence offered an opportunity for Peace Islands to offer a free Iftar to the GRCC area community.
“GRCC received a kind letter from Peace Islands offering to share their Ramadan traditions and to provide an Iftar meal to their congregation,” said church spokeswoman Holly Eastman Feb. 22. “We’re very interested in hosting such an event and encouraging the greater community to join us in learning about our Muslim neighbors and their faith traditions. Sharing a meal, taking time to talk to each other and to learn a little bit about each other goes a long way towards bringing us together.”
Eastman said she first learned about Peace Islands’ from Bloomfield’s Temple Ner Tamid and attended their Nov. 16, 2023 joint interfaith Thanksgiving celebration in the wake of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel. (Many Jews will observe the Fast of Esther and Purim March 13-14 this year.)
“I experienced such warmth and generosity that night,” said Eastman, who brought several GRCC congregants with her, “a time when coming together was of supreme importance for our community.”
The March 4 Iftar is free but requires a reservation. One can register with a qc code provided at glenridgecong.org. Details are also found at (973) 743-5596. Peace Islands – who has also held a Sept. 2, 2022 backpack distribution with the FBI Newark Field Office and an April 23, 2022 Itfar at Nutley’s Grace Church – has an Hasbrouck Heights office and reached at peaceislands.org.
BELLEVILLE – Township firefighters, with help from neighboring departments, put out a house fire along Baldwin Place Feb. 15. The Saturday morning blaze displaced seven people from among three families.
That day’s BFD blotter stated that firefighters first responded to fire reports at 10:35 a.m. The first units arrived at the 70 block of Baldwin with “flames coming out from the building” and all occupants having self-evacuated.
The incident commander instantly pulled two more alarms – one for all BFD hands and the other for mutual aid. The fire was brought under control within the hour while units from other towns covered the township’s fire stations.
The local American Red Cross chapter provided temporary housing and other emergency needs. No injuries were reported.
Washington Avenue or “Trump Avenue?”
Former Congressional candidate “Jersey Joe” Belnome presented a proposal to rename Washington Avenue to “President Donald J. Trump Avenue,” and presented a sample honorary street sign, here at the Jan. 28 Belleville Township Council meeting.
“President Trump’s ‘America First’ policies have strengthened communities like Belleville by promoting economic growth, supporting small businesses and prioritizing national security,” said Belnome. “This renaming would honor his contributions and reflect the values held by many in our town.”
The 1.75-mile President George Washington Avenue has been so named here since before Belleville became independent in 1839. Replacing the partial state highway’s name from the first President to the 45th/47th would require an endorsing council vote, coordination with NJDOT, sign installation and a dedication ceremony.
NUTLEY – Township police have put out an area bulletin regarding a Jeep and its two occupants who allegedly attempted to lure a child here Feb. 10.
A 14-year-old boy described to police about a “dark grey or black Jeep Wrangler” that he said had pulled up alongside him near Passaic and Hancock avenues between 3:30 and 4 p.m. that Monday. He said that he was heading home from school at the time.
The teen noticed a “heavy set white male” driver and his “black female” passenger. The driver offered him $10 to get aboard the SUV.
The minor ignored him, walked home – and called NPD. He was not physically harmed in the encounter.
NPD detectives are also asking their neighboring colleagues if the luring duo and the Jeep made similar overtures to other people in their towns.
