TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – The Newark Public Schools Board of Education intends to have an attorney of its own seated at their dais – once they sort out the hiring process among the nine-member board.
Schools Superintendent Roger Leon and the current General Council, Brenda Liss looked on while Board President Asia Norton and Board Member Crystal Williams disagreed over when their own attorney would be hired.
Williams wants to have the new hire on their dais before the 2023-24 school year officially starts on Sept. 1. Norton cautions that the lawyer candidates have to be vetted.
There are 12 individuals or legal firms that had responded to the BOE’s May request for proposals in June. Some of the board members, as of June 20, said that they have not seen all of the bids.
Souder, Shabazz & Woolridge, LLC, is among the bidders. That Newark firm, however, is representing four board members in a complaint before the New Jersey School Ethics Commission – a situation that may present a conflict of interest.
The board passed a resolution Jan. 21 to start looking for their own attorney – which most other public school boards have. The measure was in response to when Newark’s educators had not learned of Superintendent Leon’s “automatic” renewal clause in his contract until after the fact.
NPS, as an exception, has long had an attorney who represents both the board and the Central Office administration. That general counsel will remain on the board’s dais but to represent the administration.
IRVINGTON – 1077 Springfield Ave., a former movie theater-turned township senior citizens center, got the closest thing to a premier event ceremony in its 110 years here June 22.
Mayor Anthony “Tony” Vauss, Township Council members, State assemblyman Tom Giblin (D-Montclair) and other municipal, county and state officials reopened the Irvington Senior Citizens Community Center as the Lebby C. Jones Senior Citizens Theatre around 11 a.m. that Thursday.
Irvington police officers closed Springfield Avenue between D. Bilal Beasley Civic Square and the Five Points intersection 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. so that officials could unveil the late councilwoman and county freeholder’s facade portrait before a welcoming crowd.
Irvington’s elders then cut a blue ribbon to officially let the public view some $1.8 million worth of renovations. The work, done in 2022-23, included returning the main room’s stage for performances or screenings.
The Lebby Jones Theatre, after a fashion, reclaims the Art or Liberty theater’s original purpose. The Liberty held 702 seats when it opened in 1913. Its small size, compared to the up-to-1,700 seats in the Castle or Sanford theatres, made it a second-run movie house.
The cinema house was renamed the Art Theater in the late 1950s to run “international” films from the likes of Ingamar Bergman and Francois Truffault. It fell into the “adult” film house orbit before it closed in 1977 and was bought by the township. The ISCCC was also renovated with federal funds in 2002-03.
Now, the senior citizens theater and recreation center was renamed after the late Irvington Public Schools Board President, South Ward Councilwoman and Essex County freeholder. Jones, 75, a 33-year Newark Public Schools teacher and guidance counselor, died while in county office Jan. 9, 2019.
EAST ORANGE – City and Newark police detectives have been searching for the person who shot a male along a border street here since June 21.
The joint investigation began when the East Orange Police Headquarters desk sergeant received a call from a CareWell Medical Center staff member at about 1 a.m. that Wednesday.
That CareWell staffer told the sergeant that a male had entered the former East Orange General Hospital emergency room with a gunshot wound. He told doctors there that he had been shot along “Chelsea Avenue in Newark.”
The EOPD HQ dispatcher, after informing the Newark Police precinct nearest to the shooting, sent several officers and detectives to the three block long mostly residential street. Chelsea runs from East Orange’s Rhode Island Avenue in its Third Ward to South Orange Avenue in Newark’s West Ward-Vailsburg section.
Officers said they had found “a crime scene” by 36 Chelsea in East Orange. What evidence they have found has not been described.
The shooting victim was admitted to CareWell in stable condition and is expected to physically recover.
ORANGE – A city police task force found a resident with a gun containing armor-piercing bullets within feet of the East Orange border June 7.
Orange Police Director Todd Warren and Police Chief Vincent Vitiello said that detectives of the Street Crimes, Gangs and Narcotics Task Force were conducting a special operation on Central Avenue between Oakwood Avenue and East Orange’s South Harrison Street that Wednesday.
It was during that operation that the said detectives encountered Khalil N. Stewart, 45, by 645 Central\Ave. – an address better known as the local Burger King. Warren and Vitiello did not say how Stewart attracted their attention.
Detectives said that Stewart was found with an SCCY Arms Model CPX-2 8 mm. semiautomatic pistol. Within the pistol’s magazine were 11 armor-piercing bullets.
Stewart is being held in Newark’s Essex County Correctional Facility on a count each of possessing a weapon without a permit, being a person not to be possessing a weapon, possessing prohibited ammunition, obstructing the administration of law and resisting or eluding arrest with risk of causing injury.
Mr. Stewart, 45, is not to be confused with another Khalil Stewart, 18, who was arrested on a different weapons possession charge at his address here Feb. 20, 2020. The younger Stewart, after a search warrant, was found with a handgun that was used in a December 2019 armed robbery at a Hanover Township hotel.
WEST ORANGE – Mayor Susan McCartney has signed an executive order June 21 that would effectively set an 11 p.m. curfew on Township Council meetings.
McCartney, that Tuesday, issued an order where all municipal public buildings – with three exceptions – will close at 11 p.m. West Orange Police Headquarters, fire stations and any public buildings being used in emergencies are excepted.
West Orange’s planning and zoning boards have been adjourning their meetings at 11 p.m. No new business will be taken up after 10:30 p.m. and are rescheduled to be heard at a later meeting.
The mayor was responding to a pair of recent council meetings that had not adjourned until 3 a.m.
“The Council President had attempted to adjourn the meetings at 11 p.m.,” said McCartney. “As Mayor, I have no authority over meeting rules and practices that are set by ordinance. Nonetheless, I recommend the Council President to thank the public for their participation and explain the order to close.
