TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – Essex County Clerk Christopher Durkin showed his leadership by being among the first county clerks, if not the first clerk, to withdraw their names from their plea for a hearing before the U.S. Third Circuit of Appeals in Philadelphia over the block versus county line ballot controversy.
All New Jersey county clerks, except those in Salem and Sussex counties, were headed to Philadelphia to have the appellate court overturn U.S. Magistrate Judge Zahid N. Quraishi’s March 29 ruling that called the currently used county line ballot design unconstitutional. They also wanted to overrule the Newark judge’s April 1 injunction to have the clerks use the block ballot design for the June 4 Democratic Party primary – and not for the Republican primary.
The clerks maintained that they were running out of time to make the county line-to-block ballot design conversion on their voting machines. There are different voting machines, including those from Dominion and Election Systems & Software, in different counties and they have to have by-county ballot placements drawn and printed on or before April 20.
The above is from Andy Kim (D-Moorestown) et al vs. (Monmouth County Clerk) Christine Hanlon et. al., where Kim, who is running for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate, claims that the county line gives preference to candidates who have received endorsements from major party county committees and/or party chairpersons.
But when the filing was made at 10 a.m. April 3, only the Mercer County Democratic Committee remained as the county plaintiff. The Morris County Republican Committee and NJ Republican Chairs Association had replaced the other county clerks. Durkin was the first county clerk, or one of the first, not to put his name on the appeal.
“I’m in favor of block ballot voting,” said Durkin (D-Roseland) from his Newark county office March 31. “I’m confident that Essex County will conduct a fair and free election. Our ballots will be clear and concise; the voting systems we have in Essex County are the best in New Jersey.”
It is not clear whether the Morris County Republican Committee have joined the suit; their June 4 ballots remain county-line style by Quraishi’s rulings.
IRVINGTON – Irvington Public Schools administrators did not have to look far to find Ashley “Smoke” Pierre’s successor as Irvington High School’s head football coach. The new leader of the Blue Knights may even be considered as Pierre’s protege.
Marco Soto is being promoted from being an assistant defensive line coach. Pierre had personally tapped Soto for the job in 2022. He wanted Soto earlier but agreed to wait until Soto’s own son had graduated from high school.
The Pierre-Soto relationship goes back to when both were in Madison’s Bayley-Ellard High School, when the former was an assistant football coach and the latter a varsity Bishop player. (The Roman Catholic school closed June 30, 2005 due to declining enrollment.)
Pierre, who shepherded the Blue Knights to the 2021 NJSIAA North Jersey Section 2, Group 4 state championship, left last year after being head coach for eight.
Soto graduated from Diocese of Paterson’s Don Bosco Technical Academy in 1988. (That high school closed in 2002 and its building demolished in 2017.) Soto was also a scholar-athlete from Fairfield, Conn.’s Sacred Heart University, playing football as a Pioneer.
IPS is meanwhile looking to fill its athletic director vacancy.
EAST ORANGE – A city native – who also happens to be the East Orange, Essex County and State Democratic Committee Chairman – spoke his peace on the county line-versus-block ballot design controversy here April 5.
LeRoy Jones, Jr. maintains that there should be statewide ballot “uniformity,” but conceded that county clerks and county party chairpersons should focus on getting the June 4 major party primary ballot out instead of pursuing the matter in court.
“The decision of Judge Quraishi left some gaping inconsistencies that still need to be resolved,” said Jones. “However, every county clerk involved in the ‘line’ lawsuit has dropped their appeal. It’s time to devote our time and energy to participate in June’s primary election under the rules that were set by the judge’s order.”
Jones, in his clarification, was not opposed to the ballot block layout as-is but wants to keep “an organizational right to associate.”
“Just to be clear – I don’t oppose the ballot block design,” said Jones. “Good candidates and parties must do the work to win their elections, no matter what the ballot looks like. I continue to support an organizational right to associate, something acknowledged and reinforced explicitly by the judge’s order.
“I also continue to believe a legislative solution that leads to budget uniformity is the best way forward,” concluded Jones. “It’s my hope that the legislature can move forward with input from concerned stakeholders quickly and efficiently in an effort to take legislative action to be in effect for our general election this year and beyond.”
ORANGE – The May 14 nonpartisan municipal ballot drawing controversy had spilled into the City Council’s April 2 meeting.
Mayoral candidate Quantavia L. Hilbert and attorney Thomas C. Jardin March 25 complaint over how the March 22 initial drawing was conducted resulted in a March 26 permanent injunction by Superior Court Judge Robert H. Gardner to have the drawing done over on March 28.
