TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – Estimates on how much it would take to repair some of the Newark Public Schools’ older buildings, and opinion on how to pay for them, may become a hot topic issue within and outside of 465 Broad St. this summer.
What had started out as a $1 billion estimate at the start of 2023, has grown to $2.5 billion by May 30. NPS Business Administrator Valerie Wilson, that month, said that a “facilities condition assessment” is being conducted on the older of the district’s 65 school buildings. The average school building’s age is 98 year old.
“We have asbestos, lead paint, lead in our pipes,” said Wilson May 23. “All of those things have to be addressed before you can do some of the other kinds of the things you want to do. Construction materials pricing is very volatile, so we’d say that the estimate is around $2.5 billion just to being the buildings up to be where they need to be in terms of code.”
What has raised eyebrows outside of the NPS Central Office is that Schools Superintendent Roger Leon is considering the proposal to launch a $1 billion construction bond issue. The NPS Board of Education, on May 23, had approved a $1.3 billion budget for the 2023-24 school year.
Leon, as of press time, is thinking it over but has not asked anyone in the Central Office to draft a proposal. Some outside officials ae countering that NOS should rather be approaching the NJ School Development Authority and the State Legislature for the repair money.
State Education Law Center senior attorney Theresa Luhm, on June 13, said approaching state legislators in Trenton would be preferable to “shifting the burden to local taxpayers.”
“The SDA owes us more schools,” added Mayor Ras Baraka. “(They) fell woefully short on what was anticipated and no real explanation was given to voters across our state.”
Baraka, who was Central High School principal when it moved from its 1912 building to its new one, was referring to the drafting slowdown put on the SDA early in Gov. Chris Christie’s administration. NPS, prior to Christie’s 2007 “go slow” order, would need 70 years to replace their older schools.
NPS, should it go to a bond issue, would be the first time as a newly autonomous school district. The district, while under state control, had issued a $305 million construction bond in 2017.
IRVINGTON – A township man, said Union County officials, went from being an “armed and dangerous” suspect in an early June 24 shooting to being arrested in Plainfield later that Saturday.
Union County Prosecutor William Daniel said his detectives plus New Jersey State Troopers and Summit Police Department members arrested Jaime Tapia-Lobos, 33, of Irvington, at Plainfield’s Front and Grant streets.
While Daniel did not say how Tapia-Lobos was identified and located, he did fit the description of a man accused of shooting another in the area of Summit’s 103 Park Ave. at 8:35 a.m. Saturday.
Witnesses said that the suspect and two unidentified men were in front of that apartment house that morning when a fourth person pulled up in his car, got out and began arguing with the trio.
They said the suspect, in a black hooded sweatshirt, pulled out a handgun from his black backpack, fired three shots into the victim at close range and ran into the vicinity of Ashwood and Roosevelt avenues. Responding SPD officers were told that the victim and the suspect have had an argument going for several days.
The victim got back in his car and drove the three blocks to Overlook Hospital. Overlook transferred the 35-year-old Union man to the Morristown Medical Center. He is expected to recover.
Tapia-Lobos had a June 26 arraignment hearing in Superior Court-Elizabeth. He is being held in Elizabeth’s Union County Jail on: first-degree attempted murder, second-degree aggravated assault, third-degree aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, second-degree possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose and second-degree unlawful possession.
EAST ORANGE / ORANGE – An East Orange man, according to the Union County Prosecutor’s Office July 3, was part of a trio who were indicted by a grand jury June 28 for a December-January string of carjackings and armed robberies – including a Jan. 4 holdup in Orange.
The N.J. Superior Court-Elizabeth grand jury handed down four bills of indictment that Wednesday on Daron Thomas, 32, of East Orange, Isaiah Barrett, 33, of Elizabeth, and Alfred Pierre,37, of Roselle.
Thomas, Barrett and Pierre are accused of committing a robbery and carjacking in Linden Jan. 8. The grand jury found enough evidence to have the trio tried in court for robberies in Roselle Dec. 15, in Linden Dec. 26, in Elizabeth Jan. 2 and in Orange Jan. 4. Details of the Orange incident were not immediately available.
