by Walter Elliott
NEWARK – Relatives, friends and colleagues of Johnnie Lattner, 55, have scheduled a memorial for the public education advocate for 2-4 p.m. Aug. 27 at Jersey City’s Watson Mortuary Service, 23 Gifford Ave.
ECPO detectives are meanwhile pursuing any leads to whoever had a violent confrontation with Lattner in his North Ward apartment before Aug. 17. A relative, after several days of no response, found him during a welfare check.
Lattner, a Mt. Olive, N.C. native who moved here in 2007, may be best known through the Parents Unified for Local School Education (PULSE) he co-founded with Sharon Smith.
PULSE organized a boycott of the Newark Public Schools in 2014. The New Jersey Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights found valid PULSE’s 2012 and 2014 complaints that NPS’ “One Newark” plan of school consolidation and closings had particularly discriminated against African American and special needs students.
Lattner was a frequent education panelist, public speaker at NPS Board of Education meetings, Rutgers Abbott Leadership Institute class attendee and demonstrator. The 2018 NBOE independent candidate learned his activism skills at San Francisco’s Midwest Academy in 2005.
“Johnnie Lattner was a gentleman who worked tirelessly for Newark school students,” said People’s Organization for Progress President Lawrence Hamm Aug. 25. “What concerns me is that his death is being considered as mysterious.”
ECPO, as of 6 p.m. Aug. 25, still lists Lattner’s death as “suspicious.” Lattner, who had no biological children, has called NPS’ some 40,000 students as his children.
IRVINGTON – A funeral for 1968-80 councilman Joseph P. Galluzzi, 88, was scheduled for Union’s Galante Funeral Home, followed by a Mass at Springfield’s St. James Church and entombment at Hollywood Cemetery at Union, Aug. 27.
Galluzzi – who also served as Essex County, Treasurer and budget consultant to the county board of freeholders1982-89 – died at his Springfield home Aug. 15.
The Newark native moved here after marrying Lorraine Distefano and opened his accounting practice in 1960. He was first elected as Irvington’s West Ward Councilman in 1968, re-elected in 1972 and 76 and had served as council president along the way.
After unsuccessful runs for state assemblyman (in 1971) state senator (1973) and county Republican chairman (1977), Galluzzi switched to the Democratic party to support Hillsider Alexander Manza’s U.S. senatorial attempt in 1978. His new party affiliation opened access to the County Hall of Records jobs.
A federal jury in Newark found Galluzzi guilty of 26 counts of bribery and mail fraud April 24, 1989 and was sentenced for a 90-month federal jail term. He was accused of steering $31 million worth of county and municipal bond issues, including Irvington, to First Fidelity Bank and Gibraltar Securities for kickbacks.
Galluzzi, a Central High School (Class of 1950) and Upsala College (1959) graduate, served in the U.S. Navy during the Korean Conflict for four years.
Sons Joseph A. and John, daughter Patricia Calluzzi-Holmes, grandchildren Joseph and Vienna Holmes and brother Anthony Galluzzi are also among his survivors. Memorial donations may be maie to Center for Hope Hospice, 1900 Raritan Rd. Scotch Plains, 07076.
EAST ORANGE – Some 400 people, mostly high schoolers in the city’s Summer Work Experience Program, marched from the Sussex (Avenue) Mall and held a “Jersey Wants Justice” rally on City Hall Plaza Aug. 19.
They more than decried the May 23 death of a motorist during an encounter with a New Jersey State Police trooper along a Burlington County stretch of the Garden State Parkway.
The student and adult coordinators brought William O. Wagstaff III, Esq., the attorney of Maurice Gordon, Jr.’s family, to talk about the case. They endorsed the Gordon family’s demands for an investigation independent of the New Jersey Attorney General’s office and “immediate” release of Gordon’s autopsy and toxicology reports.
Those who watched the East Orange Police Department-escorted march and subsequent rally that Wednesday afternoon also witnessed the culmination of SWEP’s social justice component.
SWEP is a seasonal college and career preparation program for 300 14-to-18-year-olds. The Mayor’s Office of Employment and Training division, with the Seton Hall University School of Social Work, added the social justice component in the wake of Gordon and George Floyd’s deaths at the hands of law enforcement 48 hours apart May 23-25.
Wagstaff, on one hand, applauded last year’s legislation where the AG’s office independently investigated any deaths of people at the hands of law enforcers. The attorney is calling for AG Gurbir Grewal’s prosecutors to hand off the Gordon investigation since the State Police directly answers to the AG and therefore a conflict of interest.
The Aug. 19 justice event and the Aug. 21 season-ending SWEPFest here were one of the rare times the students could personally gather. This summer, because of pandemic social distancing, became a mostly on-line Virtual-SWEP.
ORANGE – A Rahway man, as of Aug. 19, became the latest person caught in the U.S. Department of Justice and FBI’s four-year investigation of Orange City Hall and Orange Public Library finances and contracts.
Jeanmarie Zahore, 56, said U.S. Attorney Craig Carpenito in Newark that Wednesday afternoon, was indicted on two counts of wire fraud and a count of “making corrupt payments to an agent of a local government receiving federal funds.” The computer consultant’s unsealed grand jury indictment also lists a count of “violating the Travel Act to carry on bribery.”
