By Walter Elliott
NEWARK – Moving your motor vehicle off major avenues, county roads and “Snow Emergency Routes” onto secondary or tertiary streets here in advance of a snowstorm, in the future, may not be enough to keep your wheels from getting towed.
“We have to do a better job in planning to get to those secondary and tertiary streets,” said Mayor Ras Baraka during a Feb. 10 webinar on snow plowing and clearing.” We pack people in (to the streets) and we have to figure that out. We’re going to have to tow cars; we didn’t want to do that during COVID, but trucks can’t get down (streets), cars get stuck and then we’re towing cars.”
Newark uses DPW trucks that are taken off of other duties and are outfitted for brine spreading, salting and plowing. The city also uses other public works vehicles to remove snow piles and are further supplemented by contractors’ trucks for plowing and clearing.
One problem common to the some 100 city and contracted vehicles involve their width. Some trucks have plows – or the trucks themselves – that are too wide for the smaller streets.
“It’s more difficult to get down side streets,” said Baraka that Wednesday night. “Sometimes vendors don’t go down those streets because their trucks are too big – especially when there’s heavy snow and it turns into a snow removal operation rather than a plowing operation.”
The mayor also stressed better communication with the contracted vendor trucks to right-size their plowing territory.
“There are a lot of trucks and vendors out there that are going different places and are shoveling in different parts of the city that they don’t even know,” said Baraka. “We have to do a better job to tell them exactly what we need, what we want and what they should be doing because they’re getting paid.”
IRVINGTON – The owner of two contracting firms here had pleaded guilty Feb. 12 to hiding about $1.7 million in corporate and personal income from the IRS over a five-year period.
Olger Fallas, 49, of Union, according to Friday’s U.S. Department of Justice-Newark press release, pleaded guilty to two counts of tax evasion via video conference before U.S. District Judge Claire C. Cecchi.
Fallas, said Acting U.S. Attorney Rachel A. Honig, had confessed to attempting to hide personal and corporate income by cashing customer checks at a check cashing business and depositing the proceeds “into bank accounts not associated with his companies.” This activity was done 2013-17.
Court documents indicate that Fallas owed the IRS $486,000 in corporate and $170,000 in personal taxes for 2016 alone.
Hoing was referring to Olger Fallas Painting and Olger Fallas Properties. Fallas Painting and its state license wear a 578 Stuyvesant Ave.address on his same name website. That same site and his Linkedin page, however, has Fallas also listing another residence – 77 Concord Ave., Union, near Maplewood’s Hilton section border.
Fallas is facing up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine per count. Judge Cecchi is to sentence him June 22.
EAST ORANGE – One of the city’s favorite daughters, Dionne Warwick, has made the list of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominees Feb. 10 for her and the Cleveland institution’s first time.
The six-time Grammy Award winner was announced along with nine other individual musicians, including one-time West Orange resident Carole King, and six groups. The nominees were put up for induction consideration by 1,000 musical artists, historians and industry members who consulted the R&RHoF.
The 1,000 HoF consultants looked at artists who released their first commercial recording at least 25 years ago. The nominees and prospective inductees. Influence on other artists, length and depth of career and the body of work plus innovation and superiority in style and technique are also considered.
“Dionne Warwick is one of the towering figures of popular music,” started R&RHoF’s three paragraph tribute. “Her vocal delivery was a defining sound of 1960s cool, with an effortless delivery and soulful tone. Dionne Warwick’s innovation in song interpretation, combined with a seemingly flawless ability to stay relevant, have made her a mainstay in popular music history.”
The sketch included Warwick’s gospel family background, early collaboration with Burt Bachrach and Hal David and latest work with Chance the Rapper and The Weeknd.
“What a Day!” said Warwick on her Facebook page that Thursday night. “I’m thrilled. Please vote at vote.rockhall.com.”
Warwick’s potentially joining her late cousin Whitney Houston in the HoF, however, largely rests with “The Fan Vote.” Online and in-person public votes are taken through April 30. The “Top Five” artists who make the induction are to be announced in May.
ORANGE – City Hall officials have quietly replaced their old, mostly (973) 266- phone exchange directory with three lists of largely (973) 592- numbers on the city’s website overnight Feb. 16-17.
Those lists, as of 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, are spread among three places on www.ci.orange.nj.us: Phone Directory, Employee Email Listing and Employee Contact List: Cell Phone Numbers.
The Phone Directory is a master landline list of 199 phone numbers across several pages. They include 78 numbers for the Orange Police Department, 23 for the Orange Fire Department and 22 for the Orange Municipal Court.
