TOWN WATCH by Walter Elliott
NEWARK – The results of a settlement between the U.S. Department of Justice-New Jersey District and New Jersey’s largest public school district here may be showing up in your local English Language Learner classroom,
Acting U.S. Attorney Rachael A. Honig announced that her Civil Rights Division and the Newark Public Schools Board of Education reached an agreement Sept. 1.
Their pact calls for NPS to keep ELL (or English as a Second Language) students in that program until they become fluent in English. NPS is to also improve services for those students.
The agreement, in turn, ends a multi-year investigation of the ELL/ESL program under the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974. The DOJ will be monitoring NPS this and the next two school years.
DOJ-Newark attorneys found that NPS had failed to hire or retain enough qualified ELL teachers. The teacher shortage limited the program and sometimes was not offered. Students were also prematurely pulled from the program.
Honig’s announcement was also released in Spanish, Portuguese, French and Haitian Creole.
Both DOJ-New Jersey and NPS posted the 25-page agreement on their respective websites.
IRVINGTON – The Whigham Funeral Home is handling the final arrangements of the father and daughter who died in the wake of Tropical Storm Ida’s flooding here Sept. 2.
Irvington Fire Chief John Brown, on Sept. 14, said that it is not clear whether James Mcgee, 66, and Shenique Mcgee, 46, had died in their Lincoln Place basement from electrocution and/or downing Sept. 2.
Joan Mcgee said that her older daughter was checking on husband James and daughter Shenique while they were shoring up the basement from the overflowing Elizabeth River Sept. 1. One of them had opened the outside basement door when a loud bang was heard, and the water rushed in.
Although Joann and the older daughter immediately called IFD, “Irvington’s Bravest” were unable to immediately access their block between Nye and Lyons avenues. Floodwater had already enveloped parked cars. James and Shenique’s bodies were recovered once the tide had receded.
James, who was born Oct. 3, 1954, had married Joann and moved from Brooklyn in 1999 to raise a family. Aug. 23 was his and Joann’s 46th wedding anniversary.
Shenique, who was born July 4, 1975, was working as a chef for Wonder Food’s Cranford Central Kitchen while going to culinary school. Wonder has set up a matching GoFundMe.com page for her funeral expenses.
The Mcgees were two of Ida’s five Essex County victims. Aventino Soares, 58, was believed to have been electrocuted while plugging-in a basement generator in his Bloomfield home. Patrick Jeffrey, 55, was swept 1,000 feet from his Maplewood home while clearing a storm drain.
EAST ORANGE – A preliminary finding of the Sept. 14 Interstate 280 collision which left one driver dead and a second injured is being cast as a five-vehicle chain-reaction crash.
The New Jersey State Police found that a semi tractor-trailer truck had run into the back of the Scion driven by Nicole A. Greco, 51, of Chester, N.Y. at 3:28 p.m. at 280 West Mile Post 12.6.
Greco’s Scion then ran into the back of a Hyundai SUV driven by a Scotch Plains man. The Hyundai ran into the rear Toyota – that did the same to a Honda.
All five of 280 West’s lanes were blocked. The Tractor-trailer veered across Exit 12 A-B’s two lanes onto the right-hand shoulder. The Hyundai SUV was spun onto the center of 280 West’s main travel lanes.
East Orange and Newark firefighters, the State Police and a Pulse ambulance arrived at 3:33 p.m. The Scotch Plains Hyundai driver was admitted to a local hospital with “moderate injuries.” All westbound traffic, which spilled some four miles back to Kearny’s Newark Turnpike, was diverted onto local roads at the Orange Street Exit 13 for the rest of the P.M. rush hour.
Greco – a mother of two who also left behind her husband, parents and three sisters – was honored with a Sept. 23 Funeral Mass at Chester’s St. Columbia R.C. Church. Memorial donations may go to the American Cancer Society’s Making Strides Against Breast Cancer Boobalicious team and/or the Chester Wrestling Booster Club.
ORANGE – The City Council has scheduled an Oct. 7 public hearing and likely final vote on amending the Mayor’s authority to call special or emergency council meetings.
Ordinance 45-2021, as introduced here Sept. 7, if passed, would require “the Mayor or the Council President may, and upon written request of a majority of the members of the Council, call a special or emergency council meeting.
