TOWN WATCH
ORANGE – Residents and other customers of the Orange Water Department Water need to verify where they have addressed their latest due quarterly water bills to on or before the end of business here Nov. 10.
Veolia, formerly SUEZ Water, of Hackensack, sent a Nov. 1 notice to Orange water customers to send their bills directly to OWD, Orange City Hall, 26 North Day St., 07050.
Veolia/SUEZ has managed OWD, including its billing, since the 1990s. The company has not said whether they have ended only their billing service or if they are completely out of Orange.
Nor has, as of press time, the City of Orange has sent a parallel announcement nor an explanation for the change. Neither the city or Veolia have said whether they will extend the Nov. 1-10 payment grace period or waive interest penalties on payments received after Nov. 10.
Some residents/OWD customers, irked by Veolia’s sudden announcement, held a “Coffee and Conversation” meeting at a South Ward home Nov. 5. The meeting was called by James Ward of the Seven Oaks Society.
Some of the said residents may have questioned the City Council at the latter’s Nov. 8 meeting public comment segment scheduled past press time.
The city, on its official website, allows online payment. Most major credit and debit cards are accepted.
NEWARK – The Newark Public Schools Board of Education, at their Oct. 30 meeting, welcomed the man who finished fifth – and out of the running – in April 25’s school board election onto their panel.
They placed Thomas Luna, who received 901 votes, or 8.12 percent, among a candidates field of eight for three BOE seats that April, in the board seat vacated by 1.5-term member Dr. Asia Norton.
Norton, who was Board President Sept. 18, immediately resigned to take a law clerk’s job in State Superior Court-Newark. The board promoted Hashini Council to their presidency Sept. 26.
Luna was placed fifth in that April election by participating city voters behind the “Moving Newark Schools Forward” team and James Wright, Jr. – who received 1,249 votes, or 8.68 percent. Wright, Luna and Tawana Johnson-Emory, who ran together on the “Newark Kids Forward” ticket, were placed fourth through sixth, ahead of the two solo campaigners on the ballot.
It is not clear as of press time why the board picked Luna over Wright Oct. 30. Luna, however, ran an independent campaign in 2022.
Luna is a KIPP RISE Academy charter school Eighth Grade mathematics teacher. He is part of Newark For Educational Equity and Diversity, a community group that called for revised NPS BOE vacancy bylaws.
IRVINGTON / EAST ORANGE – ECPO’s Crime Scene Investigation Bureau detectives are searching for the motorist who struck an East Orange man at an Irvington intersection Oct. 28 – and left him for dead.
Irvington Public Safety Director Tracy Bowers said his officers got a call of a pedestrian-vehicular collision at Clinton and Linden avenues at 10:07 p.m. that Saturday.
They found the pedestrian – identified as Bernard Jones, 70 – at the crossing but not the involved vehicle.
Local medics rushed Jones to Newark’s RWJBarnabas Health Beth Israel Medical center. Jones was pronounced dead at 10:20 p.m. – which prompted Irvington officers to call ECPO.
Jones’ funeral or memorial arrangements have not been made public as of press time. The driver who struck him remains at large.
WEST ORANGE – A “plaza village,” thanks to a West Orange Planning Board vote Oct. 25, will be arriving with new West Orange Plaza anchor tenant Target in May or June 2024 at 235 Prospect Ave.
The board, in a special meeting, approved West Orange Plaza owners’ proposal to turn the Mavis Tire store (formerly CTS Tire and EJ Korvettes Auto) on the property’s northeast corner into a pair of smaller retail stores separated by an open space plaza.
Also green-lighted is the creation of a new restaurant building on a concrete pad about halfway along the plaza’s Prospect Avenue side. The site, on one hand, will have both a drive-through window and a parking area for outdoor dining.
Our Green West Orange and other critics of the remodeling claimed that two new fast-food restaurants will go there, exacerbating traffic volume and congestion at Prospect and Eagle Rick avenues at the plaza’s southeastern corner.
