Town Watch
NEWARK – The 300 nurses and 60 technicians who make up the Jersey Nurses Economic Security Organization have been back on their jobs since they and the St. Michael’s Medical Center had agreed on a new contract here June 23.
JNESCO, affiliated with the AFL-CIO, ratified their part of a new three-year contract June 22, ending a 31-day strike against St. Michael’s.
“While it is unfortunate that we couldn’t have negotiated this agreement without a strike,” said St. Michael’s CEO Dr. Alan Sickles, “we’re looking forward to having our nurses and medical staff return to their jobs.”
UNESCO members walked off the job May 23, three weeks after their last contract had expired on May 4. Differences between the two percent wage increases St. Michael’s parent, Prime Healthcare, was offering, and the six percent JNSECO negotiators were seeking to break down March 28-May 13 talks.
The union-management pact was shepherded by a mutually agreed-to federal mediator. Prime Healthcare recently added St. Michael’s to its chain of 41 hospitals in 14 states.
IRVINGTON – Township police officers had responded to gunfire reports at Grove Street and 17th Avenue here June 18 – a block south and 38 days after a fatal gas station shooting.
Responding IPD officers responded to the 5:45 p.m. gunshot report from that intersection that Thursday They found several shell casings along that block, prompting a several-hour street closure. NJTransit’s No 1 and 90 buses were among the detoured traffic.
Officers also found two unnamed adults who suffered gunshot injuries. The victims were taken to a local hospital for treatment and release.
The victims and witnesses said that the suspect who fired the shots had fled.
Police had responded to what turned out to be the fatal shooting of an off-duty gas station attendant at the corner of Grove Street and 16th Avenue 10:41 p.m. May 11.
Both cases are being actively investigated.
EAST ORANGE – Investigators are trying to find the cause of a two car collision by a Central Avenue intersection that injured four people and knocked down a corner traffic signal late June 24.
City police officers and firefighters, responding to an accident call by 26B Central Ave., found two cars on the Central Avenue Plaza sidewalk and the southwest corner traffic light pole down by 10:18 p.m. Friday. They also found a driver and a passenger trapped in each car.
EOFD personnel extricated all four occupants, who were taken to local hospitals for treatment on non-fatal injuries.
A Public Service Electric & Gas work crew temporarily shut off power at the intersection until a temporary signal was installed.
NJTransit police assisted with rerouting traffic around the Central Avenue/South 18th Street/Steuben Street intersection. Buses on CoachUSA’s Nos. 24 and 44 routes were among the detoured traffic. Central Avenue is also known as Essex County Road 508.
ORANGE – The city’s fire chief said that the cause of two fires in a pair of historic structures may not be definitively known for two separate reasons.
Orange Fire Chief Derrick Brown told the City Council here May 17 that the cause of April 19’s Masonic Temple fire “seemed it started in the sign above YummyYo’s restaurant.” An internal investigation for arson could not be conducted there “due to all the collapse that happened there.”
The 1886 landmark temple building at 235 Main St. suffered the collapse of its roof and third floor before the fire could be contained. The building, including its three storefront businesses and six-story tower, had to be demolished.
The fire had apparently started in a sign of a business that had been open for less than six months. Municipal, county and state fire officials or their designees conduct arson investigations at fire scenes as a standard operating procedure.
Brown, however, said the cause of an April 29 carriage house fire at 408 Heywood St may never be known. Although the chief said he considered that blaze “very suspicious,” he added that the ECPO Arson Investigation unit did not show. The ECPO, said spokeswoman Katherine Carter May 27, that its unit was “not alerted to a suspicious fire” there.
OFD personnel battled the two-car garage’s structural fire that Friday night. The three-story house at 408 Heywood was built in the now-Seven Oaks Historic District in 1879.
Brown, an at-least 12-year OFD member, has been Orange’s top firefighter since Kenneth M. Douglas’ Aug. 1 departure. Douglas, who was fire director here since Jan. 1, 1915, took a similar position in Trenton.