The ordinance would amend Township Code Chapter 4, Sections 4-9 on Meetings. The Mayor can currently call a special or emergency council meeting upon the written request of a majority of the Council.
The pending legislation comes on the heels of the council awarding a pair of lawyers contracts Sept. 7 to represent them in “Mayor Dwayne D. Warren and the City of Orange Township vs. City of Orange City Council.”
Mayor Warren is seeking a State Superior Court-Newark’s decision on whether he, as municipal CEO, had the power to fire a department head’s subordinates. The council has twice introduced legislation where the department head has the hiring/firing authority.
Ordinance 45 and the hiring of outside lawyers may be seen as parts of a struggle for authority between the Council and the Mayor.
The Council’s pending and passed actions may also be viewed as making the city’s mayor “less strong” in its mayor-council structure.
Orange, like most New Jersey municipalities, operates with a mayor-council format under the Faulkner Act. The format is also called the “strong mayor” form, where the municipal CEO has wide authority outside of the council. (Maplewood and Nutley, whose committee members select a mayor from themselves, have a “weak mayor” form.)
WEST ORANGE – Prism Capital Partners, by year’s end, will be “Phase One and done” regarding the township’s Downtown Main Street Redevelopment Zone.
Prism, in a Sept. 13 out-of-court settlement with the township, will remain active with what is now known as the Edison Lofts at 177 Main St. It will be selling 17 acres of property, particularly 55 Lakeland Ave., back to the township.
The township will then seek a new developer for “Phase Two” in Sept. 13 agreement, within 45 days after it gets back 55 Lakeside and related lots. West Orange will be financing the buyback with $12 million worth of municipal bonds.
Prism will withdraw its suit alleging that West Orange had been secretly negotiating with an entity that wants to replace the old Barton Press and DPW buildings with a movie studio. That redevelopment firm reportedly includes actress, producer and Llewellyn Park resident Whoopi Goldberg.
West Orange, citing a lack of progress on 55 Lakeside and several payment defaults over the Edison Lofts, had introduced the bond ordinance in August.
Prism received redeveloper status on the overall 21-acre “Edison Village” project in 2003.
SOUTH ORANGE – Seton Hall University President Dr. Joseph Nyre followed up a Sept. 20 “medical emergency” at one of its dormitories here later that Monday by announcing the death of one of its students.
Nyre said that the unnamed undergraduate resident student had died in Neumann Hall. Medical personnel had immediately responded to the emergency call.
Neumann Hall, said “The Setonian,” is also being used as the campus’ COVID-19 quarantine space.
“We’ve been in contact with the student’s family, who asked for privacy, at this time of tremendous grief, as they await the medical examiner’s report,” said Nyre. “The Campus Ministry will announce information regarding a Service of Remembrance and Hope at an appropriate time after consulting with the student’s family.”
Nyre urged the SHU community to use the Campus Ministry and the Counseling and Psychological Services for help.
MAPLEWOOD – The reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the 2017 murderer of a Maplewood grandmother in Newark, as of Sept. 16, has doubled.
Acting Essex County Prosecutor Theodore “Ted” Stephens II announced that Thursday that Essex County Sheriff Armando Fontoura’s Crime Stoppers program had so boosted the reward regarding the case of Deborah Burton, 62, to $20,000.
Burton was shot in the area of Newark’s 43 Third St. 1:15 p.m. March 13, 2017. She was taken to University Hospital, where she died at 2:31 p.m.
Burton’s silver Chevrolet Cruze was found March 14 at 59 North Seventh St.
BLOOMFIELD – Township police detectives, said Public Safety Director Samuel DeMaio Sept. 21, are looking for the three suspects who shot at two men on an Ampere street Sept. 8 – and had placed one of the victims into county custody.
Responding officers rushed to North 13th Street that Wednesday to find a man there with a single gunshot wound to one of his shoulders – and stopped a second man who was about to leave the scene in a car.
The officers who stopped the car noticed that the driver was bleeding from one of his hands. The motorist – identified as Kasim Judd, 44, of West Orange – was in a car that had two handguns in view on the passenger side floor.
Judd, after an electronics records check, was arrested on two counts of a person not to possess weapons, possessions thereof for an unlawful purpose and possession without a permit. He was also charged with a count each of possessing a defaced firearm and for receiving stolen property before being remanded to Newark’s Essex County Correctional Facility.
