TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – The FAA held productive talks with airline representatives from May 14-16 to address flight delays and congestion at Newark Liberty International Airport.
Acting FAA Administrator Chris Rocheleau addressed the group, explaining that aging equipment, staffing shortages, ongoing runway construction and severe congestion at the airport necessitate schedule modifications.
He pointed to the immediate action the FAA is taking to accelerate air traffic control staffing and new technology at Philadelphia TRACON, which handles the airspace around Newark.
Air carriers included United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, JetBlue Airways, American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, Spirit Airlines and Allegiant Air. Their representatives worked in one-on-one meetings with the FAA to find a balance between reducing their operations at the airport and meeting the needs of each individual airline.
A final determination on arrival rates at Newark will come on or after May 28.
Proposed Arrival Rate
The FAA is proposing a maximum arrival and departure rate at Newark of 28 aircraft an hour until the runway construction of Runway 4-Left/22-Right is complete. That daily construction will end on June 15, 2025, and continue on Saturdays until the end of the year.
Outside of that construction period, the maximum arrival rate would be 34 aircraft an hour until October 25, 2025.
How the FAA is taking action:
- Adding three new, high-bandwidth telecommunications connections between the New York-based STARS and the Philadelphia TRACON. This will provide more speed, reliability and redundancy.
- Replacing copper telecommunications connections with updated fiberoptic technology that also have greater bandwidth and speed.
- Deploying a temporary backup system to the Philadelphia TRACON that will provide redundancy during the switch to a more reliable fiberoptic network.
- Establishing a STARS hub at the Philadelphia TRACON so that the facility does not depend on a telecommunications feed from the New York STARS hub.
- Increasing controller staffing. Philadelphia TRACON Area C, which directs aircraft in and out of Newark, has 22 fully certified controllers, 5 fully certified supervisors, and 21 controllers and supervisors in training. Ten of those 21 controllers and supervisors are receiving on-the-job training. All 10 are certified on at least one position in Area C and three are certified on multiple positions. This means they can work those positions without supervision from an instructor. We have a healthy pipeline of controllers, with training classes filled through July 2026.
IRVINGTON – City inspectors, the county arson squad and the state fire marshal, as per standard operating procedure, are tracing the source of a May 13 house fire near the township center that displaced around 25 people and injured a firefighter.
The first Irvington Fire Department units arrived at a house on Howard Street off Clinton Avenue at 1 a.m. that Tuesday to find heavy smoke and flames coming out of the 2.5-story wood frame house. They entered the building and found that flames had reached parts of the second floor.
The fire was brought under control but not without an IFD firefighter suffering “non-life-threatening injuries.” It is not known whether that firefighter was treated at the scene or taken to a local hospital.
Between 20 and 30 residents, including four children, were evacuated. The American Red Cross chapter provided them with clothing and temporary shelter.
Howard Street is a three block residential lane between Clinton Avenue and May Street/Irvington Park. There has been no report released of the house’s damage or whether it is slated for demolition.
EAST ORANGE – City elders had mixed feelings on honoring former Senior Services Director Dr. Catherine Wills in hindsight, having dedicated a community room after her almost a full year before her May 3 death.
Mayor Theodore “Ted” Green and the City Council dedicated the “Catherine Willis Community Room” in the Edward T. Bowser Senior Center here at 90 Halsted St. May 13, 2024. Willis, who has served the city for 50 years, was instrumental in renovating the center in 2010.
“Catherine Willis was a woman of great fortitude and her passion for helping others defined her life’s work,” said Green in his May 4 statement. “She grew strength from her unwavering faith and belief that, ‘Through God, all things are possible.’ Last May, the city honored her contributions by naming the senior citizens center community room after her.
Willis, 85, died May 3. She had also been the city’s Planning and Economic Development Director and Democratic Committee Chairperson, Essex County’s first Director of Community Action and a Board of Taxation commissioner and on the state’s Department of Human Services Welfare Reform Task Force.
Catherine Franzzelle Willis, who was born Oct. 26, 1939 in New London, Conn., came here via New Rochelle, N.Y., Nashville and New York City. She got her degrees in social work from Fisk University and Bank Street College.
Willis became a longtime member of the First Ward’s St. Mark AME Church, serving as choir member, steward, trustee and administrator. Essex County Commissioners and the Orange City Council added to her roster of awards with posthumous proclamations May 5 and 20.