This directory of all-592 exchange numbers replaces the more familiar 266 exchange numbers. The latter was still up until at least 4:30 p.m. Tuesday.
The “Employee Email Listing” is actually a second City of Orange Phone Number list of 68 all-592 exchange numbers. The “Employee Contact List Cell Phone Numbers,” on the site’s blue box, are another 75 numbers with only one 952 number.
City officials have not said, as of press time, why they had to decommission the older 49-nine number listing nor why that had kept that older list up along with the latter two, indirectly posted new number lists. All but four of those numbers on the now-pulled off directory were on the 266 exchange.
“Local Talk” joined those who had apparently had to navigate the site for the new numbers Feb. 9 – the same day four people posted their problems on the Orange NJ – Real Talk Facebook page. Some City Hall employees and City Council members’ email addresses can be meanwhile found on the latter’s 52-number contact list.
WEST ORANGE – Township Schools Superintendent Dr. Scott Cascone found himself apologizing to some public school parents Feb. 11 for his abrupt “Virtual Learning Day” call he had made early that Thursday for an anticipated snowstorm.
That snowstorm turned out to be an almost “no-show,” with a dusting covering here and the rest of “Local Talk Land.”
“It’s never my preference to make decisions relative to school openings on such short notice,” said Cascone in a Noon release. “I thought I’d provide you with some insights to my rationale.”
Cascone said that the approaching Feb. 11 storm was being forecasted with up to an inch snowfall the night of Feb. 10. His 4:30 a.m. Feb. 11 call with WOPS Buildings and Grounds and township’s DPW directors, however, “that I understood that there were up to two inches of snow in some parts of the township and ice.”
After “not having adequate time to survey the entire township” on whether there was enough time for West Orange streets and school properties to be cleared before the first bell, the schools super “decided to err on the side of caution.
“You should know that this would’ve been a day where we would’ve called a delayed opening,” concluded Cascone. “However, as you are probably aware within the COVID environment, that’s not an option at our disposal.”
The superintendent, in the Feb. 8 WOPS Board of Education meeting, said that he has been trying to give all school community “stakeholders” adequate time to pivot from hybrid to all-remote learning.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – The two-town public school district, in a matter of three hours here Feb. 15, have gone from “Phase 3” hybrid learning to all remote learning for the time being.
By “the time being,” there may be a hybrid resumption either after March 15 or April 19, depending on which education party one listens to.
South Orange-Maplewood Education Association leadership, in a late Monday afternoon notice, said that its teachers will not re-enter the 11 school buildings. The teacher’s union issued seven bullet points, involving teachers requests for classroom relocations were denied and/or moved to other spaces shared with other classes or personnel, for their re-entry refusal.
The South Orange-Maplewood School District, later that evening, said all 11 schools will be all remote “indefinitely” until April 19 – including its central office staff. District administrators said that the union’s “disagreement of 34 workspaces, more than 12 of which were brought to our attention as recently as (Jan. 13), has led to this reaction.”
The administration-teachers impasse more than puts the reopening plan into limbo. The disagreement may tear up the Jan. 27 “sidebar” agreement SOMSD and SOMEA had reached to move reopening forward.
April 19 is five days after the traditional end of the winter heating season. Shutting off the boilers may or may not help in keeping open-window or fully ventilated classrooms above the state’s 68 degree workplace minimum.
Ventilator installation, other classroom repairs and inspections are to meanwhile continue.
BLOOMFIELD – Members of the Essex County Emerald Society Pipe Band serenaded one of their own – Retired East Orange Police Department Detective. Sgt. John “Jack” McGarry, Jr., 69 – before and after his Funeral Mass here at Sacred Heart Church Feb. 12.
EOPD’s headquarters meanwhile paid tribute to McGarry’s 24 years’ service by putting up mourning bunting and lowering is American flag to half-staff since Feb. 9. McGarry’s loss was also felt in Newark, West Orange, Belleville and Little Falls since his Feb. 8 death here.
McGarry, from when he was born in the old Presbyterian Hospital Dec. 12, 1951 to when he joined “East Orange’s Finest” in 1976, was a Newarker. He was raised above grandparents Thomas and Kathleen McGarry’s Tavern at 413 Central Ave. and graduated from Essex Catholic High School in 1970.
The BSA Troop 40 Eagle Scout was a Local 10 Sheet Metal Workers Union member when he joined the U.S. Army Reserve in 1970. Specialist Fifth Class McGarry was a reservist, splitting time with PSE&G’s Auto Maintenance Department (1971-73), until he joined BFD in 1976.
