TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – The Newark Board of Education’s Jan. 22 hiring of an outside attorney to at least review its handling of Schools Superintendent Roger Leon’s latest contract may get public approval or disapproval as early as its scheduled Jan. 26 meeting here at 465 Broad St.
BOE Member A’Dorian Murray-Thomas’ resolution for an independent attorney was approved by four members, with five abstentions, during a brief public meeting before their annual in-NPS Central Office retreat. Her resolution came after some of the 12 members of the public, questioning how the board handled Leon’s contracting process, also appeared at the retreat’s start.
The concerned citizens had learned late last week that the board had approved a new five-year contract, “automatically” in May 2022. That contract approval was made without a 30-day public comment period nor the prospective new contract’s posting on a board agenda.
“I want to make it extremely clear that, whatever miscommunication or talk that’s happening in the media, that is what was stated,” said Board President Dawn Haynes Saturday. “That’s what happened according to pour timeline and what we know to be true.”
While Leon’s contract was not released, Haynes said that the new pact reflects a cost of living increase on the last one. New Jersey Department of Education School Salary Survey data indicates that Leon is being paid $290,050. His 2019-20 and 20-21 contracts paid $260,000 each and, when the state superintendents’ salary cap was lifted, $282,425 for 21-22.
This is not the first time the public did not get a say in Leon’s contract, going by how he had received a two-year extension in August 2019. The two-year extension, double the contract’s one-year extension clause, was aired in a scarcely publicized or attended hearing that third week. The board approved the extension at their scheduled fourth week of that month’s meeting.
Leon, an Ironbound native who rose from a Science Park High School math teacher to the Deputy Superintendent of Academics, was chosen as superintendent from four candidates in May 2018. He is the first NPS superintendent selected by the board after 25 years’ NJDOE rule.
IRVINGTON – The Essex County Prosecutor’s Office Homicide and major Crimes Task Force is still investigating the Jan. 18 murder of a township man although a suspect has been arrested and charged on Jan. 19.
Relatives and friends of Ibn Vincent, 37, of Irvington, are meanwhile mourning and are arranging for his last rites as of press time.
Acting County Prosecutor Theodore “Ted” Stephens and Irvington Public Safety Director Tracy Bowers said that Friday that they had arrested and charged Jonathan Quallis for Vincent’s homicide. Quallis, 32, with no hometown given, has been held on the counts of aggravated manslaughter and possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose.
IPD officers told ECPO task force detectives that they had responded to residents’ 911 calls of gunfire coming from the backyard along the 400 block of Union Avenue at 7″33 p.m. that Thursday.
The officers said they arrived at 7:36 p.m. to find Vincent suffering from several gunshot wounds and called for medics and county detectives. Vincent was declared dead at the scene at 7:53 p.m.
Neither Stephens nor Bowers said how Quallis was linked to Vincent’s homicide except that he was “taken into custody shortly after the incident.”
EAST ORANGE – Those who attend the city’s bus rides, annual Inauguration/Reorganization, “Movies in the Park,” “Summer Jam,” “Trunk or Treat” and similar events may want to pause in remembrance of Bernadette F. Gibson.
Gibson, 60, who pulled double duty as volunteer organizer of the said events and as the City Council’s Record Support Technician, died Jan. 10. Her cause of death was not disclosed.
Bernadette Francine Gibson, who was born March 6, 1962 in Fayetteville, N.C. came here soon afterwards. The Clifford J. Scott High School Class of 1980 graduate left to attend Florida A&M University.
“Francine,” “Fran, ” “Bern” or “Jazz” returned to work at Orange’s Associates of Mental Health & Developmental Disabilities. She had received the company’s CEO Executive Staff Special Acknowledgement Recognition Award of Excellence. She had also joined Park Avenue Christian Church.
Mother Helen R. Pierre-Louis, son Darren Allen, Jr., daughter Symani S. Roper, granddaughter Sarai G. Allen and brother Joseph G. Allen are among her survivors. Fathers John D. Gibson and Antoine Pierre-Louis and brothers Michael Gibson and Douglas W. Gibson, Sr. are among those who predeceased her.
Gibson’s visitation and funeral service, followed by a private Cremation, was held Jan. 17 here at Messiah Baptist Church. Arrangements were made through Woody’s Home for Services. City Hall Plaza’s flag had been lowered to half-staff since Jan. 10.
ORANGE – The first person who was buried at the Old Burial Ground 300 years ago, should he return here from the afterlife, would more than not recognize the farm he had left behind.
Anthony Olef (1636-1723) would have found his farm at the base of the Orange Mountains replaced as Llewellyn Park in West Orange. Neither Orange nor West Orange ever existed in his lifetime.
