TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – The NJ MVC Regional Licensing Center was open and closed in an institutional eyeblink Dec. 16 – but not because of Winter Storm Gail.
228 Frelinghuysen Ave. was closed, long before all other state offices had closed in advance of Gail at 1 p.m. that Wednesday, because an employee here had tested positive for COVID-19.
The licensing center – but not the inspection station and road test site – will remain closed for contact tracing and disinfection until Dec. 31.
Prospective MVC customers are asked to check njmvc.gov to see which offices are closed, which ones are open for appointment visits – and whether one’s business can be conducted online.
Walker Dead Near I-280
Newark Police and Essex County Prosecutor’s Office detectives, as of press time, were still investigating the Dec. 23 early morning car crash off an Interstate 280 exit ramp that left an unidentified man dead.
Preliminary NPD/ECPO findings have the driver of a bronze four-door SUV losing control after leaving I-280 Exit 13 and crossing First Street onto the Sussex Avenue Connector at 3:20 a.m. Wednesday. It incurred front end damage after striking the walker.
The victim was rushed to Newark’s University Hospital, where he had died at 4 a.m. The connector was closed into that morning’s rush hour for the field investigation. The SUV driver had not been identified.
IRVINGTON – “Now just WHERE were you shot?” was the question asked by Irvington, Hillside and Newark police officers to a Newark hospital patient there Dec. 15.
IPD detectives were called to RWJBarnabas Health Beth Israel Hospital just after midnight Dec. 16 by their Newark colleagues. A man walked into Beth Israel’s emergency ward with gunshot wounds 11:30 p.m. Dec. 15. He told hospital staff and NPD that he was shot in Irvington – but without further detail.
HPD detectives were called in by 4 a.m. Dec. 16 when the victim later said he had shot himself in that township. The now-tri-town investigation continues.
Man Sets Gas Station Fire
A township man, accused of setting an Elmwood Park gas station on fire Dec. 14, was to know if he would be home for the holidays after his Dec. 23 bail hearing at State Superior Court-Hackensack.
Glenn B. Wilson, 36, has been held in the Bergen County Jail since his Dec. 15 arrest. He has been charged with two counts each of aggravated arson and thereof with intent for bodily injury or death. The Dec. 23 hearing was to have determined if Wilson is facing either a first or second degree charge of theft by threatening.
The cashier and station attendant of Fuel 4 on Market Street said Wilson was arguing with them while they were pumping gasoline into his car at about 10 a.m. Dec. 14. They said Wilson removed the fuel pump nozzle, sprayed the ground with gas, used a lighter to set the fuel ablaze and sped away without paying. The fire was quickly put out.
EAST ORANGE – City police detectives are seeking the person who shot a man in one of his legs here in the Ashland section Dec. 15.
EOPD officers, responding to calls of gunfire around 234 North Arlington Ave., found the wounded man there at about 10 p.m. that Tuesday.
Local EMS medics took the victim to Newark’s University Hospital for overnight treatment.
Maskless Skateboarding Closes Park
Memorial Park’s “Victory” statue will be lonelier over the holidays since Mayor Theodore “Ted” Green has closed its skate park.
Green, from his home Dec. 11, cited social media posts of skaters not wearing masks to close the East Orange Skate Park. The skate park had been seasonally open since its Aug. 14, 2019 ribbon-cutting.
Green, who had tested positive for the virus by Dec. 7, and city administrators have stressed that the rest of Memorial Park remains open for passive recreational use. Memorial Park, with its World War One “Victory” statue as its centerpiece, is bordered by Freeway Drive East, South, Arlington and Lenox avenues and South Walnut Street.
ORANGE – The City Council will be calling for public comment on establishing an Orange Municipal Court Director’s post, and possibly casting a final vote, Jan. 5.
Resolution 62-2020, which was passed on Dec. 1 introduction by the council, would supervise court clerk performance, adjust workloads and set work priorities. The prospective director is to have a college or university bachelor’s degree and at least three years’ work experience in organizing, planning and/or directing “significant operating programs.”
The reasoning, as per the ordinance’s first of four pages, is that the OMC has an annual caseload upward of 30,000 cases, hold four or more court sessions a week and runs on an at least $300,000 budget That budget passes annual adequacy muster by State Superior Court-Essex Vicinage Assignment Judge Sallyanne Floria.
Current Municipal Court Administrator James E. Moss currently oversees two deputy clerks, a temporary part-time ticket clerk and a high school intern clerk. The said p/t clerk partially fills the vacancy of a third deputy clerk, who had died in 2019.
Director-led municipal courts who have larger populations and/or caseloads include Newark, Irvington, Jersey City, Paterson and Hamilton Township.