Zahore, according to the indictment had approached “Individual One” in early August 2015 about landing a city contract in exchange for a kickback. “I One,” on Aug. 14, informed “a Municipal Court official” and a “Police Department official” that the Freddie Polhill Law and Justice Complex “had a computer system vulnerability” that needed a new network. as its remedy.
“I One,” continued the indictment, drafted a $350,000 emergency no bid contract for JZNettech and submitted it to “a City official” in the municipal clerk’s office as a late starter to the City Council’s Aug. 15 meeting.
“I One” explained the need for the said contract. The council, after several questions regarding the “walked-on” bill, authorized the awarding on a 4-3 vote. “I One,” the next day, sent a blanket purchase orfder to JZNettech.
Zahore, on Sept. 17, sent a $115,000 invoice back to “I One” for the project’s first stage and asked, “do you want a copy sent to you?” It would be the first of three payments of the $350,000 the city would make to JZNettech/Zahore through Nov. 10.
The indictment states that Zahore used $10,000 in cash, of $50,000 withdrawn from his bank account Nov. 20 and 23, to pay “I One.” Zahore, who was arrested, charged and released on a $100,000 unsecured bond, has a pending arraignment before U.S. Magistrate Judge Kevin McNulty.
WEST ORANGE – Community Coach 77 will not be running during Labor Day, Sept. 7, nor running afternoon “holiday getaway” runs Sept. 4.
CoachUSA Dispatch Supervisor Maurice Butler posted the no Labor Day service announcement from its Paramus garage onto the Community Coach 77 Riders Facebook page Aug. 25. CoachUSA has been running the former DeCamp route since the 1990s.
Community Coach 77 has remained some riders only one seat direct service to New York’s Port Authority Bus Terminal since DeCamp suspended all of its service Aug. 7. Both DeCamp and “CC77” have provided weekday rush hour direction-only service since June 16.
CoachUSA/CC77 continues to honor unused DeCamp bus tickets into Aug. 31. Regular rush hour-only service resumes Sept. 8.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – The South Orange-Maplewood Joint Fire Department’s first day of watch has been indefinitely postponed while all parties cope with the COVID-19 Novel Coronavirus pandemic, leaving the respective municipalities to draft their own fire departments’ budgets for 2020-21.
South Orange FMBA Local 40 and 240’s personnel, when the joint department is complete, will have had several members promoted and several new hires – made by the Village Administration and Village Trustees. Those promoted will have endured a two percent cut in their previously agreed-to salaries for 2020-21.
That was what negotiators among the village administration, Locals 40 and 240 the Police Superior Officers Association and the Teamsters Union local have agreed to since Aug. 3. PBA Local 12 and the village remain at the bargaining table.
The negotiations had continued after Village Trustees passed their COVID-19 impacted Calendar Year 2020 Municipal Budget June 8. The spending plan, revised to absorb the cost of curbing COVID-19’s spread, includes freezing salaries and increases while also cutting some of the public’s fees.
Village President Sheena Collum and Maplewood Mayor Frank McGehee said their monthly joint fire department discussions with the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs had been postponed since Gov. Phil Murphy issued his March 13 public health state of emergency.
The joint department, after some 20 year’s discussion and votes, has had its opening day postponed from Jan. 1 to April 1 and Oct. 1.
MONTCLAIR – A public referendum question on whether the Montclair Public Schools Board of Education should become a voter-elected panel may be on a 2021 ballot – should a petitioning group attain sufficient signatures.
Vote Montclair is conducting a second voter survey, however, before deciding on making a petition drive. The group, who advocates greater Montclair voter participation, is holding a “runoff” survey based on the findings of a first survey it had conducted earlier this summer.
The group said that 77 percent of 333 respondents of that first survey favored an elected MBOE, followed by 13 percent unsure and nine percent wanting to retain the mayor-appointed board.
Vote Montclair is hoping that at least 15 percent of the township’s registered voters, in the second survey, favor an elected school board. State election law allows a public question to go directly on the ballot based on 15 percent of registered voters. The alternative would be the MBOE passing a resolution calling for the question to go on the ballot.
Montclair and East Orange are two of 11 Type One public school boards statewide whose members are appointed by the mayor. Orange switched to a Type Two elected board 2017-20.
The Montclair League of Women Voters, however, found a majority of township voters favoring an appointed board in their 1995 and 2009 surveys. Questions on switching to an elected board had been defeated at the 1963, 69, 71, 95 and 2009 polling booths.
BLOOMFIELD – Township law enforcers said they have a Belleville man in custody regarding an Aug. 12 robbery at an Ampere gasoline station – but are still looking for the second male.
Brandon K. Boyd, 29, said Bloomfield Public Safety Director Samuel DeMaio Aug. 19, has been arrested in the nighttime holdup of the 7-Eleven at 122 Bloomfield Ave. Boyd was remanded to Newark’s Essex County Correctional Facility on a count each of robbery and conspiracy.
The gas attendant told responding BPD officers that two men walked into his booth and demanded cash and his cell phone. They fled east towards Ampere Parkway after taking $100 cash and a $600 iPhone.
BPD detectives are looking for the second suspect. He is described as an African American male wearing a blue pullover hooded sweatshirt and a purple face covering.
