TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – The City of Newark will allow the New York City Department Social Services, after their Aug. 10 agreement, to resume the latter’s Special One-time Temporary Program here by a more restrictive process.
The NYC department may relocate up to 28 participating STOP homeless families here per year, or four families per quarter. STOP is a program where families are taken out of NYC shelters into housing within or outside of “The Big Apple.” The families come with an NYC DSS-issued vouchers that pays landlords one year’s worth of rent.
NYC STOP, started in 2017 under Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Administration, sent 1,198 of 7,500 “going out of state” families to Newark until Mayor Ras Baraka’s Administration filed a 2019 federal lawsuit and injunction. The Newark Municipal Council also passed a 2020 bill banning other municipalities from sending homeless people here for the sole purpose “of making that person a public charge.”
NYC DSS inspectors, furthermore, must vet the prospective housing here and send their findings to their Newark colleagues. STOP families will also be given a hotline number should they find unsafe or unhealthy conditions. The measures are to prevent unscrupulous landlords to take the STOP vouchers and do no upkeeping.
The New York agency is to furnish STOP family transfers and housing conditions in quarterly reports to Newark Yearly vouchers are also to be issued monthly. NYC must contact Newark for permission to exceed the 28-family limit.
Newark, under pressure from an NYC Legal Aid Society lawsuit, scuttled what the suit called its “Needy Persons Ban.”
Newark officials said they were not informed of the new arrivals who become additions to the city and Essex reach agreement on the latter’s one-time, one-year homeless relocation program.
ORANGE – The South Ward Neighborhood Alliance’s petition to address the city’s part of the Orange Valley’s parking conditions has passed its signature midway point.
The SWNA petition, addressed to South Ward Councilwoman Jaime Summers-Johnson, is asking for “a comprehensive parking assessment of four streets covering an eight-block area framed by Morris Street, Scotland Road, Randolph Place and Vose Avenue plus Argyle Avenue west to the Rahway River West Branch and Valley Street between McLaughlin Place and Morris.
That area is a mix of houses, garden apartment and midrise apartment buildings. Those residences’ parking areas range from private lots to curbside-only. The area includes a new midrise apartment building off Vose and Argyle’s northwest corner.
The petition asserts that the limited parking spaces and residency growth has resulted in unauthorized or illegal parking, parking congestion and inadequate parking for visitors.
The petition, which is still taking signatures, is found on change.org. Details are found at SWNAorangenj@gmail.com in her petition drive to address her neighborhood’s parting residents petitioning their Councilwoman to consider revamping parking regulations.
No Nov. 7 Term Limit Question
“Local Talk” has learned from Orange Municipal Clerk Joyce Lanier Aug. 22 that the Committee for Term Limits in Orange did not submit signature petitions before the 4 p.m. Aug. 18 deadline. There will be no public question on whether to place term limits on Orange’s mayor and city council on the Nov. 7 General Election ballot.
IRVINGTON – Daniel Mangan, Irvington High School’s latest principal, recently remembered when he was kicked out of the Florence Avenue School in 1997.
Mangan, 39, who is also the IHS Blue Knights assistant football coach for the last two years, said that his expulsion was when Florence was a Kindergarten-Eighth Grade school. He said that he never failed a class but kept having behavioral issues.
The Irvington native, his mother and three siblings, after having lived in the township’s four wards, moved to Newark’s West Side. He was hanging out in the streets past Midnight here when he should be completing the eighth grade when the late Golden Knights youth football founder Ralph Steele asked him to join his squad.
Mangan continued with the Golden Knights until he graduated from West Side High School in 2002 and Kean University with a history degree in 2006. He became a long term substitute teacher at Malcolm X Shabazz High School on WSHS Principal Ferdnard Williams’ recommendation. Mangan would eventually attain a masters degree in educational leadership from Grand Canyon College; he is pursuing a doctorate in education from Liberty University.
The Shabazz HS principal at the time noticed Mangan’s rapport with students and asked him to become in-school suspension teacher – and as an assistant football coach for the Bulldogs. Some Newark football followers may recall him as an on-time Barringer HS Blue Bears head coach.
The Irvington Board of Education hired Mangan this summer to lead an IHS staff of 170 and an anticipated student body of at least 1,565 students. He, and his family have long resettled in Irvington. His eldest of three sons happen to be a Blue Knights linebacker.
EAST ORANGE – The red New Jersey Department of Labor “Stop Work” handbill on 471 Central Ave., which was posted on Aug. 15, will stay on – and the Boston Market restaurant will stay closed – until its owners pays up its back wages to its employees.
NJ DOL’s Division of Wage and Hour and Contract Compliance, since that Tuesday, have closed 26 more of Boston Market’s other 32 New Jersey restaurants until its owners pay back the $607,471 in wages to 314 of its employees. Store owners and Boston Chicken of NJ LLC, of Ewing, are to also pay the agency $1,214,942 in penalties and charges for an overall arrears of $2,554,154.30.