The PBA Local 16 member, who moved into Bloomfield’s Second Ward after 1986, retired in 2000 to the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office Homeland Security Department through 2016. The West Orange St. Patrick’s Day Parade 2006 Grand Marshal was also a member of Bellville Knights of Columbus Council 1008, American Legion Post No. 121 — Little Falls and a life member of the West Orange Elks.
Life Louise, daughter Amy and brothers Brain and Kevin are among McGarry’s survivors. Memorial donations may be made to the Essex County Emerald Society Pipe Band.
MONTCLAIR – Teachers who are Montclair Education Association members may continue to virtually instruct Montclair Public Schools students from their homes at least until March 9.
State Chancery Court-Newark Judge James R. Paganelli denied MPS, Schools Superintendent Dr. Jonathan Ponds and the Board of Education their injunction petition Feb. 10 to bring MEA members back to in-classroom instruction.
Paganelli said that the plaintiffs had not proven that their facilities are safe enough to allow in-person teaching. The judge added that the district had failed to show how the teachers union members’ instruction from their homes was equal to a lost day of teaching.
The MPS and fellow plaintiffs had contended that MEA members’ insistence on remote learning from home since Jan. 22 constituted an illegal work stoppage or job action. Ponds had to postpone Jan. 25’s intended launch of hybrid learning on Jan. 22 because he said he could not get enough staff into the buildings.
Paganelli has scheduled MPS and MEA to return before his Newark bench for March 9 oral arguments. The parties are to file their respective briefs March 5 and 1.
BELLEVILLE – Township officials and historians more than ran up the Quing Dynasty flag before its Municipal Building to observe the 150th anniversary of the first Chinese Lunar New Year celebration on the East Coast here Feb. 12.
Mayor Michael Melham welcomed Facebook.com/OfficialBellevilleNJ viewers to a virtual fireworks celebration here 7:15 p.m. Friday. Melham, after brief remarks on the importance of the occasion, yielded to 10 minutes of exploding fireworks superimposed above Belleville’s town hall accompanied by traditional Chinese music.
“I’ve been working on this for the last two years since I was elected mayor,” said Melham in the still-available clip. “We were going to have fireworks, music, lanterns, dragons and crazy things but that was before the pandemic hit.”
The global COVID-19 Coronavirus pandemic, depending where one has lived the past 15 months, has brought a first or a second subdued Lunar New Year’s celebration. Township celebrants, however, went to the livestream for Friday and intend to do so for Feb. 22.
The nearest thing to a live in-person event is the ceremonial launching of 150 Chinese lanterns at Belleville Municipal Stadium after sunset Feb. 22 – but all 150 reserved spaces were taken by 9 a.m. Feb. 16.
Some 67 Chinese men and boys welcomed their Belleville area neighbors to celebrate the Lunar New Year here at the then-Dutch Reformed Church Feb. 12, 1871. They were a sliver of the 20,000 Chinese who were recruited by the Central Pacific Railroad who helped build the first transcontinental railroad 1864-69. (Many chose to work or start businesses on the West Coast)
The original 68 (one man died two months after their Sept. 20, 1870 arrival here) took up an offer to work in the Passaic Steam Laundry across the Passaic River in present-day North Arlington. Their 1871 New Year’s celebration predated ones at Newark’s Mulberry Street and in Lower Manhattan.
NUTLEY – The former Nutley Volunteer Emergency Rescue Squad president is scheduled to appear in State Superior Court-Newark March 1 to answer to a charge of stealing $105,000 from the squad.
Jonathan Arredondo, 30, of River Vale, said Acting Essex County Prosecutor Theodore “Ted” Stephens II Jan. 29, has been charged with one count of second-degree theft. The charge came six months after he was fired by the squad and after Nutley Public Safety Commissioner Alphonse “Al” Petracco had turned over the institution’s financial records to ECPO.
Arredondo is accused of stealing $75,000 from NVERS accounts and charging more than $30,000 in unrecompensed personal expenses of a squad-issued debit card.
“It’s alleged that Arredondo withdrew cash from squad accounts from May 2019 to August 2020 in 19 increments of $5,000 and deposited the money in his personal bank account’s TM,” said Stephens. “For much of that time the position of (squad) treasurer was unfilled until a new one was elected in 2020. An investigation was opened after the treasurer’s audit.”
NVERS officials, on Aug. 12, agreed to turn over their financial records to Petracco in exchange of the commissioner tabling his ordinance that would have dissolved the largely independent squad. The agreement had also called off Arredondo’s “Save the Squad” rally that would have preceded the commissioners’ Aug. 18 meeting and vote.
