Town Watch by Walter Elliotte
NEWARK – A proposed $500,000 State of New Jersey budget line-item brought University Hospital and city elected officials to one of the former’s parking lots here April 14.
University Hospital President and CEO Shereef Elnahal – joined by Mayor Ras Baraka, Sen. M. Teresa Ruiz and Lt. Governor/Department of Community Affairs Commissioner Shelia Y. Oliver – stood in the “Blue Barracks” lot bordered by Bergen Street, 12th Avenue, West Market Street and part of Cabinet Street to say that want the $500,000 on that block.
Gov. Phil Murphy is proposing the line-item in his to-be-passed 2021-22 state budget to study “the potential of a new medical facility to expand medical services” and help the surrounding community. Murphy (D-Rumson) is also proposing $8.5 million to address UH’s immediate infrastructure needs.
Elnahal said, at that Wednesday press conference, that the study can well result in expanding UH’s Level 1 Trauma Center and emergency ward. The 519-bed hospital had 83,122 emergency visits, 15,572 admissions and 199,804 outpatient clinic visits in 2020. The institution is the Newark area’s principal teaching hospital, thanks to the Rutgers Medical School here.
The expansion, which Elnahal had said would cost an overall $1 billion, would include new operating rooms, a stroke center and an extended liver transplant theater.
This projected new building would replace the Blue Barracks – a group of one-story “temporary” buildings that were built in 1969. The now-white structures were once the link between the former 1950’s Martland Hospital and the mostly 42-year-old University/UMDNJ complex.
The state and federal government supply an annual overall $44 million to UH for treating uninsured patients. It is the largest share among New Jersey’s 72 hospitals.
Elnahal added that the $9 million in state 2022 line items and projected $1 billion in construction funds are needed because UMDNJ-now-UH has almost exhausted its 2015 bond fund. The bond issue raised $250 million – mostly used to handle emergencies.
IRVINGTON – Newark rescuers extricated and transported a motorist whose crash actually happened here on the township side of 14th Avenue early April 12.
Newark police officers and a city-based EMS came to the 450 block of 14th Avenue, between Irvington’s Oak Street and the City’s Speedway, at 1:50 a.m. that Monday. They found the single-car and its entrapped driver on the 454-56, or Irvington, side of 14th.
The Irvington-Newark border cuts northeasterly through the neighborhood until it stops along South Orange Avenue. This section is historically known for the long-leveled Hoffman Soda bottling plant and Pabst Blue Ribbon brewery.
Rescue crews removed the woman driver and took her to Newark’s University Hospital. She is expected to recover from non-life-threatening injuries.
EAST ORANGE – It took all available city firefighters to extinguish a pre-dawn house fire here on April 15.
The first unit’s incident commander, upon arriving at 76 Amherst St. 3:10 a.m. that Thursday, found “heavy fire coming through the roof” of the 2.5-story house. The commander promptly pulled the second alarm while the crew began by containing the blaze away from adjacent houses.
On-scene and arriving firefighters, with the help of a ladder truck hose, attacked the fire’s exterior until it was brought under control by 4 a.m.
There were no injuries reported. 76 Amherst was built on a .08 acre lot in 1925. City and county arson investigators, who arrived as a standard procedure, have not disclosed the fire’s cause as of April 20.
ORANGE – The City Council ended their nearly five-hour meeting by tabling a bill that would ban cannabis-based business within city limits 11:45 p.m. April 20. The tabling, which passed on a split-vote, allows Orange elders to consider or reconsider the bill as early as their May 4 meeting.
The council, in their sixth attempt, voted 4-2-1 to table Ordinance 14-2021. The measure was carried by Council President/East Ward Councilman Kerry Coley, bill sponsor North Ward Councilwoman Tency Eason, West Ward Councilman Harold Johnson and Councilman Clifford Ross.
South Ward Councilwoman Jamie Summers-Johnson and Councilwoman Adrienne Wooten voted “No.” Councilman Weldon “Monty” Montague abstained. The vote duplicated the March 16 roll-call where the ordinance was introduced.
Ord. 14-2021 calls for the city to prohibit the growing, selling, most transportation and any consumption establishments within Orange. The measure would use will use the state’s 2020 recreational and updated medicinal marijuana regulations’ opt-out clause 31a.
It is not immediately clear whether BrwnBox or any prospective cannabis-based business that is set up here would be grandfathered in. The retailer had moved from Maplewood to the Orange Valley in February 2020.
BrwnBox co-founder Almaz Adeigbola presented a petition that she started April 1 against the ordinance. Summers-Johnson and Wooten, who opposed the ban, had held community meetings April 10 and 17, the latter attracting News12 New Jersey cameras.
How many members of the public spoke before the council is not immediately known as of April 21 deadline. Some virtual audience members took to Facebook Wednesday, complaining that they had problems logging on or got “kicked off.” There were 31 citizens who commented on 14-2021’s March 16 introduction – all of whom opposed the proposed ban.
WEST ORANGE – Township police officers collared three juveniles here at the Essex Green Town Centre, who are accused of attempting two carjackings some 30 minutes earlier, April 9.
The first WOPD patrol cars arrived at the Shop Rite side of the plaza at 6:55 p.m. that Friday on the first carjacking attempt call. The victim said that three males, one of whom displayed a gun, and told him to get out of the car. The victim-driver did not – and they left.