There will also be permitted facelifting both at the now-Verizon phone, former bank building on the southwest part of the parking lot and for the plaza’s main structure. The latter remodeling will be in preparation of Target’s arrival in the former EJ Korvettes / Caldor / Kmart / Essex County vaccination center space.
NOTE: The BCCLS.org interlibrary website has listed the West Orange Public Library being closed “Oct. 30 – Nov. 30, 2023.” WOPL is moving its holdings from its 80 Main St. temporary site to the remodeled, more centralized site at 10 Rooney Circle north of the Essex Green shopping plaza.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – The SOMSD Board of Education, on a pair of 6-3 split votes Nov. 3, voted not to renew Superintendent of Schools Dr. Ronald Taylor when it expires on June 30 – and put him on immediate administrative leave.
The board then voted, 9-0, to make Assistant Superintendent of Access and Equity Dr. Kevin F. Gilbert Acting Superintendent.
Although Dr. Taylor asked that his performance reviews by the BOE not to be made public, he said that Friday night that he has had “satisfactory ratings” and that he has “never received a reprimand of any kind” during his four years here. The 28-year educator had received a vote of no confidence from a majority of South Orange-Maplewood Education Association members as announced by the teachers union representative at the Oct. 27 school board meeting. Taylor, early on Nov. 3, issued an eight-page response to SOMEA’s claims.
Board Second Vice President Nubia DuVall Wilson, that Friday, said that “a triggering event,” which she would not elaborate on, prompted the board’s actions. Board President Kaitlin Wittleder, however, issued an explanatory statement Nov. 6.
Wittleder opened her three paragraph statement by thanking “on behalf of the Board,” thank Dr. Taylor for his service to the district. She added, however, that “The South Orange-Maplewood School District has a lot of work to do to repair the relationship between the District leadership and our educators.
“The Board’s decision to place Dr. Taylor on administrative leave was a thoughtful and considered one,” said Wittleder. “A BOE may place an undesirable superintendent on administrative leave when the circumstances warrant it. There’s no legal authority that states that an illegal act, extreme action or other predicate event must occur before the right to place the superintendent on leave is vested.”
Dr. Gilbert joined the two-town district May 16, 2022. He last made news by adopting a majority of recommendations from the Dr. Fergus Report and defending the district’s decision to restricting Halloween celebrations to after school hours.
BLOOMFIELD / GLEN RIDGE – When former Glen Ridge resident Margot Fleming was finishing her first TCS New York City Marathon Nov. 5, she passed the spot near the finish line where she and her father Tom used to stand and cheer on the some 50,000 runners after coursing through the Five Boroughs.
M. Fleming, who began running in marathons and other endurance contests while an Adelphi University student in Philadelphia, ran in Sunday’s race in tribute to her father – who won the 1973 race. He won again in 1975, becoming the first Garden Stater to reside here while winning. (1972 winner Sheldon Karlin, said the New York Road Runners Club, was a Newark native but was attending a Maryland college when he won.)
Tom Fleming, then a student at Wayne’s William Paterson College, won in a time of two hours 21 minutes and 52 seconds. He and 592 other runners, back then, ran four loops within Central Park until 1976.
Tom Fleming won three Jersey Shore Marathons, finished second twice in the Boston Marathon and won marathons in Cleveland, Washington, DC, Toronto and Los Angeles before becoming a cross-country and track coach at the Montclair Kimberley Academy in 2000. He also helped organize the five-mile Sunset Classic, which runs through Bloomfield and Glen Ridge every June.
Tom Fleming, 65, may have been with her in spirit. He was at a track meet in Verona April, 19, 2017, when he had a fatal heart attack. His name has since been attached to the Sunset Classic and Essex County’s “Tom Fleming Athletic Complex” in Montclair Bloomfield.
M. Fleming, Glen Ridge High School Class of 2003, ran in the 30-34 age category Sunday. The Los Angeles resident and Lululemon senior manager finished at 4:01:05 – placing 14,895.
MONTCLAIR – The loss of Vivian Folkenflik, 83, in an Oct. 28 pedestrian-pickup truck collision here, is being felt not only in and around Upper Montclair but as far out as New York City, California and on broadband airways.