That complaint, Docket No. ESX-L-2069-24, said Deputy City Attorney Aaron Mizrahi at the Council’s night meeting, “is still in litigation.” The attorney, who was present in both drawings and interceded in the first drawing March 22, was audio and video recorded as saying that after Council President / North Ward Councilwoman Tency Eason had muted a public speaker’s microphone. That speaker – one of several who decried Mizrahi and City Clerk Joyce Lanier’s March 22 actions – started mentioning Judge Gardner’s March 26 ruling.
“It’s not her (the speaker’s) right to defame someone,” said Mizrahi. “Nobody’s been found guilty of a crime, of doing anything wrong. This matter’s still in litigation.”
Eason said that the public speakers segment was “the wrong forum” to discuss the matter.
As for the revised May 14 Ballot, the mayoral candidate line is: 1A Quantavia L. Hilbert; 2A April Gaunt-Butler; 3A Dwayne D. Warren. The council candidate line is: 4A Weldon Montague III; 5B Clifford Ross; 6B Adrienne Wooten.
WEST ORANGE – The March 16 Newark-Jersey City Turnpike crash in Kearny that killed both township parents and left a 17 year old in a coma, said the Kearny Police Department, involved five vehicles and “several other severely injured people.”
KPD Headquarters promptly dispatched two officers to the scene after getting a call at 7 a.m. that Saturday of a multivehicle accident “with several people entrapped” on Hudson County Rt. 508. The officers arrived to find one of the five having rolled over. One male passenger was dead at the scene.
The deceased was later identified as Rhakeem L. Oliver. His wife, Shavonn Stewart-Oliver, died in a local hospital a week later. Oliver was an accountant for Weichert Realtors. Shavonn-Oliver was vice principal of Prekindergarten – Eighth Grade Passaic School 6.
Their daughter, Khameryn, 17, remains in an induced coma. She was being driven to a volleyball tournament as a member of the Paramus Catholic High School team. A GoFundMe.com page for the parents funeral and the daughter’s medical expenses continues.
Oliver and Shavonn-Oliver’s visitation and life service are scheduled for April 13 here at Life Church, 747 Northfield Ave.
The Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office, who is investigating the accident, has not released the collision’s details, including how many were injured and its circumstances, as of press time.
SOUTH ORANGE – This village, thanks to the State Legislature March 1’s amendment of South Orange’s charter, got more than its old name back.
Sheena Collum, in her last announcement as Village Trustee, said that “The Township of South Orange Village” has been allowed to drop “Township” from its charter name. South Orange, like the City of Orange and several other municipalities, had added “Township” to their names to take advantage of certain federal grant programs in the early 1980s.
You will also now address the Hon. Collum “Mayor” and the Village Trustees as Village Council Members. South Orange’s elders, while asking Trenton for a name reversal, also asked to modernize their job titles. Some people were left with the impression that the VP and the Trustees were volunteer titles.
The State Legislature, in permitting South Orange’s charter changes, gave the village the option to move its May nonpartisan mayor-council elections to November. South Orange, should they move their elections in November, would join Maplewood’s Township Committee and the South Orange-Maplewood Board of Education on the General Election ballot.
South Orange Village and South Orange Township were actually separate but name-related entities until the latter, with state permission, changed its name to Maplewood Nov. 7, 1922. South Orange either rejoins or remains with three other villages, including Ridgewood (Bergen County) and Loch Harbor (Monmouth).
MAPLEWOOD – The Columbia High School’s latest interim principal, a former Newark Arts High School principal, had not been in office 48 hours before other South Orange-Maplewood School District officials announced some key changes here April 4.
Acting Schools Superintendent Dr. Kevin Gilbert announced on April 2 that Ricardo Pedro will be Columbia’s interim principal April 8-June 30. Ann Bodnar, who had been interim principal since Principal Frank Sanchez’s Jan. 2 paid suspension, will return to her previous Assistant Principal of Curriculum and Instruction.
Pedro is a 32-year educator and administrator who had been Arts High School’s principal for six years. He was promoted to that magnet high school’s helm after being a vice principal and its Mathematics and Science Department Chairman.
Pedro had served Newark Public Schools’ East Side and Weequahic high schools as their math and science teacher as well as the Archdiocese of Newark’s Sacred Heart School. The Trinidad native had started his high school math teaching at a high school there.
SOMSD will meanwhile hold interviews of a permanent superintendent in a closed Sept. 13 session. The two-town district board put Frank Taylor on paid administrative leave Nov. 3 until his contract expires June 30.
Gilbert, on April 4, announced three Restorative Justice Nights to be held April 11 and 29 and May 2 at SOMSD’s Central Office, 525 Academy St., in Maplewood as a community rebuilding tool. The Board of Education, that night, adopted a new Inappropriate Staff Conduct policy to give “the voiceless safety and support.”