No salary has been proposed, nor does the ordinance state whether the director would replace the municipal court administrator. Also unstated is whether MCA Moss would be considered for the new post.
State websites have listed MCA annual salary ranges from $49,000 to $74.100 with a $60,198 median income.
WEST ORANGE – The Township Council approved granting a 30-year Payment in Lieu of Taxes for the redevelopment of three Executive Suites office buildings by 1:05 a.m. Dec. 16.
City elders approved, on a 4-1 vote, a township administration agreement where Executive Suites owner Clarion will pay an average $1.3 million a year after it has converted 100 and 200 Executive Drive into residential units.
The PILOT will also cover Clarion’s payments for 10 Rooney Circle redevelopment, which would be converted to West Orange’s new DPW & Engineering headquarters and West Orange Public Library.
What the council voted on can be considered “Executive Suites 2.0,” where 300 Executive Dr. has been excluded. Clarion has also long spun off the neighboring Essex Green Shopping Center from its original redevelopment, PILOT and “An Area in Need of Redevelopment” request.
The township administration and its Heyer, Gruel and Associates consulting planners went back to the drawing board after A State Appellate Court panel overruled the first Executive Suites AINOR and PILOT Sept. 11.
John Krakoviak, in his last major vote on the council, was the lone dissenter. Krakoviak’s tenure, dating back to 2010, has declined re-election Nov. 3. Councilman Jerry Guarino, whose re-election bid failed Nov. 3, and newly re-elected Council President Michelle Casalino, voted for the PILOT.
Planning Board Chairman Ron Weston, according to council discussion, has either resigned or will not be returned to the board Jan. 1.
SOUTH ORANGE – People with long memories are midway between saying, “Goodbye Gruning’s and Blockbuster” and “Hello Vose + Taylor” here along 55-65b South Orange Ave.
Sanzari and other HUB Realty contractors had been demolishing the three South Orange Avenue storefront buildings plus 60-62 Taylor Place from Nov. 25 until only their basements were left by Dec. 18.
59 SOA and 60 Taylor Pl. may be best remembered as addresses for Gruning’s Ice Cream. William Gruning, fresh from opening his first store on Orange Street in Newark’s Roseville section, moved into the Freeman Building in 1925. He later bought 60 Taylor and rented it to his night manager.
“Gruning’s at the Bottom” became the flagship store and ice cream factory of a chain that included Maplewood (“Gruning’s at the Top”) and Montclair 1925-83, 84-91. 59 SOA became a pair of restaurants while the creamery became a Cuban restaurant and exercise gym. 60 Taylor became a daycare center.
When Village elders and planners began a “Vose and Taylor Redevelopment Zone” in 2017, reporters kept referring to the combined eight-property, 1.267-acre lot as “The Blockbuster Site.” 55 SOA, which the video rental store existed since the 1990s, had been vacant since that chain’s 2012 liquidation.
It their place will be a five-story 110-unit residential building with ground floor commercial/office/pop-up “maker” space. There will be 70 public parking spaces and 11 affordable housing units within the structure and plus another 11 affordable unit off-site nearby.
HUB, who bought the lots for $1.3 million, will receive a 25-year Payment in Lieu of Taxes worth $15 million. The village, in exchange for granting the PILOT, gets a $700,000 public improvement contribution and a five-year first choice/right of refusal on the second floor office space.
MAPLEWOOD – South Orange-Maplewood School District parents have until Jan. 4 to inform administrators here whether they want to opt into a proposed two-days-a-week in-person teaching model or stay on virtual/remote learning.
SOMSD Superintendent Dr. Ronald Taylor had opened the preference application pipeline at the end of a “Return to School Town Hall” webinar that was launched here Dec. 17. Taylor and his staff will also be feeding post-airing questions.
The two-town district administrators are aiming to have all students the opportunity for twice a week in-school learning by Jan. 25 in five phases. One phase has Pre-Kindergarten-Second Grade, Sixth Grade and Ninth Grade students plus special education and English language learners from all grades returning Jan. 19. Students will then be on an AA/BB twice weekly schedule.
Taylor did immediately respond to why not go to a five-days-a-week in-person schedule “like a neighboring district is planning.”
“Their five-day elementary design is based on a walking design,” said the superintendent. “We’re bound to offer transportation to families based on legal mandates, including the number of miles students live away from school buildings. This includes special education programs.”
The “Return to School” webinar was launched five days after 65 parents and students marched to the SOMSD Administration Building, here at 525 Academy St. to urge reopening schools for full-time learning. The SOMA delegation were part of “Safe Return to School” rallies that were also held that Saturday in Montclair and Nutley.