Olef settled here in 1678 and started his farm while the area was originally in Newark. He may have been among the original Puritans who came to Newark with Robert Treat in 1666 or a later wave from Milford, Conn.
Threat and his group bought land from the local Lenni Lenapes to create Newark – which would be recognized by the English governor of the Colony of East Jersey. Newark, back then, covered most of what is now Essex County.
Neighbors of Olef brought his body to the newly-opened Old Burial Ground, becoming the first of at least 700 people interred at the southwest corner of Main Street and Scotland Road until 2000. Olef’s body was among those moved for the last First Presbyterian Church of Orange in 1928; his original headstone was replaced by the church congregation in 1969.
Olef may take some solace at the corner of West Orange’s Main Street and Park Avenue. The West Orange Downtown Alliance erected a commemorative marker in his name, near his farm site, in 2017.
WEST ORANGE – The Zoning Board of Adjustment, in golfing terms, has reached “the back nine” of the six-month-long-and-counting application for the Daughters of Israel nursing home capacity.
DOI, its attorneys and architect KDA, of Cherry Hill, has presented its plan to turn the sub-acute care, assisted living and respite nursing home into “a continuum of care community” here at 1155 Pleasant Valley Way monthly since Aug. 18. The hearings, since Jan. 19, have gone over to objectors and comments from the public.
DOI wants to construct a three-to-five story, 122,560-square-foot building containing 160 apartments and community spaces. The apartments include 24 assisted living and 36 assisted living-memory units. The community spaces include an auditorium, a pub (liquor license pending), a formal dining room, a gameroom, a library/reading room, a pool, a theater.
The new building, which would be built in three phases in 10 years, would face its five stories along Pleasant Valley Way. Its three-stories part would face Parsons and Skyline drives. The latter part, cut into a hillside, would be naturally screened and buffered.
The Daughters are asking for 14 C and D variance. The three D variances include changing its primary use and raising the maximum building height from 2.5 stories or 35 feet to six stories and 69.22 feet. The other 11 C variances include doubling its loading docks to four.
KDA architects, in its presentation, cited “changing regulations and decreasing funding for nurses” for expanding its facilities and scope. The 100-year-old organization has been in West Orange’s Pleasantdale section since 1962.
Our Green West Orange, as of Jan. 11, faults the Daughters/KDA plan as using “an outmoded universal building,” not being “environmentally stable” and that Essex County has control over Pleasant Valley Way’s traffic light timing. The next Zoom meeting is set for Feb. 16.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – All three of the South Orange Volunteer Rescue Squad’s vehicles, as of Jan. 14, are back in its headquarters garage spaces here at 62 Sloan St.
Repairs, since its Dec. 25 water main burst, have been made to make the three bays usable. The damage, however, had extended to its mechanical, supply and laundry rooms. The squad, however, never missed a call.
The 71-year-old squad, in its Jan. 14 Facebook posting, thanked the South Orange DPW and the South Essex Fire Department for assisting on Christmas Day. Their vehicles were parked on their apron or across Sloan Street while contractors cleaned out the damaged materials and made repairs.
They also thanked City Fire Equipment, Pedro Crispian Electrical, Home Remediation Service, New Jersey Door Works and ServPro for their repairs “and all who donated and reached out with their support.”
The squad works in concert with SEFD’s former Maplewood Rescue Squad unit and takes mutual aid calls in Maplewood, Irvington and Orange.
BLOOMFIELD – Both Garden State Parkway motorists who use Exit 148 South and local drivers had to take detours while three blocks of John F. Kennedy Driver were closed in both directions “for 51 hours Jan. 18-20.
Bloomfield and Essex County officials said that “a major sewer collapse” overnight Jan. 17-18 prompted the closure between Montgomery and Spruce streets north to Liberty Street. The cave-in was first noticed at JFK Drive and Liberty’s intersection.
The emergency work lasted from 8 a.m. that Wednesday to before 8 p.m. that Friday. GSP drivers had to use either the Belleville Avenue on/off ramps to the north or JFK Drive south of Bloomfield Avenue for access. No scheduled bus service was affected.
Neither authority has said whether the caved-in sewer was a stormwater or a sanitary main. It may likely have been a near-70-year-old pipe, laid before the Morris Canal Bed was filled in to become “Canal Street” after 1954.
The repairs would have been the New Jersey Turnpike Authority’s emergency had GSP engineers’ original right-of way plans been realized. The Parkway was to use most of the canal bed in Bloomfield before engineers needed to double their 75-foot-wide ROW requirement in 1953.
What Bloomfield-owned canal bed the Parkway did not use was sold to Essex County for $1 million in 1954. The county road was renamed JFK Drive, after the assassinated President, in 1964.
