TOWN WATCH
EAST ORANGE – The Boston Market here at 471 Central Ave., is now three months in being “permanently closed” and may not reopen as part of that national restaurant chain. There is also a greater likelihood that Boston Markets across the country may be liquidated in bankruptcy court.
It appears that Ewing-based Boston Chicken of NJ has lost its back rent dispute with Boston Market’s real estate arm, Sunrise Equities, of Golden, Colo.in N.J. Superior Court-Newark. It had reopened during the year-end holidays into the winter as a drive-through only outlet until the .77-acre property were served with Superior Court – Chancery eviction and East Orange Zoning violation notices.
471 Central Ave., like 26 other BCNJ-run Boston Markets, were closed by the State Department of Labor Hours and Wages Office last summer. The agency said that BCNJ owed its 417 employees over $630,000 in back wages – not counting additional fines.
The former Gino’s/KFC and Roy Rogers restaurant reopened after 53 days in September after BCNJ repaid the arrears and penalties in full.
The fast casual chain may not live to see its Oct. 13 third bankruptcy filing date. A federal Philadelphia bankruptcy court judge, citing Bensalem, Pa. chain owner Jay Pandya’s failing to file property insurance documents and missing several court deadlines, barred him March 13 from re-filing for Chapter 11 reorganization for six months. Supplier US Foods has meanwhile won its $11.9 million debt case and is now asking for $30 million in penalties and fees
NEWARK – Public Safety Director Fritz G. Fragé requests the public’s help locating suspects in connection with a robbery attempt on April 15, 2024.
Police responded to the incident that occurred at approximately 8 p.m. on the Court Street side of an apartment building on Hill Street. The victim was smoking a cigarette in the parking lot of his apartment building when three Black males demanded that he give up his belongings. As he turned to walk back into the building, one of the suspects punched him in the back of the head.
The victim was able to break free and go back into the building and the suspects were last seen traveling eastbound on West Market Street from Martin Luther King Boulevard. They were seen chasing another individual with a large sharp-edged stick near the Essex County Court House parking lot at 50 West Market Street.
Director Fragé urges anyone with information about the suspects to call the Police Division’s 24-hour Crime Stopper tip line at 1-877-NWK-TIPS (1-877-695-8477). All anonymous Crime Stopper tips are kept confidential and could result in a reward.
IRVINGTON – A township man, accused of sexually assaulting two complete strangers here March 26 and April 10, has been remanded to Newark’s Essex County Correctional Center since April 17 by State Superior Court Judge Patrick J. Arre.
The Irvington Detective Bureau and the ECPO Special Victims Unit told Arre that Wednesday that Marquise Jones, 31, had been arrested and charged on first-degree aggravated sexual assault, criminal restraint and weapons possession charges from 25 Park Place on April 10.
IPD and county SVU detectives were first called over to Newark’s St. Michael’s Medical Center March 26. The victim recounted being lured there by Jones, who then pulled out a knife. A struggle ensued where both suffered cut marks.
Detectives from both agencies deduced that Jones was the suspect in the April 10 assault by that victim’s testimony. He was charged with 10 counts.
Judge Arre continued Jones’ detention due to the serious charges.
ORANGE – “Local Talk” is awaiting word on whether the Cleveland Street Elementary School here in the North Ward will have its long-awaited renovation and expansion completed in time for the 2024-25 school year or if the Archdiocese of Newark will extend its lease of the former Our Lady of the Valley High School building in the South Ward to Orange Public Schools.
Some 300-plus Pre-Kindergarten through Seventh Grade students, faculty and parents have been taking the 1.9-mile cross-city commute from 355 Cleveland St. to 518 Valley St. since the former’s construction began in 2021. The project, which was first awarded by the New Jersey Schools Development Authority with $18.4 million in 2019, has had a “September 2024” completion date since a contractor change order reset was approved by the SDA April 3, 2023. The project had September 2021 and 2023 completion dates.
The SDA, in its April 12 X (formerly Twitter) post, said that it is continuing with “ductwork, HVAC equipment, light fixtures and window installation ongoing as well as preparation for building finishes.” Orange Public Schools and SDA officials, city building inspectors and the contractors will then hold a walk through punch list inspection with an eye towards obtaining a city certificate of occupancy.