SOMSD wants parental preferences on Jan.4 so they can plan on class sizes and staffing.
MONTCLAIR – Two men were injured, and a bagel shop’s front windows were smashed, said township police, after a brawl here Dec. 12.
MPD officers on patrol said they noticed “upwards of 25 people” who were fighting each other in front of 560 Bloomfield Ave. that Sunday. Many of those combatants scattered when the first cruiser and other units arrived.
The two men who were left behind had cuts on their hands and arms, prompting a call for local EMS. The men said that the altercation began three doors west at the Antika Grill, 578 Bloomfield Ave. – and refused medical attention.
Two storefront windows and the glass front door to Royal Bagel & Deli, which was closed at the time, were shattered. The incident remains under investigation.
BLOOMFIELD – The closest a township man will be coming home from Atlanta for Christmas, according to U.S. Department of Justice-New Jersey District Attorney Craig Carpenito, will be a Newark federal courtroom for an arraignment hearing.
Attorneys for USDOJ-Northern Georgia District informed Carpenito’s office that Cedric Lewis, 30, is available for extradition. Lewis, they said, had been arrested in Atlanta Dec. 4.
Lewis had been wanted for narcotics and weapons possession since an incident in Elizabeth Sept 20. He had been accused of possessing “an AM-15 rifle with a high capacity magazine containing 30 rounds of .300 caliber ammunition” plus “188 jugs of suspected crack cocaine” in a car there.
That car, a 2012 Jeep Cherokee, was found abandoned with the said rifle and suspected narcotics on Newark’s Van Vechten Street. Elizabeth police said they began pursuing the Jeep in their city “chasing another vehicle” until they lost sight of it on Frelinghuysen Avenue. Lewis was the Jeep’s passenger.
An authorities’ search warrant served on Lewis’ home here at 21 Lackawanna Plaza Sept. 25 yielded a 9-mm. Glock pistol with an extended magazine reported as stolen from North Carolina. They also found a .40 caliber Glock pistol with an extended magazine, nine suspected Xanax pills, several distribution quantity bundles of suspected heroin, a clear plastic bag of distribution quantity suspected crack cocaine, $800 in U.S. currency, drug paraphernalia and a scale.
Federal attorneys here charged Lewis in absentia on two counts of possessing controlled dangerous substances with an intent to distribute, two counts of firearms possession while a convicted felon and a firearms possession count in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. He was also charged with cds possession with the intent to distribute within 500 feet of Watsessing Park.
Carpenito thanked the Bloomfield Police Department, the Essex County Sheriff’s Office and U.S. Marshalls in Newark and Atlanta for their investigation and arrest.
BELLEVILLE – The volume of properties the township has put up for delinquent taxes and liens Dec. 17 may dwindle to where the actual 9 a.m. Dec. 28 sales session here at the Belleville High School Auditorium may be a short one.
The 191 residential and commercial properties Tax Collector Mary Cabanillas and listed on a Dec. 17 legal notice was down to 141 by Noon Dec. 22. That 26 percent decline is due to property owners who removed themselves off the list by paying their taxes and charges in full.
Those who do not make good in full on the current year’s back taxes and liens may lose their tax certificate to a third party bidder Dec. 28. The property owner and tax lien certificate holder have two years to come to a payment plan – or the former may lose the property to the latter through eviction or foreclosure.
Belleville Township administrators have called for the $17,005.37 accelerated tax sale to help recoup revenue that went to combating the COVID-19 pandemic. That sale, as posted, individually ranged from $27,425.82 to $16.23.
Cabanillas told “Local Talk News” that “Conrail-Greenwood Lake Branch” had paid off $659.22 for a billboard charge on Block 702, Lot 2. That property was the Conrail Shared Assets-Norfolk Southern right of way linking the “Lower Boonton Line” to the former Jergens/Roche Diagnostics site over Mill Street 1938-2016.
That billboard has been Conrail Shared Assets’ only income generator there since the Mill Street bridge was demolished in 2016. There are no known plans to include that spur with Norfolk Southern’s June 16 $65 million sale of the Montclair-Jersey City LBL to the Open Space Institute for a proposed rail trail.
NUTLEY – An elderly resident is back home after being reported as missing and found in a Miami airport within a 24 hour period.
The man’s relatives first called Nutley police to file an “endangered missing person” report, due to his health condition, Dec. 5. They said the man’s luggage had arrived at Newark Liberty International Airport earlier that day – but not himself.
Miami International Airport Police called NPD and the family that they found their man on premises Dec. 6. They said he had traveled with his passport but without his wallet and cell phone.
The man was in MIAP custody until a relative arrived to escort him back home.