Their alleged crimes came out to 56 counts before the grand jury, including those for weapons offenses. The charges include one each on Barrett for reporting a false crime to law enforcement and using a juvenile to corroborate.
The trio were arrested April 17 and remain held in Newark’s Essex County Correctional Facility Their trial is being scheduled for late July in Elizabeth.
Union County Prosecutor and Linden Police Chief thanked the Orange, Elizabeth and Roselle police detectives for their assistance in their four-month investigation.
WEST ORANGE – Township elders, since granting final approval to their annual Independence Day fireworks celebration here 12:30 p.m. June 30, have been crossing their fingers that, as of 4 p.m. July 3, the event will go off as intended.
The Township Council held a special hybrid meeting that Friday to pass a resolution authorizing the July 4 event and its vendors. The extra meeting was immediately set after they had tabled the same resolution at their scheduled June 27 meeting.
“Your Town Council did NOT vote to cancel the July 4 Fireworks,” explained Council President Tammy Williams June 28. “We needed additional information that wasn’t available last night. We want to make sure our West Orange traditions remain safe.”
Williams was responding to an overnight social media post that had claimed that the fireworks were canceled. Whatever additional information township elders had wanted sufficiently satisfied them to grant Friday approval.
The celebration is to start around 6 p.m., with fireworks at dusk, July 4 on the West Orange High School field. The event includes a July 8 rain date.
That rain date may be used if the National Weather Service’s prediction of scattered rain and thunder showers July 4 is realized. That rain threat, however, is above marginal for western, central and southern New Jersey plus Delaware, eastern Pennsylvania and the Elkton, Md area.
Anticipated thunderstorms and poor Air Quality Index readings had prompted some “Local Talk” towns to postpone. Essex County, for example, cited air quality to bring their June 30 NJ Symphony Orchestra concert and fireworks at Newark’s Branch Brook Park respectively indoors thar Friday and “to be announced. Its July 2 Infernos concert at Bloomfield/Montclair’s Brookdale Park was rendered “TBA” and its Fireworks added to a July 7 concert there.
SOUTH ORANGE – A former private school teacher and coach from the village, said the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office June 22, will still pay a price for not alerting authorities of a colleague’s seduction of a student even if she will not get jail time.
Ranait Griff, 30, in Superior Court-Somerville that Thursday, pleaded guilty for a disorderly person’s charge for not reporting fellow teacher-coach Matthew Rennie’s “grooming” of a 17-year-old student in 2021. The plea bargain puts her on one year’s probation and ends the family of the victim’s six-month-old claim that she had actively allowed Rennie’s actions going back to 2018.
Griff, however, has lost her license to coach or teach anyone under 18 years old. She, Rennie and the victim were all at Franklin’s Rutgers Preparatory School in 2021.
Rennie’s victim first reported her abuse to Franklin Police in late September 2021. Their September 2018 relationship had developed into a sexual one – where acts were performed in his car, house, in local parks and in his RPS classroom – July-September 2021.
Rennie, 35, of East Amwell, was arrested Oct. 6, 2021. He is currently serving a four-year sentence after pleading guilty March 17 to second-degree sexual assault and third-degree endangering the welfare of a minor.
Griff may not be completely clear of related legal troubles. The victim’s family has claimed that she had sexually assaulted another student in 2021. No charges, as of press time, have been filed against her.
MAPLEWOOD – County and state officials continue to hunt for the coyote who attacked a girl, a dog and, reportedly, a man here June 30 after they had closed South Mountain Reservation south of West South Orange Avenue through July 2.
Essex County Executive Donald DiVincenzo had the reservation’s Bear Lane, Crest Drive and the South Mountain Dog Park closed soon after the first attack was reported after 3 p.m. Friday. The closure, which includes parts of Maplewood and Millburn, was closed throughout Saturday while N.J. State, Game and Wildlife officials and the Essex County Sheriff’s Office combed the area for at least one coyote.
