TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – A decades-long effort to make NJTransit’s Newark Light Rail line fully ADA accessible may have taken a $519,750 step forward, thanks to Uncle Sam, here July 12.
The USDOT Federal Transit Administration had awarded a $519,750 grant to NJTransit to conduct a modernization study of four of its NLR stations: Military Park (formerly Broad Street), Warren Street, Norfolk Street and Park Avenue.
These four underground or open depressed stations were first built when then-Public Service Coordinated Transport converted the Morris Canal bed into the No. 7 Newark City Subway as a federal Works Project Administration effort in 1935.
NJTransit, in four separate cycles, had been making the City Subway/Light Rail U.S. Americans with Disabilities Act compliant since the late 1990s.
Existing or added grade-level stations were modernized or opened during the line’s extension into Bloomfield Grove Street in 2002 and the Broad Street Extension downtown addition in 2006. Elevators were added to the Bloomfield Avenue and Washington Avenue stations, at $1 million each, around 2015. (Elevators came with Newark Penn Station in 1935.)
At-Large Councilman Luis Quintana, in 2015, has said that he has wanted the NLR to be fully handicapped accessible. “Local Talk,” back then, recalls helping a rider on crutches down three flights of Military Park Station stairs so he could go home at the Stephen Crane Elderly Apartments just off Branch Brook Park Station.
The study, however, does not come with a projected elevator construction timetable or commitment.
IRVINGTON – Neither Acting Essex County Prosecutor Theodore “Ted” Stephens II nor Irvington Public Safety Director have identified the 19-year-old woman, whose body was found in a home near Irvington Park 3 p.m. July 17.
Irvington Police, responding to a man’s phone call, went to the house along the 1100 block of May Street. They found the woman’s body, which included a gunshot wound, inside.
Investigators have reportedly interviewed the caller but have not said whether he is a person of interest, let alone a suspect.
Burgess, Hudley New Council Leaders
The Irvington Township Council have re-elected colleagues Renee Burgess and Dr. October Hudley as their respective Council President and Vice President for 2022-23.
Burgess and Hudley – who were respective council leaders a couple of years ago – were re-selected after they took their respective oaths of office in a reinauguration ceremony and reorganization meeting here at the Ascend Center July 1.
Hudley, Burgess and Charnette Frederic – all returning at-large councilwomen – plus the returning Mayor Anthony “Tony” Vauss were sworn back into office for full four-year terms. A majority of participating voters returned all four Team Irvington Strong candidates in the May 10 nonpartisan municipal election.
EAST ORANGE – The ECPO Homicide Task Force and this city’s police detectives have been investigating the July 15 fatal shooting of a man here in the Elmwood Park section.
EOPD Chief Phyllis Bindi and County Prosecutor Stephens said that city officers had responded to the city park on a shots fired call at 9 p.m. Friday.
Officers found a man with gunshot wounds lying on Oak Street before that park’s entrance. The man – identified as Antwan McAdoo, 42, of Burlington, N.C.- was rushed by local EMS to Newark’s University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 3:45 a.m. July 16.
Park neighbors said that an East Orange Fire Department crew arrived later to wash away pools of blood on the street and sidewalk and park walkway. It is believed that the shot McAdoo had staggered onto the street.
“Biter” Arrested on Teen Streets
A West Orange man has been held in Newark’s Essex County Correctional Center since July 6 on charges by East Orange police – including biting one of their own officers.
Chief Bindi said that several of her officers and detectives pursued and apprehended a man who was carrying a handgun at William and North 18th streets 8:30 p.m. that Wednesday. A struggle ensued, where one detective was bitten on one of his forearms and a broken finger. A second detective suffered a separated shoulder.
Jamari J. Hall is being held on three counts of aggravated assault of a police officer plus illegal possession of a firearm, possession of hollow point bullets and possession thereof while as a convicted felon. The detectives were treated at and released from a local hospital overnight.
ORANGE – A familiar and a fresh face will respectively preside over the Orange City Council July 1 through June 30, 2023.