“Should you choose to continue your meetings after 11 p.m., you’ll have to do so at a different venue.”
The Council was scheduled to hold a June 27 hybrid meeting.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – Although South Orange-Maplewood School District Superintendent Dr. Ronald Taylor’s contract does not expire until June 30, 2024, members of the public have begun taking sides June 22 on whether he should be retained or become a lame duck.
Although the SOMSD Board of Education ‘scheduled June 22 and special June 19 meetings did not have Taylor’s prospective contract on their agendas, several parents and members of the public presented for or against renewal stands during the public comment segments.
Maplewood Mayor Dean Dafis, for example, was among those who want to see Taylor stay on June 22.
“I encourage the board to be sensible and work with Dr. Taylor; there are some easy wins here,” said Dafis that Thursday night. “Starting a new search for a new superintendent would distract us and halt our progress.”
Mayor Dafis may have been referring to a construction bond issue to update the two towns’ school buildings and help with bridging a stubborn achievement gap between Caucasian and African students. Dr. Taylor, who was first hired here in 2018, had also shepherded the district through the COVID pandemic and with a sometimes-divided school board.
The SOMA Black Parents Workshop, on June 23, issued a letter of no confidence on Taylor.
BPW members contend that the district, under Taylor, had made little to no progress on the achievement gap in the last three school years. They cite a June 23 Rutgers Disproportionality and Equity Lab report, where 80 to 90 percent of the district’s Black and Latinx students lack access to honors and advanced placement courses.
The school board, on Sept. 20, 2021, awarded Taylor a three-year contract through June 30, 2024. He is being paid $226,051 annually. He has also received two percent annual increases, amounting to $30,000 a year.
MONTCLAIR / BLOOMFIELD – The Cameron Animal Hospital here at 417 Bloomfield Ave. Montclair have been graced since June 1 by mourning bunting above its sign and a drawing in its front window.
The drawing, made in 2010, is of a ginger cat wearing a lab coat and, around its neck, a stethoscope. The labcoat’s name tag reads, “Dr. Cameron.”
Dr. George L. Cameron DVM, 87, who had retired from a 45-year veterinary career here Nov. 1, 2019, had died in Paterson’s St. Joseph Medical Center that Thursday. The Bloomfield resident passed away with his family present.
It can be said that Cameron was born into the family business. George L. was born in Parsippany Jan. 9, 1936 – the same year his father, Dr. George, Sr. opened the first purpose-built veterinary office in New Jersey here. Cameron, Jr., at his Nov. 3, 2019 retirement party, remembered the family farm populated by some of the animals his father helped care for.
The son, after stints with the U.S. Army and veterinary school, joined his father’s practice and assumed its helm upon George, Sr.’s death in 1970. The younger Cameron started Cameron Animal Rescue and helped found the Montclair Animal Shelter, the Bloomfield Animal Shelter, the Friends of BAS and the Pound Animal Welfare Society.
Dr. Cameron, who mentored 150 college students into veterinary school, sold the hospital in 2018 to longtime associates Dr. Elizabeth Houston and George Martinez. He spent his last days in the company of stepdaughter Deborah Bielicka, four grandchildren, two great-grandchildren and his cat Star.
A Memorial Mass was held June 14 at Cedar Grove’s St. Catherine of Siena RC Church, followed by a private cremation. Memorial donations may be made “to the rescue group of your choice.”
BELLEVILLE – The Quick Chek Corporation’s confidence in building a new gas station and convenience store here at Rutgers and Stephens streets by or on January 2024 is such that it had just closed its long-standing store on 501 Washington St.
“Local Talk” noticed the former store on the northwest corner of Washington and Little Street bereft of its signage and evidence of displaced shelving within on June 24. A paper sign on its front door reads: “We’re closed. See you in 6-7 months down at our new store at Rutgers and Stephens streets.”
The new Quick Chek will take up the bulk of the block at Rutgers and Stephens – just west of Main Street and the Rutgers Street/Route 7 Bridge. The site was where Belleville School 1 stood until it was closed in the 1990s, demolished and its land sold to the township for $1.
A proposed Quick Chek there had been in discussion since 2019 and had recently been given a Belleville Planning Board public hearing. A sliver of the block, for a projected apartment building, a purported surveying oversight, had to be formally incorporated into the site plan earlier this year.
The Township Council put the final puzzle piece in place by approving Quick Chek Corp. as the block’s redeveloper, Resolution 149-2023, at their June 13 meeting. A representative from Quick Chek’s Whitehouse Station headquarters said that its lease at 501 Washington was to expire on June 30.
The owner of 501-519 Washington now has the Quick Chek and the former Supercuts at 505 Washington vacant. The three-building strip mall still has Advance Auto Parts and CVS Pharmacy.
NUTLEY – One Township Commissioner more than wants to have the Nutley Health Department to part ways with Montclair on or by Dec. 31.
Nutley Public Affairs Commissioner John V. Kelly IV, at the commissioners’ June 8 meeting, announced that he gave the Montclair Health and Human Services Department six months advance notice of letting their interlocal shared services agreement expire.
Kelly explained that he envisions a more robust Nutley Health Department that would offer more services than before its contract with Montclair. “NHD 2.0” is to start by advertising for its own health director.
Nutley’s prospective “Top Doc” would more directly search and apply for public and private grants to fund the extra services. The revamped department would also work more closely with Nutley Public Schools and the Nutley Family Service Bureau.
Montclair HHS will meanwhile continue to serve Cedar Grove and Verona. Both Verona and Cedar Grove renewed their contracts with Montclair last year.
