Town Watch by Walter Elliott
NEWARK – Mayor Ras Baraka and Newark Public Safety Director Brian A. O’Hara announced a new and a returning first aid response here May 27 – three days after a man died waiting for an ambulance at a downtown soup kitchen.
Baraka and O’Hara, while at NFD Engine 10’s firehouse at 360 Clinton Ave. Friday, declared that Newark firefighters will respond to all life-threatening calls. NFD personnel joining EMS technicians in those calls are seen as a response to a shortage of EMS and paramedic units since January.
City firefighters, said Baraka and O’Hara, will deliver basic and advanced life-support services, including airway clearance, cardiac monitoring, defibrillation, hemorrhage control and initial wound care. Neither O’Hara nor Baraka said how many firefighters have been trained so far and how many more are to be trained.
NFD personnel will be supplying those services on calls out – and on those who walk into their stations. Baraka and O’Hara are bringing back Neighborhood First Aid Stations with new signs affixed to firehouses.
The identity of a man who had collapsed while in line for food at St. John’s Church and died while waiting 45 minutes for an EMS unit to arrive May 24, however, has not been released as of June 1.
Members of Hudson County-based “Help to Feed the Hungry” said they gave CPR to the stricken man while making multiple 911 calls. They stayed with the man, who went into apparent cardiac arrest, until an ambulance arrived 45 minutes later.
Help to Feed the Hungry uses St. John’s Barbara Moran Soup Kitchen at 22 Mulberry St. most Tuesday nights.
IRVINGTON – Authorities are looking for the shooter of a township man in Newark’s Central Business District, and left him for dead, May 31.
Memorial Day was still new when Newark police officers responded to a gunshot call from the corner of University Avenue and Campbell Street just after Midnight. It was there where they found Irvingtonian Tyzier White, 23, shot.
White was rushed to University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 12:50 a.m.
Acting Essex County Prosecutor Theodore “Ted” Stephens II said that NPD detectives turned over the investigation to the county’s Homicide and Major Crimes Task Force.
White’s funeral arrangements are to be announced as of 4 p.m. June 1. The ECPO-NPD investigation continues.
EAST ORANGE – Essex County Prosecutor’s Office attorneys are still analyzing the circumstances of a May 9 fatal car-and-tanker trailer truck collision here – while relatives and friends have given the deceased his last rites May 17.
Panache L. Bryant, 33, of Newark, was buried at Morgancille’s Forest Green Cemetery May 17 after an 11- a.m.-2 p.m. gathering and janazah prayer at Newark’s Islamic Burial Service.
Bryant was one of two occupants of a southbound late model white two-door car which had rear-ended a Volvo tanker trailer truck on Interstate 280’s South Harrison Street overpass at 6 a.m. May 9. The impact caused the car to catch fire, prompting calls to East Orange first responders.
Arriving city police and fire units and local EMS personnel said they found the car “engulfed in flames.” One person, the car’s passenger, had escaped before the outburst; the truck driver, also present, did not suffer serious injury.
Rescuers strived to extricate and save Bryant but he was declared dead at the scene. Both directions of South Harrison plus Freeway Drive West were closed for several hours that Sunday morning. Buses on NJTransit’s No. 94 route were among traffic suffering delays.
It is not clear whether Bryant was the car’s driver or passenger. Other details, including how the crash happened and whether the truck driver was ticketed, were not available as of press time.
ORANGE – If one came to 23 Main St. for a 12:30 p.m. June 2 groundbreaking ceremony of a new PNC Bank branch here, one would have instead seen seven workers from Veriun and HC construction adding steel to the building’s skeleton.
“Local Talk” had accepted a May 23 invitation by Mayor Dwayne D. Warren and the City Council for the $2.2 million project, only to receive word May 31 that the groundbreaking had “been canceled.” A question on if the cancellation was weather-related was left unanswered as of 4 p.m. June 1.
Whether the groundbreaking being canceled or merely postponed may be a moot point, given that the “$2.2 million project” has had its steel skeleton up a week earlier. PNC Bank and its construction partners, who bought the .3636 acre lot from Franklin Lakes’ Tatica Realty in January, demolished the 13-year-old Orange Hand Car Wash once the Orange Planning Board had approved their site plan application.
The Yuras, Aicale, Forsyth, Crowle Leased Investment Group, of Sacramento, Calif., have set a 20-year lease with PNC with 12 percent rent increases every five years. Yuras, on Loopnet.com, called the project as the “Relocation from a top-10 performing branch system wide with $129 million-plus in existing deposits.”