Vivian, said son and NPR reporter David in his tribute, said that she was a humanities professor at University of California-Irvine for over 30 years until 2012 retirement from full time teaching. She had moved here after her husband Robert’s death in 2019 to be close to her grandchildren.
V. Folkenflik, for the last four years, attended and supported her grandchildren’s soccer games, dance recitals and drama performances here. She attended New York’s Cong. Beit Torah Simcha’s Psalms classes and studied the Talmud at home.
Vivian was born in Brooklyn in 1940 to a school librarian and a cardiologist. He love for history, literature, museums, music and Jackie Robinson helped her to graduate from James Madison High School in 1956 at 16 years old.
Folkenflik attained a bachelor’s degree in Radcliffe College and a master’s in French literature from Ithaca, NY’s Cornell University. She and Robert were pursuing doctorates in Cornell when they met.
The Folkenfliks moved to Laguna Beach, Calif. in 1975, where they raised Dave and Nora. Nora, 28, was bicycling in Seattle when she was killed by a drunk driver Jan. 17, 1995.
Sister Judith, daughter-in-law Jesse and grandchildren Viola, Zella and Eliza are also among her survivors. No public memorial service was announced as of press time.
BELLEVILLE – Premier Development, of Englewood Cliffs got the green light from the Township Council on two of its higher profile redevelopment pursuits this month with their being approved Oct. 25 to redevelop the School No. 1 site.
By being the “redeveloper,” Premier will be working on what will actually go on the block on Academy Street’s north side between Stephens and Courtlandt streets. Bellville’s elders on the Township Council and the Planning Board have recently rezoned the block to accommodate building a large QuickChek convenience store and gasoline station there.
The elders, earlier this year, added an accidentally excised sliver of land so that an apartment building can be sited there as well.
It is not clear why it took this long to select Premier. QuickChek has closed its older, smaller store at 501 Washington Ave. last summer with a projected new year’s opening of the new site. A walk-in medical care center at 501 Washington appears to be shaping up for an around Thanksgiving opening.
Premier, earlier this month, was granted redeveloper status of 274-78 Washington – also known as the Irvine-Cozzarelli or “Sopranos” Funeral Home – and the adjacent 163 Valley St.
The Cozzarelli family held an “estate sale,” putting many of the funeral home’s contents under an auctioneer’s gavel, Nov. 3-4. The family closed the parlor after its director, James Cozzarelli, died in 2021.
Premier is also responsible for constructing The Essex Apartment building this year on 102 Washington. It had hosted a cocktail fundraiser for “A Better Belleville 2022” teammates Mayor Michael Melham, Deputy Mayor Naomy DePena and Councilman Thomas Graziano. (All were re-elected that May.)
NUTLEY – A carjacking in Newark Oct. 31 led to one of Nutley Public Schools being locked down for nearly an hour that Tuesday.
Nutley Public Safety Commissioner Alphone Petracco and Police Chief Thomas Strumolo said that they had received a call from their Newar colleagues at around 9 a.m. They said that there was a silver 2017 Hyundai Sonata – with a three-year-old boy inside that was stolen from the 100 block of Wilson Avenue at about 8:13 a.m.
Newark Police Division officers said they had posted an AMBER Alert at 9:55 a.m. – and had reason to believe that the car, the suspect driver and the child may be in the Nutley area.
NPD officers joined their Belleville, Lyndhurst and State Police colleagues plus U.S. Marshals in combing their area. Township supervisors asked Nutley Public Schools to lock down the Washington Elementary School for the time being. It is not known whether school officials in Belleville or Lyndhurst were also advised to lock down.
The AMBER Alert was called off after the car and the boy were found unharmed in Jersey City by 10:30 a.m. NPD arrested the suspected carjacker – Shanita N. Rose, 40, of Newark Nov. 3 and charged her with account each of carjacking, kidnapping and endangering the welfare of a child.
The Hyundai’s authorized driver, and the boy’s father said that he stopped at 8:10 a.m. to drop off items at Wilson Auto Parts when Rose allegedly jumped into the car.
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