TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – There are one to four reasons why the Newark Public Schools Board of Education approved four outside attorney service contracts at their Feb. 23 meeting.
Each of the four contracts to pay $285 an hour plus expenses are for the said lawyers to represent members before the New Jersey State Department of Education School Ethics Commission.
Neither NPS’ administrators nor any of the nine board members would identify which of the four members are facing ethics charges. The NJDOE ethics commissioners, by state law, cannot discuss a complaint before them until they have heard the matter or if the matter has been withdrawn, dismissed or settled.
There was at least one abstention recorded on each attorney contract vote roll call. Board Member Hasani Council had abstained on all four votes. Board President Dawn Haynes and members A’Dorian Murray-Thomas and Crystal Williams abstained once on the other three contract resolutions.
Abstentions, according to “Robert’s Rules of Order,” are neither for nor against matters put before the governing body. They are used by members who cannot legally vote on a matter due to a conflict of interest.
Souder, Shabazz and Woolridge, of Newark, are to represent two of the board members in question. The other two members are to be represented by Janelle Edwards-Stewart of Morristown’s Porzio, Bromberg & Newman PC.
No party has come forth as the complainant or about the complaint’s nature.
IRVINGTON – Township Council, on Feb. 27, joined the growing roster of New Jersey municipalities who are banning the use of dirt bikes, ATVs and similar “off road vehicles” on their public streets.
The council’s resolution bans the said vehicles from using or being parked on township streets. These vehicles are also not to be parked or stored in public view on driveways and front lawns.
Irvington’s measure is to curb the “12 O’clock Boys” runs and stunts on township streets. Freelance youths have been seen and heard driving in packs on streets here and beyond the “Local Talk” area for the last decade.
Many of the said riders operate without wearing helmets and on vehicles that do not have license plates. It is presumed that none of the riders carry insurance should they run into something or someone else.
“12 O’clock Boys” is also the name of a 2013 documentary covering packs who plied Baltimore streets – as “Local Talk” witnessed while on way to the 2011-13 Baltimore Indycar GP by the Inner Harbor. The term also refers to the stunt where a rider runs while in a near-vertical position.
Irvington’s resolution, going by the Feb. 27 council agenda resolution summary, also bans those off-road vehicles that are insured and registered with the state MVC and wear license plates.
EAST ORANGE – Some of those who are planning to attend the East Orange School District Board of Education meeting here March 21 may be wondering about three related questions:
- Will Unite Here Local 100 school cafeteria workers continue to bring up their state of negotiations with food vendor SodexoMagic, like they had here on March 6?
- Will Local 100 and SodexoMagic announce a new labor contract?
- Will Local 100 make good on their March 6 strike threat?
Local 100 President Jose Maldonado and some of the unionized cafeteria workers came to the March 6 board meeting to announce that they have just voted to authorize a strike. Maldonado added that talks with Sodexo have bogged down over wage increases and the potential subcontracting of some food services.
SodexoMagic and the EOSD, with the school board’s approval, had entered a food service partnership Sept. 1, 2022 – Aug. 31, 2027. The nationally known Sodexo, Inc. and Magic Johnson Enterprises have since been providing nutritious food for district staff and students with Local 100 labor.
Sodexo, Inc., one of the country’s largest food service providers, reported a 21.2 percent increase of revenue in 2021-22 compared to the previous fiscal year, according to their Oct. 25 board of directors meeting.
A Sodexo spokesperson said that they and Local 100 are returning to the bargaining table on March 17 to complete NY-NJ area contracts.
ORANGE – There are those in and around the Orange Valley who are wondering if mass transit will keep up with the new housing going up in the neighborhood.
The Orange Planning Board unanimously approved Scotland Ventures’ plans on Dec. 21 for a 65-unit six-story apartment building to go up at 611-17 Scotland Rd. The building will replace the two houses at 611 and 613 Scotland and go up on the Fine Finishes auto body site. Fine Finishes was destroyed in a Feb. 22, 2022 two-alarm fire.
611-17 Scotland is the latest of four apartment buildings going up or have been completed within Highland Avenue train station’s half-mile Transit Village Zone radius. Construction is about to start on a seven-story Scotland Holdings’ building at 448-452 Scotland. Harvard Printing, I and II, at 550 Central Ave., Orange and 22 Central, West Orange, and Hat City Lofts, at 475 So. Jefferson Ave. here, had respectively opened in 2019 and 2018.
New Jersey Transit’s Highland Avenue Station service, however, remains largely unchanged since the carrier cut Morris & Essex Line off-peak rush hour service to 60-minute intervals in May 2010.