Yuras’ statement indicates that 23 Main will replace the one at 565 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. two blocks east in East Orange. The stand-alone branch and the rest of the 1974-built Brick Church Shopping Plaza are to make way in stages to the 820-apartment unit/Shop-Rite Supermarket/other retail Crossings at Brick Church Station complex starting later this year.
23 Main St.’s construction comes while the existing PNC Orange Branch at 410 Main St. is supposed to make way for an Orange REC Center-related parking garage. The new Orange REC and related new Rossi Paint and hardware headquarters project, however, has been recently slow-tracked.
How many of 410 Main’s customers will move to 23 Main, .7 mile apart, may also be moot. PNC’s 39 Main St., West Orange Branch, at .4 mile from 410 Main, is closer.
WEST ORANGE – The former United States Postal Service worker who admitted May 27 to abandoning 99 Vote By Mail Ballots, among other mail meant for addressees here and in Orange, will be sentenced by U.S. Magistrate Judge Cathy L. Waldor on Sept. 21.
Nicholas Beauchene, 26, of Kerany, said Acting U.S. Attorney Rachael Honig, had pleaded guilty to one count of destruction of mail before Judge Waldor in her Newark courtroom that that Thursday.
Beauchene admitted that he had left behind 1,875 pieces of mail, including the VBMBs, in a North Arlington dumpster Sept. 28 and Oct. 1-2. The articles also included 276 campaign materials of candidates for West Orange’s Nov. 2 Township Council and Board of Education member elections.
The second-year letter carrier was assigned to routes from the Orange Post Office; West Orange is served by two Orange branches. A passer-by discovered the mail by the North Arlington dumpster, which was not far from Beauchere’s residence and alerted the NAPD and posted a picture on Facebook.
North Arlington and USPS police recovered the materials Oct 2 and 5. Beauchere was arrested Oct. 7.
Beauchene is facing up to one year’s federal imprisonment and a maximum $100,000 fine.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – The South Orange-Maplewood School District has begun its second Board of Education appointee search since the surprise Memorial Day resignation of member and township resident Kamal Zubieta.
Zubieta emailed an open letter to the two-town public district, its board and the public that she had resigned as of 11:27 a.m. Monday.
Zubieta, who leaves after 16 months on the board, contends that the panel has become “an exclusive inner circle and a marginalized minority of independents” that “fails our most precious treasure – the children of our district.
“The focus of my work is on the children of our district; their social, emotional and mental health; their learning gaps after more than a year of remote and hybrid learning; their access to supportive, effective and equal education and their families’ livelihoods,” said Zubieta. “The board majority is moving away from my focus and my conscience.”
Zubieta was sworn twice onto the BOE: first in January 2020 as a replacement to the resigned Javier A. Farfan and again this January after being elected by a majority of participating two-town voters to complete the last two years of Farfan’s term. (Farfan is also a Maplewoodian.)
Running on her own “For All Children” banner, Zubieta ran unopposed in the Nov. 3 special election. Farfan, citing his workload as an SHU professor, resigned from his only term on the board Dec. 31, 2019.
Kamaljit and husband Rudolfo moved here in 2004 to raise their three daughters. One daughter recently graduated from Columbia High School; a second is also in CHS.
BLOOMFIELD – What may become either an epilogue or a legacy to the late First Ward Councilman Elias Chalet’s story was filed last week in New Jersey Superior Court-Newark.
Springfield attorney Peter W. Till said, on May 27, that he had filed a wrongful death and negligence suit against the state Department of Corrections on behalf of Chalet’s widow. DOC Commissioner Marcus Hicks and “those responsible for Chalet in their custody” were named among the respondents.
Till and Berno Chalet assert that the councilman received inadequate medical care for his heart condition and for contracting the COVID-19 virus while serving his five-year sentence for bribery.
Chalet, 58, died April 20, 2020 at Trenton’s St. Francis Medical Center. He was taken there from Newark’s Northern State Prison. Authorities had housed him in Northern State since April 5 after Chalet got sick while at the James A. Hemm halfway house, also in Newark.
Chalet had been allowed to spend weekends with his family in Bloomfield and at the Hemm house during the week. He began serving his five-year term in 2018 after pleading guilty to a second-degree bribery charge in 2017. His first parole or early release hearing was slated for July.