MONTCLAIR – The Friends of the Howe House and guest community groups will be holding several fundraisers to make good on their $50,000 down payment on 369 Claremont Ave.
The Friends made the $50,000 down payment on the $400,000 they had pledged to pay Robert “Bob” Van Dyk on Freed Slave House bought in the 11th hour for $379,000 on Dec. 22.
The preservationist coalition wanted to buy Montclair’s oldest house for more than being built in 1790. It was home to James Howe, who received the one bedroom, one bathroom building as a bequest from former slave master, Maj. Nathaniel Crane, in 1836.
Crane, who bought Howe for $50, also granted Howe his freedom, Crane’s Mill in Caldwell and a ferry service in the Meadowlands. The Cranes, who settled here before the Revolutionary War, are Montclair’s “Cranetown” namesakes.
The Friends of Howe House include members of the NAACP Montclair Chapter, the African American Clergy Coalition, Montclair Mutual Aid and the Universalist Unitarian Congregation of Montclair.
Van Dyk, who also owns a nearby nursing home, said the house came into his family in the 1950s. A Howe descendant sold part of the bequeathed five acres to the Welsh-Wiggin family, who then built a mansion.
The Howe House was also next to an underground tunnel that may have been used by runaway slaves to bypass the bounty hunters at the Newark-Pompton Turnpike toll booth in the 1850s. It was rediscovered by an 1870’s test bore by the Erie Railroad, who was mapping out what is now the NJTransit Montclair-Boonton Line.
GLEN RIDGE – An outpatient bariatric surgery center, or at least its lawyer, has until Feb. 18 to respond to a Caldwell woman’s negligence suit stemming from a March 15,2021 operation here.
The suit, filed by the 74-year-old plaintiff, claims that she had suffered second- and third- degree burns about her face and neck while at the Glen Ridge SurgiCenter, 230 Sherman Ave.
She said she was placed on a nasal oxygen tube while the operating doctor, nurses and assistants were removing tumors from her right shoulder and neck. The assistants were using an electric cauterizing tool to close the wounds when “the device gave off a spark that caused the oxygen to burn.”
There was then a flash fire that caused the draperies near the device to also catch fire. The plaintiff is suing Glen Ridge SurgiCenter, the doctor in charge and the nurses and assistants of the operation for “careless and incorrect” action.
The patient is also suing the New York Bariatric Group. A NYBG spokeswoman, on Jan. 19, said that the company, who also has offices in Springfield and on Staten Island, “has never owned or operated the Glen Ridge SuriCenter.”
NYBG and GR SurgiCenter do have separate offices here at 230 Sherman Ave. The latter, one-room center’s license, according to N.J. Health and Senior Services records, expired on June 30, 2022.
BELLEVILLE – 20-year Township Clerk Kelly Cavanaugh will be turning her office keys to former Guttenberg Town Clerk Cabrera Jan. 30-Feb. 1.
Cavanaugh, who succeeded the late Mary Lou Hood as clerk in 2002, has been a 31-year Belleville employee. She was given a proclamation by Mayor Michael Melham, Town Manager Anthony Iacono and the Township Council at the latter’s Jan. 10 meeting.
Cabrera, 60, was appointed later that same Tuesday night meeting.
Resident, 38, Killed in Newark
The family of Oscar Rivera, 38, have been mourning his Jan. 15 death in Newark while law enforcers search for his killer. Rivera was found along the 300 block of their North Seventh Street at 12:30 a.m. that Monday by Newark police officers who were responding to “a potential homicide” report.
Rivera, who was “shot multiple times in the chest,” was rushed to University Hospital, where he died at 4 a.m. At least six shell casings were found by 345 North 7th St. Rivera’s last rites have not been announced as of Jan. 23.
NUTLEY – The township’s public affairs department and Vitalant Blood Services of NJ have dedicated their Community Mobile Blood Drive here at 149 Chestnut St., 2:30-7:30 p.m. Jan. 30 after the late resident and chef Keith R. Jaret.
Jaret, 62, who owned and ran three cupcake restaurants here, Hoboken and Endicott, N.Y. plus a Totowa bakery, died while awaiting a liver transplant Feb. 8, 2018. Those between 16 and 79, have made an appointment, are not sick or exposed to the COVID-19 virus are welcome to donate.
Woman, 74, Dead on Roof
Township and county authorities are investigating the circumstances that led to a woman being found dead on a building’s roof here on Jan. 16. Police officers were searching for the 74-year-old woman, reported as missing, when her body was found atop the six-story Nutley Parkside Apartments at 7 William St., 6:57 p.m. that Monday.
NPD and ECPO officials gave few details except that they believe that no suspicious activity had happened. The deceased ‘s daughter had reported her as missing that morning. after not hearing from her for several days.