Just over a third of the 145-weekday eastbound and westbound M&E trains, going by its Nov. 13, 2022 timetable, stop at Highland Avenue (51), South Orange’s Mountain Station (52) and East Orange Station (52) NJTransit’s 2017 weekly ridership data has East Orange being used by 455 weekly riders, followed by Mountain’s 333 and Highland’s 233.
While all 37 weekend and major holiday M&E trains stop at East Orange Station, Highland Avenue is served 19 times and Mountain 18. The 37 hourly trains alternate between Highland Avenue and Mountain, making riders wait up to two hours at their respective stops between trains.
Orange DPW Director Marty Mayes, when he was also the city’s planning and economic director in 2018, said that NJTransit cannot increase Highland Avenue service due to capacity limits in the New York Penn Station Hudson River tunnels. (The city had recently hired Laquana Best as Planning and Economic Director.)
Capacity relief and more Highland Avenue-New York Penn service may be a decade away once the two new Hudson River tunnels are built. Off peak M&E service to Hoboken Terminal, since 2010, is every two hours.
While NJT upgrade the No. 92 night and weekend bus service from 90 minutes to 60 minutes in the early 2000s, CoachUSA reduced its No. 44 Tremont Ave service to hourly in 2017. Neither West Orange or South Orange’s community shuttle minibuses are known to stop at Highland Avenue or Mountain stations.
WEST ORANGE – Although moving the West Orange Library’s move to 10 Rooney Circle from 46 Mt. Pleasant Ave. is proceeding, the Supreme Court of New Jersey’s March 13 ruling may put a speed bump, if not a road block, to the township’s plans to replace the library’s old building.
It appears, as of press time, that the Township Council’s recent directive to redeveloper Joe Alpert to start demolishing WOPL’s 1959 building and 1979 annex by April 1 may be on hold, given the SCONJ’s ruling on “An Area in Need of Redevelopment.”
The state’s high court, in the opinion of Chief Justice Stuart Rabner, has invalidated the township’s AINOR criteria under the Local Housing and Redevelopment Law. Rabner, in the 18-page ruling released Monday, said that the Township Council and its planning consultant had falsely determined that the 64-year-old building and 44-year-old annex were “obsolete.”
“Like many older buildings, the library needed improvements in a number of areas,” said Rabner for the court. “But the record didn’t establish that it didn’t suffer from obsolescence, faulty arrangement or obsolete layout in a way that harmed the welfare of the community. To designate property for redevelopment under the LHRL, a municipality must demonstrate that certain specified problems exist and that they cause actual detriment or harm.”
The ruling, which was based on the 105-page Heyer, Greul consultant’s study of 46 Mt. Pleasant Ave. and resulting Township Council AINOR designation from 2019.
The ruling may have at least paused plans to build a five-story senior citizens apartment building at 46 Mt. Pleasant Ave. Such construction, said Township Attorney Richard Trenk, would help West Orange meet its Coalition for Affordable Housing quota. (NOTE: Trenk’s name was misspelled in the March 9 TW entry.)
The ruling came after the high court had heard arguments from lawyers representing the township and, until recently, Kevin Malanga on Oct. 24. Malanga, who took West Orange to court over its library AINOR, appealed to SCONJ after losing in state superior and appellate court.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – A committee of South Orange-Maplewood School District administrators is examining applications for who will succeed Board of Education Member Susan Bergin.
The school board has meanwhile kept Bergin’s seat vacant until the committee makes an appointee recommendation.
Bergin, of Maplewood, tendered her resignation with immediate effect on Feb. 20. The New York City lawyer said that her firm had given her a promotion that would present a conflict of interest.
The 13-year Maplewoodian and mother of three was more than halfway through her first term. She and Courtney Winkfield, of South Orange, ran together in 2020.
A majority of registered two-town voters selected her, Winkfield and current board First Vice President Elissa Malespina, of South Orange, were elected to their first terms Nov. 3, 2020. Malespina and Wakefield’s terms are to expire on Dec. 31.
Whoever is appointed to succeed Bergin may have the option to run for a full three-year 2024-26 elected term.
Bergin meanwhile left behind an open letter urging for greater public involvement. instead of “joking about popcorn-watching meetings,” “pot-stirring” and “lively entertainment.”
BLOOMFIELD – A township man, as the result of a Nov. 22 conviction for a 2019 car hire carjacking, has been serving an up to 29-year sentence in state prison since March 3.