George Britt, Pastor of Elizabeth’s Mt. Teman AME Church, is among her survivors. Visitation and life celebration were held at Orange’s St. Matthew AME Church, followed by entombment at Newark’s Fairmount Cemetery, May 15-16.
ORANGE – A husband and wife, who proclaim themselves as pastors here, have been detained by the U.S. Department of Justice – New Jersey Division since their May 7 arrest on forced labor and sex trafficking charges.
Both Treva Edwards, 60, and Christine Edwards, 63, said U.S. Attorney Alina Habba May 10, were indicted by a federal grand jury April 25 for conspiracy to commit forced labor. T. Edwards was further indicted for sex trafficking by coercion, force, fraud and forced labor. Their indictments were unsealed early May 7 and were arraigned the next day before U.S. Magistrate Andre M. Espinosa.
The Edwards are founders of “Jesus is Lord by The Holy Ghost” here at 3 S. Center St. While there are two marked minivans and a straight box truck parked in the neighboring lot May 20, neither the church’s name nor the Edwards’ names are above the doorbells of the four-story Victorian era apartment building.
The Edwards, according to Habba and USDOJ Civil Rights Division Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon, used apartments in the southwest corner building of Main Street as a worship center and living quarters for their victims between 2011 and 2020.
As outlined in the indictment, the defendants would recruit people who are struggling and persuade them to worship and move in with them. The Edwards would use the victims to “provide manual labor in and around Orange” for their contracted clients. They “did not pay wages to the victims for their work and kept their money earned from their labor.”
T. Edwards would tell the new recruits that he was a prophet who had direct communication with God and that disobeying him would bring about divine retribution as well as physical, emotional and financial harm. Both Edwards would regulate their prayer, work, eating and sleeping habits and whether to leave the building. Members/victims were told not to communicate with non-members because the latter were “evil” or “possessed by the Devil.”
T. Edwards sex trafficking count was allegedly having “controlled and subjected one victim to repeated physical and sexual assaults, impregnated her and instructed her to get an abortion.” Whether the defendants have an attorney is not known as of press time.
WEST ORANGE – Llewellyn Park resident Whoopi Goldberg’s production company – including former township economic development chairman J. Wayman Henry – may be shifting their studio location attention from West Orange to Newark.
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and city Office of Film & TV Director Desiree Hadley said, on May 12, that they are talking with Whoopi, Inc. and the MBS Group about building a studio in New Jersey’s largest city. MBS, of Manhattan Beach, Calif., owns and/or operates 48 studios around the world including Los Angeles’ Television City, Queens, N.Y. ‘s Silvercup and Kaufman Astoria studios and two in Kearny, NJ.
The prospective studio, said Baraka, would generate affordable housing, local jobs and job training and economic development.
“MBS/Goldberg” would be Newark’s second large scale studio over the South Ward’s LionsGate. LionsGate – sited on the demolished Seth Boyden Homes public housing lot and to be partially served by a new PATH station – was scheduled to open in 2024 but is now set for a fall 2025 groundbreaking.
The Matrix Development Group is meanwhile redeveloping the 12.2 acre Barton Press/McGraw-Edison site at 55 Lakeside Ave. here into a “film ready community” studio.
The Township granted Matrix redevelopment rights and oversaw the Monroe-based company’s purchase of the property from Prism Capital Partners. Prism, of Bloomfield and Nutley, had redeveloped the former Edison Battery factory into Edison Lofts – but had to buy back 55 Lakeside from Wells Fargo after a 2011 foreclosure auction.
Whoopi, Inc. was interested in 55 Lakeside in 2011 and 2017, when the property was returned to township ownership.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – Another permutation from Columbia High School Principal Frank Sanchez’s 2024 arrest and reinstatement has been firmly settled in a Newark Superior Court room April 25.
Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Beacham dismissed Elissa Malespina v. Courtney Winkfield, Rachel Fisher and Stephanie Nasteff “with prejudice” – meaning that the suit can not go before that judge again. Malespina and Winkfield were South Orange-Maplewood School District Board of Education members 2023-24 Fisher and Nasteff were founders of “Friends of Frank” who supported the principal.