Sheriff’s and Maplewood Police officers first arrived at the Cedar Drive parking area after a 13-year-old girl called, saying that and her Maltese Shih Tzu were bitten by a coyote at around 3 p.m.
The girl said she was walking her dog along Bear Lane when the coyote seized on the canine by its jaws and tried to drag it into the woods. She managed to open the coyote’s jaws and free the dog – but not without biting her leg before leaving.
The human victim was taken to Livingston’s RWJBarnabas Health Cooperman-Barnabas Medical Center; she is expected to fully recover.
Maplewood police soon found the dog and sent it to the Fairfield Animal Hospital. The canine is said to be suffering severe injuries; one report said it had lost an eye. The sheriff’s office, as of 5 p.m. June 30, had not confirmed or denied a report of a man who had also suffered puncture wounds to his leg here at around 4:30 p.m.
Officials consider the coyote in the first attack as “aggressive.” They advise not to leave out food – including bird feeders, make a lot of noise without running when encountering one and call NJF&W, (908) 735-8793 and/or the DEP (877) WARN-DEP Hotline.
BLOOMFIELD – A spray park in the East Orange part of Essex County’s Watsessing Park is the nearest thing that Bloomfield residents have to a community pool this summer.
Bloomfielders, like their counterparts in Belleville and Nutley, have had to get memberships either with other nearby municipal pools, if allowed, or become members of the local YM/YWCA or private pools to cool off in the summertime.
The township, as recalled by former Mayor Ralph G. Conte, came within one vote of having a municipal pool of its own in March 1965. Conte, who was mayor 1963-66, said that a fifth and decisive council member’s vote was needed to pass an $800,000 bond ordinance – worth $7,723,860.32 in today’s dollars – but it did not happen.
Conte, in an Oct. 28, 2014 recollection at the Bloomfield Historical Society, said that the Bloomfield Municipal Pool drive started with a 1963 poll of 20,000 residents. (Bloomfield had a population of from the 1960 Census.) Two-thirds of the 5,000 responding residents favored having a municipal pool.
Positive support was then bolstered by a 250-person charter membership subscription drive. That drive secured $11,000 worth (or an inflation-adjusted $109,335.61) of memberships.
Mayor Conte and the Township Council found a pool site at Millbank Park in the Ampere section and, in January 1965, held an introductory bond ordinance and subsequent public hearing. There were 42 people testifying at the public hearing – with the Bloomfield Recreation Commission, the N.J. Recreation Department, the Bloomfield Planning Board and local sports hero Frank Tripucka voicing their support.
The bond ordinance was introduced 4-3 – but failed to get a five-vote majority at the March meeting. The .38-acre Millbank Park now includes a children’s playground and a community garden.
MONTCLAIR – Councilman-at-Large Peter Yacobellis ended three months of lawsuit-and-countersuit by withdrawing his defamation suit June 12 against current resident Matthew Schwartz and former resident David Herron.
Yacobellis had filed his suit against Schwartz and Herron March 13 for what he said were the two public speakers’ “self-interested defamation campaign” against him. Herron and Schwartz, at Feb. 23’s Township Council meeting public comment segment, asked Yacobellis to refrain from any decision-making on the latest Lackawanna Plaza redevelopment plan.
The two speakers said that Yacobellis, as Out Montclair’s co-founder, had a conflict of interest since that group had a fundraiser at redeveloper Steve Plotkin’s house. Herron then added that he had notified the New Jersey Attorney General’s office.
“This was a decision I had made out of a desire to try and put the need for some inner peace and community healing in front of the need to be right,” said Yacobellis in his June 12 email to his supporters. “I had a very strong case that I was ready to fully litigate. But, as a mayoral candidate now, this’ a distraction and I need my focus to be on solving some of our larger challenges as a town.”
Herron, at the council’s June 13 meeting, sounded skeptical of Yacobellis’ suit withdrawal. He first said that the councilman was dropping his own suit on a day before the June 13 deadline.