The newly reconstituted council, at its inauguration and reorganization meeting here July 1, selected North Ward Councilwoman Tency Eason and At-Large Councilman Clifford Ross as their Council President and Vice President.
Eason, just minutes before, had been sworn into new four-year terms with colleagues Kerry Coley (East Ward), Jamie Summers-Johnson (South Ward) and Quantavia Hilbert (West Ward.)
The East Orange School District employee, who was first elected in 2002, is taking her fourth turn as president. She was on her third turn as Vice President for 2021-22.
Ross, who was elected to his first term in 2020, is Chairman of the Orange Democratic Committee and had been a longtime Orange Housing Authority Commissioner. All of Orange’s mayoral and council candidates, including Eason and Ross, are voted in as nonpartisan candidates in May.
“Cliff and I are working together,” said Eason to “Local Talk” in Orange City Hall July 19, “Just as we had for a long time.”
WEST ORANGE – There are four township residents as of press time who are circulating ballot signature petitions and established websites to succeed the now-outgoing Mayor Robert D. Parisi on Nov. 8.
Parisi, on July 6, announced that he will not be pursuing a fourth mayoral term. A majority of registered township voters first elected the former councilman as mayor in 2010, succeeding now-Assemblyman John McKeon. The lifelong resident was re-elected in 2014 and 2018.
Two of the four candidates – Rev. H. William “Bill” Rutherford and Joseph “Joe” Krakoviak – had announced their candidacies long before Parisi’s decision.
Rutherford, who is pastor of Orange’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, was elected councilman in 2020. Krakoviak was a 10-year councilman who followed his own self-imposed term limit in 2020.
Current council women Susan McCartney and Cindy Matute-Brown are also circulating petitions. Both have previously run with Parisi.
McCartney has been a council member since 2002 and is this year’s president. Matute-Brown was elected in 2019.
All signed petitions are to be returned to the municipal clerk’s office on or before Sept. 8. The Nov. 8 General Election triples as the township’s nonpartisan municipal and annual board of education election day.
SOUTH ORANGE – Village residents are being assured that their health concerns are being addressed for the time being by Maplewood Township Health Director Candice Davenport.
Davenport is doubling as South Orange’s Interim Health Director July 1-Dec. 31. Respective village and township health departments have agreed to a joint contract on Davenport, as announced by the Maplewood Health Department July 5.
South Orange will be paying $5,000 a month to Davenport for her services at no more than 10 hours per week, emergencies notwithstanding.
The six-month contract will supposedly give the South Orange Health Department time to find its next full-time director. John Festa, after 32 years as village health director, had retired on June 3.
It is too early to tell whether this arrangement will lead to another two-town shared service. South Orange and Maplewood’s fire departments, after decades’ research, became the South Essex Fire Department July 1. The village and township have shared a municipal court since the early 2000s.
The South Orange-Maplewood School District, however, was established long before “South Orange Township” renamed itself as Maplewood Nov. 7, 1922.
MAPLEWOOD – Maplewood police detectives have put out descriptions of the male who robbed a Wawa gas station attendant at gunpoint here July 12 and the car he may have fled in.
Responding MPD officers met with the attendant at 6:13 a.m. that Tuesday, who said he was approached by a male minutes earlier. The male carried a small black handgun.
The employee said the suspect demanded money from him – and gave him $40 cash. When the suspect demanded more money, the victim said he was unable to get more cash from the locked safe.
The suspect, with all of $40, ran out of 1515 Springfield Ave.’s parking lot onto Jacoby Street. He had possibly entered “a small grey SUV” that drove onto Lee Court and 44th Street before entering Irvington. The victim suffered no physical injury.
Wanted is a male described as a “black male 16-20-years old, 5 ft., 10 in. to 6 ft. tall and weighing 160-170 lbs.” He was dressed in a dark colored Adidas sweatshirt with three white stripes on both sleeves, a black mask, black sunglasses and fatigue-style cargo shorts.