The DOL, in an Aug. 15 release, said that division investigators were first told of unpaid back wages by a Hamilton Township Boston Market employee last November. Detectives found failure to pay the minimum wage, unpaid or late wage payments, failure to keep paid sick leave records and hindering the investigation.
The 314 Garden State employees are not alone in claiming that Boston Market had shortchanged them. A group of Massachusetts workers had filed suit in Boston Federal Court in July – and that is not the company of 342 nationwide stores’ only problem area.
US Foods and several other food suppliers and distributors said that they are owed $11.7 million. Its Golden, Colo. headquarters were padlocked by the Colorado Division of Revenue over $423,000 in back rent Jan. 23.
Those are three of the headaches BM CEO Jignesh “Jay” Pandya, who has been named in NJ DOL’s complaint, have had since he bought the casual dining fast food chain from a venture capital firm in April 2020. Pandya, of Newton, Pa., who owned and operated a string of Delaware Valley Pizza Huts and Dunkin’ Donuts, had hoped to add 105 more BMs and bring its 5,500 employee level to 8,000.
The .77-acre restaurant was opened around 1970 as a Gino’s Hamburgers-Kentucky Fried Chicken. NFL Baltimore Colts football captain Gino Marchetti helped bring Col. Harlan Sanders’ KFC to the Mid-Atlantic states.
Boston Market’s Sunrise Holdings real estate division bought the southeast Central Avenue and South Clinton Street eatery July 1, 1986. KFC moved to 434 Central Ave. after the former Robert Hall clothing store there was demolished.
WEST ORANGE – A 10 a.m. visitation and an 11:30 a.m. memorial service with military honors for Peter J. Longo, 100, has been set here at the Dangler Funeral Home for Oct. 7. Longo, who has been recognized as West Orange’s oldest World War Two veteran at his Nov. 2, 2022 100th birthday, died peacefully at home here Aug. 4.
Longo was an Orange native who was living with his family at the city’s Nassau Street residence and was an electrician and nickel plater for Thomas A. Industries here when Uncle Sam called him for service in 1945. He was sent off for a 25-month tour of duty in the war’s European and North African Theater.
Tank crewman and Staff Sgt. Longo, upon honorable discharge, married defense plant worker Elizabeth “Betty” Raycheck. They moved to the Orange Valley’s 483 Cary St. to raise daughters Patricia Bolles, Diana Longo and son Peter M. Longo.
Longo became an electrical inspector for the City of Orange, Montclair, Verona, and Cedar Grove among nearby towns. He eventually joined Essex County as a senior electrician.
Longo, off-hours and in retirement, was an avid fisherman throughout the Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawai’i, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Brazil. He and the late conductor Gabriel Nevola, of Glen Ridge, were Bloomfield Mandolin Orchestra charter members.
The balloon animal maker for children had several of his poems – including “Our Golden Years,” “Trees” and “Share a Smile’ – were published by the National Library of Poetry. The Our Lady of Mt. Carmel of Orange parishioner was a member of West Orange Knights of Columbus Council No.5519 and VFW West Orange Post No. 376.
VFW Post No. 376 and West Orange Mayor Robert Parisi respectively honored Longo at Bella Italia Ristorante Nov. 2, 2022 and at the annual West Orange Veterans Day Observance Nov. 11, 2022. The former Essex County Vocational and Technical High School student lost his beloved Betty Dec. 30, 2017.
Memorial donations may be made to the Wounded Warriors Project, PO Box 758517, Topeka, KS 66675 and or the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, 2361 Staten Island, NY 10306.
SOUTH ORANGE – Village President Sheena Collum and the Village Trustees ran into controversy on Aug. 14 when they introduced their latest charter changes that they want to send to the State Legislature for their approval.
The revised charter change resolution proposes dropping “Township” from the Village of South Orange title and rename the VP and Trustees “Mayor” and “Village Council Members.” The resolution provides a possible move of South Orange’s nonpartisan municipal elections from May to the November General Election.
What got some villagers’ ire up is the creation of stipends for the prospective “Mayor” and “Village Council.” The measure calls for paving the VP/Mayor $12,000 and each of the six VT/Council Members $8,000 annually.
Some public speakers want to keep South Orange’s elders as unpaid volunteers. The thinking is that the individuals in office are there for the service and not for the pay.
VP Collum, who was elected to her third term May 9, said that she spends $15,000 from her pocket for job-related expenses. Former Trustee Donna Coallier, in an Aug. 18 editorial, said that the $60,000 in annual stipends can be offset by saving $70,000 in shifting its May elections to November.
The trustees carried the introduction, 5-1. It’s second reading and public hearing date has not been immediately set.