BLOOMFIELD – An 18 year old male resident, who was taken to University Hospital with a gunshot wound to his abdomen April 1, is at the center of a mystery Montclair police detectives are trying to unravel.
MPD Lt. Terence Turner said that officers had responded to a gunfire report coming from their part of Woodland and Maple avenues, in the South End, at 9:56 p.m. that Monday.
The first arriving Montclair officer noticed two men running to a waiting white car ant Maple by Monroe Street. The car then fled on Monroe onto Wheeler Street and Woodland.
Montclair police stopped the motor vehicle stop and approached its three occupants. It was during that stop that an officer found the 18-year-old Bloomfield man sitting in the passenger front seat – and was bleeding from his stomach from a single gunshot wound.
Montclair Police called for Montclair EMS, who treated him at the scene before taking him to University Hospital. He was admitted in stable condition.
The two other males in the car – the driver and the rear seat passenger – were questioned by police. They were not injured, nor have they been charged as of press time. Officers also found several shell casings along Maple. The incident remains under investigation.
MONTCLAIR – The township’s CFO and her attorney files suit against current interim Town Manager Michael Lapolla in Superior Court-Newark March 27, saying that he is doing similar things that his predecessor was fired for.
Padmaja Rao and Nancy Erika Smith assert that Lapolla, who was hired last August, was excluding the CFO from Montclair financial matters that the plaintiff said is part of her job. That exclusion includes not holding meetings with her on the township’s operating and capital budget process.
Rao outlined eight instances of exclusion, including implementing financial policy changes without her input, awarding raises to CFO office employees that are lower than those in other departments and offering last-minute financial requests for her to sign without adequate reviewing time.
Lapolla, accused Rao, had submitted resolutions to sign that included what she said were false statements about her actions regarding the hiring of a financial advisor.
Rao asserts that Lapolla was conducting “an ongoing campaign of retaliation” with the approval of Mayor Sean Spiller and Township Council Members Lori Price Abrams and Robin Schlager. All three are named as respondents in the amended complaint.
Rao had filed charges of a hostile work environment and retaliation in October against the then-Town Manager Timothy Stafford. Stafford was put on administrative leave and then fired by the Township Council.
Lapolla had allegedly said to Rao that he did not want to delay the capital and operating budget process.
BELLEVILLE – Motorists, bus riders, delivery drivers, residents and business people along an average five block stretch of Washington Avenue have been negotiating lane closures since 7 a.m. April 1 – and it is no joke.
NJDOT had announced on March 27 that its workers and/or contractors will be milling and repaving the curbside lane in each direction until the work is done. The state agency is involved because that part of the avenue is N.J. State Route 7.
That stretch between Cleveland Street near the Newark border to Academy Street by the public library is six blocks north bound or four blocks southbound. Many drivers use Washington’s intersection with Belleville Avenue / Rutgers Street to take the Route 7 Rutgers Street Bridge.
Curbside parking along those right hand lanes are prohibited. Entrances to residences will be open at all times and to commercial/retail places will be open “during normal business hours.”
There are no left hand turns in the work zone onto Washington from the side streets and visa-versa. Detours will be posted. Motorists are urged to take alternate routes for the work’s duration. Updates will be posted as needed.
It is not known whether the work will be completed before NJDOT and its allies start repairs of the Nutley-Lyndhurst Kingsland Avenue DeJessa Memorial Bridge some two miles north. It is also unknown whether the work is in anticipation to a rumored “Lower Washington Avenue” streetscape.
NUTLEY – Township firefighters, with mutual aid from Belleville and Clifton, put out a car fire north of Route 21 Exit 8 March 14 while township police called their Passaic city colleagues that they have one of their reportedly stolen vehicles – but in worse shape.
Nutley’s fire police and fire blotter entries said they got a call of a vehicular fire at Rt. 21 Mile Post 8.5 at 8:42 p.m. that Thursday. The location is north of MP 8.0. where the exit for County Road 646 – Park Avenue.
The first units arrived to find the Mitsubishi Outlander SUV “almost fully engulfed” by flames. The incident commander promptly called for Belleville and Clifton mutual aid. Additional NPD units were called to close Rt. 21 between exits 8 and 9 – the latter in Clifton for Route 3 – for the extinguishment’s duration.
Nutley police detectives, once the Outlander’s fire was out, traced its Vehicle Identification Number to one that was reported as stolen from Passaic. It is believed that whoever stole the Mitsubishi abandoned it on Rt. 21, set it alight and fled.
Some incident details – including whether the fire was north or south bound or a description of the car theft/arson suspect – remain unavailable as of press time. It is presumed that the owner of what is left of the Outlander had called the SUV’s insurance carrier.