BLOOMFIELD – Robbers, for the second time in 22 days, helped themselves to cash or property at gunpoint while at an Ampere service station here July 18.
The owner of a brown Honda Accord told responding BFD officers here at the Sunoco station at 72 Bloomfield Ave. that one of at least two suspects implied that he had a gun on him at 8:40 p.m. Monday night.
The carjacker took the Accord with NJ license plate N96-AKD and fled onto Bloomfield Avenue. Three males had meanwhile stuck up a station attendant at 122 Bloomfield Ave. on June 27 – 22 days and two blocks away from the Sunoco carjacking.
One of the three approaching suspects, said the attendant at the 7-Eleven booth, had pointed a black handgun at him while the second held him down. The third demanded what money he had in his pocket. One of the three, said the victim, had threatened to kill him.
The suspects, after relieving the victim of $50, fled in a white BMW.
MONTCLAIR – The township’s recreation and cultural affairs department, in the face of two of Montclair’s municipal pools being likely closed for most of this summer, have made two changes to its pool badge policy here since July 14.
The department will refund pool badges – worth between $25 (for seniors) and $250 (family of four) – from patrons who do not want to use the Mountainside Park pool in Upper Montclair. Those seeking refunds are to bring their badges in the department’s office at 205 Clermont Ave. weekdays 8;30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. for deactivation and refunds.
“This department’s policy is to provide a full refund to patrons who have signed up for a Recreation program but decide not to participate in that program,” said July 14’s announcement. “This applies to pool memberships.”
The recreation department has meanwhile suspended daily and guest passes for the Mountainside pool.
Pools at Essex and Nishuane parks were “anticipated” to reopen with Mountainside June 29 – but the first two pools’ renovations had been delayed since the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak in March 2020.
Work on and around Nishuane Park Pool started on May 5 but was halted due to supply chain issues. The four weeks’ renovation is now targeted for Aug. 1-15 completion.
Renovating Essex Park Pool would, by contract, start once Nishuane was finished.
BELLEVILLE – A township man, convicted by a Superior Court-Newark jury July 12 for a 2021 Newark gas station armed robbery, will learn from Superior Court Judge Patrick J. Arre Sept. 9 how long he will be away from his hometown.
Arre may sentence Jose Rivera, 58 to a five-to-10-year sentence to the second-degree armed robbery charge that the jury had convicted him on July 12. ECPO attorneys, citing that Rivera has 17 prior convictions on his record, may ask Arre for an up to a 20-year maximum state prison sentence.
The jury, after two hours’ deliberation that Tuesday, found Rivera guilty of robbing a gas station along Newark’s Pennsylvania Avenue at gunpoint on Sept. 18, 2021. Rivera and a second man demanded all the cash the lone attendant had on him.
The victim gave Rivera $850 without resistance. Rivera and the other man then fled the scene. The attendant was not physically harmed.
This case remains active since the other suspect remains at large.
NUTLEY – What a magnetic fisherman had “attracted” just off the Passaic River here July 16 brought four law enforcement agencies to the riverbank and closed three roads and a bridge that Saturday.
Nutley Chief of Police Thomas Strumolo said that the fisherman called headquarters, saying that he had just found an unexploded military shell, at 3:45 p.m. The fisherman pulled the shell ashore, took a picture and promptly called NPD.
“That was quick thinking for the fisherman,” said Nutley Police Commissioner Alphonse Petracco, “to get away and notify police.”
The NPD shift supervisor immediately called the Essex County Sheriff’s Office Bomb Squad plus the Belleville and Lyndhurst police departments. The respective police departments joined Nutley in closing off the Kingsland Avenue / De Jessa Memorial Bridge between Nutley and Lyndhurst plus parts of Park Avenue, Route 21 and River Road.
The sheriff’s bomb unit, once they had determined that the military ordinance was live, took the shell to a remote location for detonation.
How that shell wound up in the Passaic remains a mystery.