BPD personnel combing the shooting scene found shell casings of three different caliber bullets. The department believes that three suspects fired 10 rounds at Judd and the victim. They also believe that Judd cut his hand while cutting across several backyards
Both Judd and the other victim were treated for their injuries.
MONTCLAIR – Two of Montclair’s three motion picture theaters, despite Tropical Storm Ida’s flooding, are on track for an Oct. 21 reopening – but the third may miss its reopening for entirely different reasons.
Clairidge Cinemas, said Montclair Film Executive Director Tom Hall Sept. 18, is set to host the 10th Annual Montclair Film Festival Oct. 21-30. It will be the movie house’s first screening with MF as its operating tenant.
While Hall said that the Clairidge, at 486 Bloomfield Ave., “was spared any real damage,” contractors are working to have its offices, at 505 Bloomfield, ready to hold film classes in October.
Hall said that MFF’s concourse had up to four feet of water from Ida’s Sept. 1 record downpour. The water came running off the four-story North Fullerton Avenue into the concourse an onto the first floor. Flooding undermined the first floor’s flooring, baseboards and neighboring sheetrock.
Although Bellevue Theatre owners Jesse and Doreen Sayegh have not reported any Ida-related damage, another outside development may put off their desired May 22, 2022 reopening.
The Sayeghs want to reopen the Bellevue exactly 100 years after its grand opening here at 268 Bellevue Ave. They had submitted plans before the Montclair Planning Board to install apartments on the building’s second floor and add more street-level retail space earlier this year – only to withdraw those plans for further revision. Tenant Bow-Tie Cinemas took all of its equipment with it when its lease with the Sayeghs expired Nov. 30, 2017.
The MPB and Township Council meanwhile designated the Upper Montclair building as “an area in need of restoration” by Aug. 23. The township’s AINOR designation will preserve the building’s structure while allowing for appropriate redevelopment.
BELLEVILLE – Mayor Michael Melham shed light during the Sept. 14 Township Council meeting on an ongoing investigation on how a construction code official has been recompensated.
Melham said that the township building department has been paying the said official for taking part in the Belleville Planning Board’s special and subcommittees since January.
The payments, in $200 and $750 amounts, were drawn from a planning board escrow account posted by applying developers. The account is used to pay planning and construction officials hired by the board for their consultation.
Melham said that the particular official had drafted and submitted his own invoices to the department. The 40-year employee, who reportedly draws a $156,000 annual salary, also has a $17,292 expense stipend.
“He created his own fee structure,” said Melham, “typed up invoices and received checks totaling thousands of dollars.”
Township Manager Anthony Iacono, while stressing that the investigation is continuing, said that the escrow account had been meanwhile closed to meeting attendance invoices. He and Assistant Township Manager/Chief of Police Mark Minichini are reviewing the matter.
Lyndhurst attorney Christopher A. Errante, on Sept. 16, agreed with Iacono that the investigation has not been completed. Errante added that his client “has a spotless record” and that all should “wait until all results are in.”
NUTLEY – Township elders said they are still cleaning up after Tropical Storm Ida and are looking at how to mitigate against similarly severe future storms.
Mayor/Parks & Recreation Commissioner Mauro Tucci, fresh from a Sept. 7 tour of the township with FEMA officials and Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo, said he wanted to look at the impervious surface coverage that leads water runoff into the Third River and its tributaries.
Tucci found agreement with Public Works Commissioner Joseph Scarpelli, who said that Ida’s Sept. 1 rain and runoff raised the Third River to “10 feet in a half an hour.” The flooding entered the DPW garage, ruining office furniture and work equipment and, thanks to stored oil, turned it into a hazmat cleanup site.
“I don’t know if there’s anything we can do to plan for 10 inches of rain in five hours,” said Scarpelli. “We’re on the last end of the (Third) river, so everything before then collects and comes into our town.”
Resident Maria Bozza also wants the township to look on how paved surfaces contributed to Ida’s flooding. The Harrison Street resident asked how she got six feet of Third River water in her house while neighboring Burger King was not flooded.
The CVS Pharmacy, two blocks upstream at 217 Harrison, remains closed as of press time. The streaming floodwater had broken store windows, carrying away some of its inventory. CVS has transferred its prescriptions to its Allwood, Clifton store.