WEST ORANGE – NJDOT and its contractors are hoping that a month-long closing of a Pleasant Valley Way ramp to Interstate 280 here will complete a pesky sinkhole problem.
NJDOT, since 7 a.m. June 24, has closed the ramp that brings southbound Pleasant Valley Way/Essex County Road 636 traffic to Eastbound 280 “and lasting for approximately four weeks.” The closure is to repair “the damage of a stormwater pipe caused by Tropical Storm Ida” and the resulting sinkhole.
The sinkhole, caused by undermined earth, have partially closed that said ramp since Ida struck the Northeast Sept. 1. Another sinkhole had cratered part of 280 West Exit 10 ramp onto Northfield Avenue/CR 508 on April 14, prompting overnight detouring and repairs.
Those who are used to taking the PVW/280 East ramp are to take PVW past 280 and take the ramp to 280 West, get off at Exit 6A for Laurel Avenue and then tale Laurel Avenue to get onto 280 East.
This repair is being paid from a $10.5 million state contract to “repair stormwater and drainage structures” among eight Northern New Jersey counties.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – A majority of the South Orange-Maplewood School District Board of Education, after their June 27 meeting, is leaning toward replacing the Thomas Jefferson Elementary School name with Winnie Delia Bolden’s name.
The board, which passed a split-vote resolution to replace Jefferson’s name Aug. 16, favored Bolden’s name in a non-binding informal straw poll. Bolden, Class of 1912, was the first African American to graduate from Columbia High School.
The Jefferson PTA and the at-large two-town community, said Board Member Courtney Winkfield, wanted the panel to choose from a name list compiled by students. That student list includes: Bolden, Olympian track and fielder Joetta Clark-Diggs (CHS Class of 1980), U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, inventor Erna Schneider Hoover (Class of 1944) and U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Amalya Lyle Kearse (Class of 1955).
Board President Thair Joshua, earlier this month, suggested that the “retiring” Jefferson name be delegated to a plaque or statuary in the building. Last August’s board, citing the third President of the U.S. and author of the Declaration of Independence’s owning of slaves, voted to start replacing his name.
Jefferson descendant Sally Unsworth, who has a rising fourth grader in the Jefferson School, said, on Aug. 16, that she supported the renaming. Unsworth called Jefferson “a deeply flawed historical figure and, while no part of his contribution to the founding of the U.S. should be erased, no part of the entire truth of who he was, how he lived and who he harmed should be ignored.”
BLOOMFIELD – 99 Cent Dreams at 33 Broad St. and Bob’s Sweet Shop at 1032 Broad St., among 13 DeCamp Bus Lines agents, will start selling tickets with an 11 percent increase on July 5. The rates for single intra and interstate, half-fare, 10-trip and 40-trip tickets will rise across all 10 zones, from Union City to the Meadowlands.
Bloomfield, Belleville, Glen Ridge and Montclair – who are all in Zone 6 – will cost $8.20 for single fare, $4.20 for half-fare, $75.35 for 10-trip and $269 for 40-trip tickets.
Nutley, in Zone 5, will cost $7.10, $3.55, $63.25 and $231. Local intrastate single rides are estimated to cost an estimated $1.35.
Upper Montclair, Zone 7, is to now cost $8.50, $4.25, $76.45 and $282.
Zone 8 – Montclair, East Orange, Orange and West Orange east of Prospect Avenue – is to cost $8.75, $4.35, $77.55 and $286.
Zone 9 – West Orange west of Prospect Avenue – is to cost $9.05, $4.50, $79.75 and $291.
Montclair-based DeCamp has not said why it has boosted its fares. Unused or current tickets are to be honored until their printed last day. There will be no commuter bus service on July 4.
GLEN RIDGE – The Borough Municipal Building is open to receiving “fire suppression” and George Washington Field use requests from its Bloomfield and Montclair municipal government neighbors now through Aug. 18. Both current contracts expire Dec. 31; the RFP was posted on June 8.
Glen Ridge’s administrators and elders are asking the Montclair and Bloomfield fire departments how they will serve the borough – including scope and pricing -2023-32. The proposed contract includes an extension option for 2033-37.