Herron added that Yacobellis’ lawyer had offered a settlement where he and the councilman would read a joint statement. That statement, said Herron, would have included saying he “didn’t have all the facts” before making his conflict-of-interest claim.
Schwartz, in response to a reporter’s June 14 query, said that his lawyer received a May 5 offer from the councilman’s attorney to pay $20,000 in attorney’s fees for dropping his and Herron’s “frivolous” countersuit. Schwartz, through his lawyer, called the offer “a strategic lawsuit against public participation.”
GLEN RIDGE – The remains of 20-year Glen Ridge Democratic Committee Chairwoman Ann P. McNeill were laid to rest alongside her husband’s at Wrightstown’s Brigadier General William C. Doyle Veterans Memorial Cemetery June 16.
McNeill, 89, died June 14 at her North Beach home on Long Beach Island. She and Richard P. McNeill, after living in Glen Ridge for 35 years, retired on LBI in 1985.
The former Ann Orlando and high school sweetheart Richard had married and moved to the borough in 1950. Ann was an assistant administrator for the Essex County Guidance Center for 17 years while Richard was a Western Electric electrician.
McNeill was GRDC Chairwoman 1965-85. The municipal party’s latest chair, former councilwoman Jacqueline Yutsein, was appointed in April to temporarily succeed the retired Ralph Caputo (D-Nutley) in the N.J. 28th General Assembly District.
Ann and Richard raised children Janice Jimmy, Michael Ricky and Susan here while, in later years, summering on LBI. Richard, a USMC sergeant 1952-55, died in Barnegat April 1, 2016.
Brother Rocco, sisters Cam, Josephine and Mary and five grandchildren are among Ann’s survivors. Her Funeral Liturgy was held at Brant Beach’s St. Francis of Assisi Church, where she and Richard were parishioners, June 16.
BELLEVILLE – The curious case of 335 Union Ave. which the Belleville Public Schools had been making rent payments on since July 1, 2021, got more curious on June 20.
BPS Superintendent of Schools Richard Tomko confirmed to a reporter that Tuesday that the district had moved out of that address. There was no anticipated $3,075.50 monthly rent payment, however, listed on the Tuesday night Board of Education Trustees’ agenda.
$3,075.50 would be the monthly rent with a two percent increase kicking in on the five-year lease July 1. That increase would start with BPS-335 Union’s year three of its lease.
The Board of Trustees had authorized the five year lease, effective July 1, 2021, at their Jan. 26, 2021 meeting. The lease included an annual two percent increase on the $2,950 monthly base rent.
The seven-page lease includes a 90-day advance notice from either the tenant or the landlord to renew, extend or sever the contract. The contract does not have language on when or whether the rent payments stop.
335 Union Ave., which is across the street from Belleville School No. 3, is a 102-year-old commercial-residential mixed-use house. It is owned by Mayor Michael Melham.
Melham has used 335 Union’s address to file A Better Belleville’s NJ Election Law Enforcement Commission campaign financing reports. He was manager of two 2021 BOT members who ran on the ABB ticket.
NUTLEY – JD Vick has ended his 23 years of coaching Nutley High School’s football team and moved back to his native Alabama.
Vick, who had been the Maroon Raiders head varsity football coach since 2021, put in his resignation effective June 30. He said he had taken a similar coaching position that is closer to his family’s home.
Vick came here from Tuscaloosa Christian School, where his teams had won 94 games and three state championships. He worked with the legendary NHS head coach Steven DiGeorgio while teaching history and special education here.
He first took the head coach position while DiGergorio went on medical leave. DiGregorio, 60, who returned for his final season in 2020, then retired March 4, 2021 and died Oct. 12, 2021.
Vick, in his 23 years here, was also an assistant baseball and basketball coach. He had also founded the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and the Patriot Club.
The Maroon Raiders, under Vick’s 2019, 21 and 22 leadership, amassed an overall 16-12 win-loss record and qualified for the NJSIAA playoffs each year.