MAPLEWOOD – An East Orange man is to answer a summons he was issued July 23 here soon in the Maplewood Municipal Court part of 1618 Springfield Ave.
Maplewood Police Chief Albert Sally said that Derek Marshall had been processed and released from the police headquarters half of 1618 Springfield late early that Sunday morning after being arrested at 1942 Springfield Ave. the night before. There was also a side trip to Newark’s University Hospital to treat Marshall’s head laceration.
MPD officers had first responded to an unwanted person report from Maple Crest Deli & Liquors’ business owner and arrived to find the results of a fight between him and the man identified as Marshall.
The store owner said he had banned Marshall after he had allegedly stolen a bottle of wine in a paper bag. He then confronted Marshall when he returned to the store.
The manager said that Marshall had struck him with the bagged bottle, causing its contents to break. The manager said he then caused Marshall’s head wound by striking the top of his head.
Marshall has been charged with theft, trespassing and simple assault. The manager had initially refused medical attention.
BLOOMFIELD – Mayor Michel Venezia and a majority of the Township Council, in a 5-2 vote Aug. 14, has awarded a $275,000 contract to Musco Lighting to install field floodlights around Lion Gate Park and Urban Wetlands’ soccer field.
The lighting – after that Monday night’s meeting, an Aug. 8 Zoom town hall and the resolution’s July 17 introduction – is to be installed later this year.
The fixtures will allow soccer play to continue past sunset – which is what Second Ward Councilman Nicholas Joanow, Councilman Ted Gamble and several homeowners around the 18.4-acre municipal park object.
“Who are we representing?” asked Joanow – himself an adjacent homeowner and a longtime Lion Gate Park advocate, “the homeowners who live there 24/7 (or) the soccer people who go home at night?”
Joanow had asked for an independent environmental impact study on adding the floodlights, “like the planning board does with a traffic study,” instead of a recommendation from Musco. He and Township Attorney Michael S. Parlavecchio disagreed on when the pack closes “8:30 p.m.” or “an hour after dusk.”
Gamble’s objection was that the lighting is an additional project when LGP Phase One, including additional tree plantings, has not been finished. The councilman favored holding off the contract’s awarding “until we’ve gotten the grant money that’s due us.”
Venezia, and Council Members Jenny Mundell, Sarah Cruz, Richard Rockwell and Dr. Wartyna “Tina” Davis, in the end, awarded the contract.
MONTCLAIR – A large crowd of Grace Presbyterian Church and community members held a 10 a.m. Aug. 20 “Bring Your Own Lawn Chair” worship service in front of Grace’s manse here at 63 Tuxedo Rd.
The reason for the special outdoor service was self-evident through the just-erected chain link perimeter fence next door. Grace’s sanctuary and fellowship hall at 153 Grove St., its stained glass windows broken out and its roof partially collapsed, had been gutted by fire Aug. 15.
The first Montclair Fire Department units, acting by a pedestrian’s 911 call, swiftly arrived at Grove Street and Tuxedo Road’s southeast corner at 8 a.m. that Tuesday. Firefighters, said MFD Deputy Chief Robert Duncan, found flames and smoke running from the 1926 edifice’s basement to its roofline.
Three alarms were pulled, bringing all MFD hands, Montclair’s police and ambulance units plus mutual aid and/or station coverage from West Orange and other neighboring departments. Although the fire was brought under control by 1 a.m., part of its roof collapsed and the interior heavily damaged by fire, smoke and water.
Four firefighters were treated at and released from a local hospital for minor injuries. No one was in the edifice. Although township and ECPO fire inspectors are looking for the blaze’s exact source, it is believed to have started in the basement.
Grace Interim Pastor Robin Curra said that future worship services will be held at the Upper Montclair Presbyterian Church. Grace has 500 members from in and around Montclair.
The pastor said that rebuilding project donations must be made to gracemontclair.org’s tithe page.
GLEN RIDGE – A Bloomfield man may likely be appearing at Glen Ridge Municipal Court in September to answer burglary and related charges from an early Aug. 9 reported incident.
GRPD Officer Michael Addu said he was responding from an Outlook Place resident’s 2:25 a.m. alarm sounding that Tuesday. The resident told Addu that he noticed a man walking on his driveway towards Essex Avenue.
Addu began searching for the suspect, and found a man matching the resident’s description sitting in a car parked in another driveway. That man bolted from the car and soon got the attention of Sgt. Patricia Romaine when he cut through a backyard to Bay Avenue.
Romaine and Addu were joined in the foot pursuit by Det. Anthony Re, who apprehended the man at Bay Avenue and Broad Street. The suspect – identified as Akeem Williams, 20 – was charged with burglary to an automobile, theft and resisting arrest.
Williams may be facing additional charges after another car had been entered along Outlook Place.