Malespina had filed a defamation suit against Winkfield, Fisher and Nastell Jan. 23, claiming that the trio were falsely asserting that she had conducted wrongdoing by leaking an internal Sanchez report draft to the Maplewood Police Department Dec. 12, 2023. That draft over internal findings about Sanchez’s altercation with a 16-year-old student in a CHS hallway March 9, 2023, led to the principal’s Jan. 2 arrest on second-degree assault and being placed on administrative leave by the school board.
Sanchez’s charge was downgraded to simple assault and was dismissed in Maplewood Municipal Court. The school board reinstated him June 23, 2024 – in time for that year’s CHS graduation ceremony.
Malespina, Winkfield and their BOE colleagues had received a draft investigation report from a district-hired outside attorney on the March 9, 2023 incident Dec. 12, 2023. They were told by the BOE attorney and a representative of the investigator that it was for internal use only, due to the need to have the report formally processed. Malespina said she, as a “mandatory reporter,” had to present the report to MPD due to the assault of a child allegation.
James Davis III, attorney for Malespina, said on dismissal that his client had been investigated by SOMSD administrators but no ethics violation charges were filed against her. Malespina and Davis said that she had been “intentionally, maliciously and recklessly defamed” by the three respondents. Beacham, in his written ruling, said that the “plaintiff had failed to establish a prima facie case as to each essential element of any cause of action in the complaint. and that the defendants are entitled to judgement as a matter of law.”
Winkfield told a reporter on May 10 that she had signed a settlement and release document but, according to a “Friends of Frank” statement, chose not to pursue lawyers fees out of consideration of the client.”
BLOOMFIELD – The remains of George A. Dittrich, who was born and raised here, will be buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery, after a Funeral Mass at St. Valentine Church, May 23. Dittrich, 27, died in the company of family at University Hospital May 16 from injuries he had suffered in the southbound Watsessing section of the Garden State Parkway 3:31 p.m. March 28.
Dittrich, who was born into a family of four June 19, 1997, was a Bloomfield High School Class of 2015 graduate. He wore No. 15 as a pitcher and first baseman for the BHS Bengals 2014 and 15. He was Petco’s dog day care manager in Totowa.
Dittrich was likely named after two namesakes – his uncle and great uncles. Uncle George P. (1938-2015), BHS Class of 1957, was a naval veteran and a 30-year Bloomfield Police Officer before retiring to Toms River. Great Uncle George ran an upholstery shop at 483 Broad St. 1930s-60s.
George A. is related to George P. and the earliest George by cousins/daughters Alicia Foulke and Carrie Bieksha.
Younger brother Craig, BHS Class of 2018, was a Bengals catcher. Other brother Anthony, parents John and Lisa and grandparents Joseph Mahoney and Genevieve Herrmann are also among his survivors.
The Levandoski-Grillo Funeral Home here arranged May 22’s visitation and its live streaming. Memorial donations may go to the Mayor John Bukowski Bloomfield Animal Shelter, PO Box 241, 07003.
MONTCLAIR – Students and staff of Montclair State University’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences are waiting to see if their specialized library in Dickson Hall will be staying, moved to another part of the campus – or be leaving with the just-graduated Class of 2025.
English junior Jazmine Perez has been keeping watch on David Dickson Hall Room 155 since May 5, the last day of scheduled classes and three days before the Class of 2025 held their graduation ceremony. Perez was informed by CHSS Department Chair Mary English on Jan. 24 that she was told by CHSS Dean Peter Kingstone that movers were to take out the library, busts and maps May 2-3. That move-out, however, said MSU spokesman Andrew Mees May 8, has been postponed to June.
English said that the “Classics Library” is being vacated so that the Student Success Center, at Room 153, will have needed room, going back to a 2018 capital plan. Where the room’s contents will go or be absorbed into the Harry Sprague Library to its southeast or be dissolved remains in question.
The CHSS mini library had practically grown along with Dickson Hall, named after MSU’s first African American president, since its1995 opening. Donated books of the classics in literature and archeology and related objects lined the walls over the last three decades. The library room became a seminar space, mini group study hall has works and hours outside of the Sprague Library.
Mees said that the “Classics Library,” not part of the Sprague Library, will have its holdings in a secured space for the time being. A change.org “Save the MSU Classics Library” petition to University President Jonathan Koppel has, as of May 17, reached 1,226 signatures.