Till and the family, at the time of Chalet’s death, were not clear on whether he had died from COVID or heart complications. His trial and sentencing were delayed several times due to the latter condition.
The DOC has refrained from commenting on the suit as of Jan. 3.
MONTCLAIR – Residents and commuters may have indeed seen Decamp Bus Line coaches fanning out from its headquarters here since May 20. Those buses, for charters and limited Wind Creek casino runs, may well portend the carrier’s return to limited commuter service.
Jonathan DeCamp, the company’s sixth-generation owner, first posted on his website that DeCamp is running a single bus to Wind Creek, in Bethlehem, PA, on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays. A sole bus will be making eight stops here, West Orange, Bloomfield, Nutley and East Orange 9-10 a.m. (Details are found at decamp.com)
DeCamp, in selected media interviews, also elaborated on May 20’s “preparations being made to resume limited service in mid-June.” He is talking about three busses running on three routes similar to what he had run June-Aug.7, 2020.
The reactivated routes are to be the 33 including Montclair, Glen Ridge, Bloomfield and West Orange; the 44 (Bloomfield, Belleville and North Newark) and the 66 (Montclair and West Orange).
The No. 88 route (Orange, East Orange, Bloomfield, Nutley) and the No. 32 (Nutley) will remain suspended until DeCamp has gauged the reopening of New York City venues and ridership levels.
The company’s reception of the Payment Protection Program loan has made DeCamp reopening for Wind Creek and charters possible. The state’s oldest stagecoach and bus company ran commuter-hour service in June until its 400-daily riders average made it unsustainable Aug. 7. It first shut down in response to the COVID outbreak March 25, 2020.
GLEN RIDGE – Herman Street was temporarily closed while it was honorarily renamed “Officer Roberts Way here May 11.
Glen Ridge Chief of Police Sean Quinn, in his first public occasion as the borough’s “top cop,” helped unveil the signage with Off. Charles “Rob” Roberts family. The sign was installed overnight after Mayor Patrick Stuart and the Borough Council unanimously passed “Ordinance No. 69-21” May 10.
The one-block Herman Street/Roberts Way fronts the GRPD’ headquarters. Roberts, 45, badge No. 69, served an award-winning 20 years on the force before he lost his struggle against COVID-19 May 11.
Roberts’ widow, Alice, during the street dedication ceremony, announced Eli Fellis and Dorothy Waldt as the inaugural Charles E. Roberts Civilian Service Award recipients.
Fellis was an assembler for the local “Shield Our Heroes” campaign, which made and distributed 15,000 face shields for Mountainside Hospital and 29 other medical centers. Waldt led the Glen Ridge Congregational Church’s care package campaign, which assembled and distributed 7,107 containers of snacks, energy drinks and “thank you” cards to local medical workers.
BELLEVILLE – The cost to property owners of the Township Council’s May 25 adoption of its $71,858,292.84 Calendar Year 2021 Municipal Budget is $39 more than what township elders charged in 2020.
By “$39,” that is the amount based on the average homeowner’s assessed value of $276,000 spread out across the next four quarterly tax bills. That tax increase may be higher or lower depending on how one’s property is assessed.
The $39 average tax increase over 2020 will help raise $68,754,058.60 of the approved CY21 budget. The remainder comes from various grants, account interest and/or municipal fees.
The $39 may appear to be a softer blow compared to last year’s amended $298 average tax increase. Spending for COVID curbing and prevention, a three percent increase in general liability insurance, a 28 percent increase and a 44 percent decline in municipal court fees put the township into a mid-2020 $3 million shortfall – which was eventually balanced by the property tax increase.
“Revenue was down last year, which affects this year’s budget,” said Mayor Michael Melham, who introduced the CY21 budget April 13. “With all that being said, we did what we promised to do, we tightened up where we could tighten up.”
NUTLEY – A Nutley man has been detained in Paterson’s Passaic County Jail since his May 26 arrest on narcotics and weapons possession charges.
Paterson Public Safety Director Jerry Speziale said that three of his Special Investigations Unit detectives were patrolling Rosa Parks Boulevard when they noticed a white Jeep Cherokee “commit a minor traffic violation” at the Putnam Street intersection at 11;30 p.m. that Wednesday.
The detectives stopped the Jeep, driven by Orland Cruz III, 35, and discovered a Glock .45 caliber handgun and four bags of suspected cocaine. Cruz was arrested without incident.