Officers were taking the victim’s report when their dispatcher told them of a second report – this time by AMC Theater. That victim said that three males approached him, showed a gun and demanded exiting the vehicle. The driver refused – and, again, they left.
Police, bolstered by backup cruisers, found three boys who matched the victims’ description by the plaza’s Cold Stone Creamery. One of the trio was found possessing a BB gun.
The trio, who were identified by the victims, was arrested and taken downhill to the WOPD Headquarters Juvenile Aid Bureau. No further details were given.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – A State Superior Court Judge issued her report card to the South Orange-Maplewood School District and the South Orange-Maplewood Education Association on their school reopening progress April 19.
Judge Jodi Lee Alper, from her Chancery Court bench Monday afternoon, said she was “heartened” on how SOMSD and SOMEA had complied with their March 16 reopening agreement The district administrators-teachers union pact brought before the judge has led to the start of in-classroom hybrid learning April 19.
Alper, however, said she will keep her monitoring conditions so that both sides adhere to their reopening timetable. SOMSD some of their classrooms so that teachers can instruct from there and via Zoom simultaneously as part of Reopening Phase 3.
Alper’s report and ruling came four days after a federal court judge, in another part of Newark, dismissed a parents lawsuit that could have immediately returned SOMSD to full-time five-day all in-classroom learning.
“This’ a serious issue,” summarized U.S. New Jersey District Judge John Michael Vazquez in his hour-long Friday afternoon decision, “but. legally, I don’t think there’s a strong case here for federal involvement.”
Vazquez effectively ended a 14-week bid by 11 parents and East Orange-based attorney Keri Avellini for full and immediate SOMSD reopening. Avellini and husband/lead plaintiff Christopher Donohue have a child in a South Orange school and a second in Columbia High School.
BLOOMFIELD – One of this township’s major parties was mentioned as the recipient of a “pay to play” ploy in a Morristown attorney’s confession there April 14.
Elizabeth Valandingham, 48, before a State Superior Court-Morristown judge, admitted that she used a straw donor to contribute $48,750 to “Bloomfield Democrats” in 2018 – and failing to report it on her tax returns.
Valandingham, or believed straw donor Matt O’Donnell, allegedly received $500,000 of tax attorney contracts from Bloomfield and Mt. Arlington. She had similarly confessed to donating $11,000 to that borough’s Republicans – and failing to disclose those donations for 10 years.
The $500,000 in Bloomfield and Mt. Arlington contracts benefitted O’Donnell McCord LLC, of Morristown. N.J. Attorney Gurbir Grewal, in his April 15 press release, said that O’Donnell, as the firm’s CEO, turned state’s witness.
By “Bloomfield Democrats,” Valandingham’s plea bargain did not say whether the $48,750 went to the township’s Democratic Committee or particular candidates.
Bloomfield Mayor Michael Venezia, on Dec. 27, 2019, said that, “on the advice of our township attorney,” had rescinded his and the Township Council’s Dec. 16 reappointment of O’Donnell McCord. O’Donnell lost contracts with five more municipalities, causing him to dissolve his firm.
Valandingham, in exchange for her plea, loses her law license and has been assessed a $75,000 fine. She is barred from public contracts for 10 years.
MONTCLAIR – State Sen. Nia Gill can return to practicing law, now that she has paid an overdue fee to the New Jersey Lawyers; Fund for Client Protection.
Gill (D-34th LD), as of April 15, had paid the $252 fund fee plus a $50 reinstatement fee. She had been on the NJL barred attorneys list for six months, going back into October.
The six-term senator, however, attended six of the last seven Essex County Improvement Authority’s board of directors meetings as their general counsel. Her representing and advising the ECIA are for a $70,146 annual salary. (The ECIA issued the $125 million, 30-year lead service replacement line bond issue for Newark in 2019.)
ECIA Executive Director Steven C. Rother, when asked by a reporter April 15 of Gill’s ineligibility, said he would “take this up with her immediately.”
BELLEVILLE / NUTLEY – Towns along nine miles of the Passaic River north of Newark, including Belleville and Nutley, will have their turn and their say of the US EPA’s $441 million dredging project now through May 14.
The EPA, on April 15, launched a resident comment period through May 15 on the project, which will remove decades-old dioxin from the riverbed. The federal agency will be holding a virtual public meeting at 6 p.m. April 27.
Bank-to-bank dredging will remove the dioxin sediment, which was deposited by the Diamond Alkali chemical plant in Newark in the 1960s-70s.
The Vietnam-era defoliant’s residue drifted north with the tide up to Clifton and Garfield’s Dundee Dam.
The dredging and sediment removal will also take out heavy metals, pesticides, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), furans and other contaminants.
Some 387,000 cubic yards of dredged sediment would be taken to “licensed disposal facilities” for processing. The exposed reverbed would then be capped. Existing state Department of Environmental Protection bans on fishing and crabbing along the overall 17-mile length of the Lower Passaic River south to Newark Bay. (That lower eight-mile stretch began in 2016 as part of a Superfund site.)
This phase of the overall $1.4 billion project is to take four years. Part of the funding is coming from the EPA Superfund and in part from polluter reparations. The EPA is still in court against Diamond Akali successor Maxus Energy Corp.
Meeting viewers sign in at: https://epa_proposed_plan_lprsa.eventbrite.com. Comments may be left with Remedial Project Manager Diane Salkie, USEPA, 290 Broadway, 18th Floor, NYC 10007-1866; salkie.diane@epa.gov.