N.J. Superior Court Judge Thomas Isenhour, from his Elizabeth bench that Friday, sentenced Farrakhan Howard to 24 years on the first-degree carjacking count – including a concurrent 18-year sentence for the first-degree attempted murder of its Lyft driver.
Judge Isenhour also placed a consecutive five-year sentence for the third-degree aggravated assault of its passenger. Howard must serve at least 85 percent of his overall sentence before being considered for parole or early release.
The Union County Prosecutor’s Office had tied Howard, 30, to the stabbing of the 47-year-old driver in Clark and the stabbing of the 20-year-old woman passenger.
Clark police found the driver along Westfield Avenue just after 1 a.m. April 24, 2019. The driver had stab wounds to his head, face and neck. Rahway police found the passenger with stab wounds to her head and scratch wounds to her neck.
The driver and passenger said that fellow passenger Howard began scratching and stabbing the woman. The driver stopped the car to assist the woman – only for Howard to assault him. Both bailed out and Howard stole the car. The vehicle was found in Woodbridge.
The Superior Court-Elizabeth jury, on Nov. 22, also found Howard guilty on a pair of third- and fourth-degree weapons possession charges.
MONTCLAIR – Councilman-at-Large Peter Yacobellis, as of March 13, has filed a defamation suit against two township residents over their accusations against him in the Feb. 21 Township Council meeting.
Yacobellis, in his State Superior Court-Newark filing, charged that David Herron and Martin Schwartz had conducted “a self-interested defamatory smear campaign designed specifically, as threatened, to damage Yacobellis’ reputation.”
Herron and Schwartz, during the Feb. 21 public comment segment, claimed that Yacobellis’ Out Montclair advocacy group had received donations from current Lackawanna Plaza owner David Placek. Placek currently has his plan to redevelop the historic Montclair train terminal and the former Pathmark supermarket before the township’s council and planning board.
Herron and Schwartz, on Feb. 21, urged Yacobellis to recuse himself, including all communication, over the Lackawanna Plaza plan. The first-term councilman founded Out Montclair in late 2021, roughly a year after his 2020 election.
The councilman claims that he is suffering damage to his reputation plus material damage in the form of “the loss of email subscribers and financial support.” He remains as Out Montclair’s paid executive director.
Yacobellis has also named just-resigned Out Montclair advisors Anson Pope and Cathy Renna as “co-conspirators.” He calls their wanting a private meeting in January an “extortion” attempt to “reveal information damaging to his reputation” should the meeting not take place.
BELLEVILLE – There is a reason one might have seen more Belleville police patrols around its public schools since late March 7.
Police officers said that a student was robbed of a cell phone while walking to school that Tuesday morning on a SoHo section street.
The child told responding BPD officers that, while walking along Rocco Street at 8 a.m. a car with Four occupants pulled up. One of the male passengers then got out, grabbed the phone and got back in. The car then sped south into Newark.
“Police immediately identified the vehicle after the incident,” continued the BPD report. “These same individuals had allegedly committed similar incidents in at least one other jurisdiction Surrounding towns were notified.”
The car, recovered from the Garden State Parkway, was earlier reported as stolen.
“Several males were detained,” added the March 8 report. “(Belleville) detectives are investigating their role in our incident.”
NUTLEY – Any memories of “The Three Little Hillbillies” performing here and nearby in the early 1930s may have died with actor Robert Blake’s March 9 death in Los Angeles.
Blake, 89, was the last of the “Three Hillbillies.” He, older brother James and sister Joan, under the watch of their father James, would sing and dance for spare change in Nutley and nearby town parks 1936-38.
“I was a child laborer, not a child actor,” recalled Blake in a 1990s interview. “It was either that or stealing bottles of milk off front porches.”
Blake was born here Sept. 18, 1933 as Michael James Vincent (or Vijencio) Gubitosi. He, James and Joan lived with father Giacomo (or James) Gubitosi and mother Elizabeth Cafone Gubitosi at 28 Humbert St.
James and Elizabeth moved to Hollywood in 1938, so their children can get hired as movie extras and vie for auditions. Michael Gubitosi, who changed his name to Robert Blake, was a cast member in the last 40 of the “Our Gang / Little Rascals” serial series.
Blake would be cast in 200 feature films and 41 television series 1938-97, except for a three-year tour with the U.S. Army. He received two Oscar nominations, a Golden Globe award — and an Emmy for his title performance in the 1977-78 television series “Baretta.”
Blake was acquitted in the 2005 murder trial of wife Bonnie Lee Bakley but was found liable for her death in a later civil trial. His two other wives, a son and two daughters are among his survivors.