GLEN RIDGE – Some observers are looking at whether the Glen Ridge Public Schools’ May 13 acceptance of an unnamed employee’s resignation and Glen Ridge Public Schools’ May 12 reception of a teacher-student grooming tort claim was coincidental or not.
Westfield attorney Justin L. Drazin, of Drazin and Warshaw P.C., said he had filed a $10 million tort claim against the borough’s school district and board in Superior Court-Newark Civil Part May 12 on behalf of client “MOC” and her family. The tort claim gives both sides 90 days from the district’s receipt to respond and to reach a settlement before heading towards court.
MOC, said Drazin, was the manipulated victim of an inappropriate sexual relation with a public school teacher from September 2021 into March 2025. The relationship started when the client was 11 years old in the Ridgewood Avenue Upper Elementary School – which serves as GRPS’ junior high school – and ended when she was 14 in Glen Ridge High School.
The plaintiffs’ attorney said that the “non-consensual relationship” was discovered when the victim’s diary was found by another teacher. The diary’s contents – starting as handwritten notes of early morning meetings into later emails, texts, voice memos and “obsessive messages and photo requests” are the basis of the grooming and coercive behavior.
That journal was turned over to the school’s main office, district administrators, borough police and ECPO.
Drazin, in his press release and in court documents, is accusing 23-year teacher Gerald White, 51, of Green Brook, of grooming. White was last listed as a Ridgewood Avenue language arts and homeroom teacher. The lawyer is asking for $10 million for “emotional pain, distress and other psychological damages.”
District Superintendent of Schools Kyle Arlington, at the May 13 meeting, said that state law limits his remarks on the “rumors circulating” that led to questions from the community on receiving “a notice of safety concern.” Arlington said that a GRPS internal investigation can not start until law enforcement completes theirs and the district will provide additional information when it is allowed to.
BELLEVILLE – State Monitor Thomas Egan’s May 6 overriding veto of the Belleville Public Schools April 29 6-1 rejection of the proposed 2025-26 district budget is the latest cause for some Bellevillites to regain financial autonomy.
Eagan, who has been in Belleville since 2014, allowed the $140,228,132 budget to go through with a $5,930,475, or 4.429 percent, increase on the current and outgoing 2024-25 budget.
That increase is being paid with a $1,415,612 school property tax levy. That 2.93 percent levy increase comes out to $127, based on the average assess house’s property value, on the coming school year.
The override is the latest incident for residents and public officials to cry out to the state to end Egan’s tenure here. Mayor Michael Melham asked on his own Facebook page May 14: “If the State Monitor can override our elected Board, why have a Board? In my 2024 State of the Township Address, I clearly urged the Board to appeal to the State for his removal. It’s time to return home rule to our district.”
Board of Education Trustee Jean Gillis had also called for Egan’s dismissal at their April 29 meeting. Both Melham and former BOE trustee Michael Sheldon – usually at odds on most issues – cite that the township had made its last $4.2 million loan repayment to the N.J. Department of Education in March.
NJDOE stipulated Egan’s monitorship as a condition of its giving the $4.2 million loan to plug that size gap in the BPS 2012-13 budget. Sheldon has started a petition for community members to urge the Governor and State Education Commissioner that Eagan’s sun has set in Belleville.
NUTLEY – The Nutley FMBA Local No. 44 saluted one of the township’s firefighters, Robert F. Shepard, Jr., by posting, “Rest in Peace, ‘Shep’ ” on its Facebook page May 13. Shepard, 69, who was a career firefighter with Nutley Hose No. 2 at 200 High St, died at his home here May 10.
“Shep” was a volunteer firefighter before being hired by the township. Nutley is a municipality served by both paid and volunteer personnel. NFD hired its first paid fire chief in 2023.
Born Sept 8, 1955 in Passaic Shepherd was a lifelong Nutleyite. The NHS Class of 1973 graduate married his high school sweetheart, the former Terry Sierchio. They raised Jonathan and Katie at their Oak Crest Place house.
Before his NFD hire, Shepard worked with his late father Robert at Shepard and Shepard Land Surveyors. That family business continues.
Sisters Maryann Romas, Nancy Luxton and Elizabeth Stoffers are also among his survivors. A private cremation was arranged by S.W. Brown & Son Funeral Home here.