Montclair has consistently provided firefighting and prevention services under 10-year contracts since the GRFD was dissolved in 1992.
The proposed GWF contract is also for 10 years with a five-year extension option. Bloomfield and Montclair recreation are being asked what services they would provide for the field and its recreational facilities.
George Washington Field, 268 Baldwin St., has also been co-managed by the Glen Ridge and Montclair recreation departments. The unlighted turf field abuts the Montclair border since its 2015 grand opening.
MONTCLAIR – The mother of a Buzz Aldrin Middle School student and their lawyer made good their two-year-old tort claim by filing a 50-count complaint against the Montclair Public Schools June 17.
Natalie Hackett and attorney Jeffrey R. Youngman, in their June 17 filing in State Superior Court-Newark, charge that MPS and Aldrin Middle School officials had failed to prevent the bullying and racial harassment by several of her daughter’s classmates between September 2018 and June 2020.
The plaintiffs further assert that, when their complaints were made to middle school staff members, the staffers accused the daughter of provoking the harassment, requesting that she go to counseling and to move to another district.
Hackett, then an MPS employee, asserted that former schools superintendent Kendra Johnson had blocked her email, “made veiled threats against her employment and frequently called security when she entered the school building.”
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, acting on Hackett’s 2019 complaint, found that the school frequently failed to address harassment, intimidation, bullying and retaliation, placed MPS on a corrective action plan and to address the agency’s findings. Youngman said, however, that the district has so far denied the complaints and tort action.
The suit names as respondents former superintendents Johnson and Nathan Parker, current super Jonathan Ponds, the Montclair Board of Education, Aldrin School former and current principals Jill Sack and Major B. Jennings, several current and former school staff members and students.
MPS and the named respondents have 60 days to file a response. MPS, through superintendent executive assistant Nina DeRosa, said it will not comment on litigation.
BELLEVILLE – A township woman involved in the June 7 fatal collision with a 13-year-old dirt biker, said Belleville police, had surrendered herself June 16 – three days after the boy’s visitation.
Marylin J. Quisepe-Falcon, 36, said the ECPO, was released on her own recognizance for a future court date. She has been charged with second-degree leaving the scene of a fatal accident plus third-degree counts of endangering an injured victim and being an unlicensed driver involved in a fatal accident.
Quisepe-Falcon’s Ford Explorer was identified as the SUV that had struck Belleville Middle School seventh grade student Victor Huaringa-Alvez and his Yamaha in the intersection of Joralemon Street and Garden Avenue 5:30 p.m. June 7.
Quisepe-Falcon drove away before BPD officers’ arrival. Huaringa-Alvez was rushed to a local hospital but died of his injuries 45 minutes later.
Belleville Public Schools held a district-wide dress-down day June 20. Participating adults donated $5 and students $3 towards the Huaringa-Alvez family’s expenses.
It is to the understanding of “Local Talk” that West Orange’s Edison Middle School also held a fundraiser. Sixth Grade social studies teacher Anton Carrera said that Huaringa-Alvez had started this school year there.
Huaringa-Alvez. who was born Sept. 13, 2008 had his visitation at Newark’s Alvarez Funeral Home June 14.
NUTLEY – Officers reviewing the Nutley Public Library’s surveillance recordings for June 20 quickly recognized the 32-year-old man sleeping on a bench near its main entrance at 93 Booth Dr.
The detectives reviewed the tape at the request of NPL employees. They said that they had noticed a man sleeping there earlier that Saturday.
Police had matched the man’s looks with the description of one who was found unconscious on the library’s 1914 original building’s steps June 18. The man, who has been described as homeless, had climbed the locked front gate before passing out.
Responding NPD officers that Thursday had to climb the fence and, with evidence that he had overdosed, administered naloxone Narcan. A Nutley Fire department crew had arrived to cut the gate’s padlock and to take him to a local hospital.
NPL’s original front entrance had been gated and locked when a new addition and main entrance had opened in 1990.