It will be after then when the 12,000-square-foot extension wing – featuring a security lobby, a multipurpose room, a kitchen and servery, support services and a three-story extension to a renovated 1898 core building – be open. Renovations include a new boiler.
The revamping – aimed for accommodating up to 348 PreK-Seventh Grade students – is aimed to alleviate decades of overcrowding. One “Local Talk” staffer remembers a large basement room, for example, being used as an indoor gym, auditorium and election polling station in 1965-71 – prior to also becoming a makeshift kitchen and cafeteria. The room was too small to accommodate all students to watch the live televising of Gemini 4’s Ed White becoming the first American astronaut to walk in space.
“Cleveland Street School at Our Lady of the Valley” has meanwhile used part of Valley High School’s classrooms. The 1920s-era three-story building at Valley and McChesney streets was closed by the archdiocese for declining enrollment June 30, 1981.
WEST ORANGE – Latest pull in the months-long mayor-council tug of war over the longtime township attorney’s status involved a failed Township Council resolution here at the latter’s April 9 meeting.
Resolution 124-24, introduced at that Tuesday night’s meeting called for legal teams from each side to draw up budgets and make cost estimates of the previous and ongoing litigation. The resolution stated that lawyers representing the council have spent $65,000 in the last eight months; the mayor’s lawyers, $10,000.
Mayor Susan McCartney and the council have taken their dispute over the status of Township Attorney Richard Trenk and his same-name legal firm to court. At issue are whether the council has the right to suspend paying Trenk and his firm for services and whether the Township Attorney serves the council or the administration.
R 124-24, in the end, was defeated 2-2-1. Council Members Michelle Casalino and Tammy Williams voted, “Yes,” members Susan Scarpa and Councilman Rev. William “Bill” Rutherford, “No.” Member Asmeret Ghebremichael was absent. A tie, according to “Robert’s Rules of Order,” is equal to not passing a resolution.
A Superior Court Newark judge, on March 19, ruled that Trenk can legally represent West Orange until the dispute has been settled. The 30-year lawyer and his firm, however, remain unpaid for the interim.
The council had voted down what would have been Trenk and his firm’s renewal. He and his legal team meanwhile draws up invoices to bill the township.
SOUTH ORANGE – The South Orange-Maplewood School District Board of Education is investigating – and is being investigated.
The two-town school board, as of April 10, is starting its own investigation of the January 2023 Columbia High School principal’s hallway encounter with a female student. The incident was made public when the board suspended CHS Principal Frank Sanchez Jan. 2 and the schoolgirl and her family filed an affirmative action complaint.
The incident was brought to the Maplewood Police Department’s attention, who then brought it to the ECPO Detective Bureau. Their probe resulted in an arrest warrant put out on Sanchez, who surrendered himself to MPD.
The SOMSD inquest is to include a CHS hallway video recording and an internal board report which a member brought to the police last January. It is not known whether Sanchez will have legal representation from his union.
The district’s board and administration are being meanwhile probed by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Civil Rights since March 19. The OCR that Tuesday, gave no specifics except that the matter was of “discrimination involving shared ancestry” under the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
“Shared discrimination” includes antisemitism and Islamophobia. Some outside media reports speculate that this investigation was called after CHS faculty distributed supposedly Ramadan education handbills – which included antisemitic language.
MAPLEWOOD – Township Committeeman and former mayor Dean Dafis, barring any unforeseen delays, will likely be at home here, recovering from April 11 open heart surgery.
Dafis said that he has excused himself from official duties since April 7, when surgery to replace a Bicuspid Aortic Valve was scheduled for four days later. BAV is a congenital condition where two blood valves are formed in the aorta instead of three. The two valves leak blood back into the heart, potentially causing an aortic aneurysm and heart failure.
Dafis, like many other BAV sufferers, did not know he had the condition until he collapsed while running with the New York Road Runners Club in Central Park decades ago – and was so diagnosed.
The one-term mayor discovered that he was having an aneurysm after pulling over on the New Jersey Turnpike in late January. He was having a bout of vertigo, a loss of feeling on one side of his body and disorientation.
Doctors told Dafis that he is among two percent of the world’s population with BAV – which is only corrected by open heart surgery. He anticipates missing “a couple” of Township Committee meetings.
BLOOMFIELD – When two men looking for work got into another man’s car here at the Home Depot parking lot April 4 were not asking to get robbed at gunpoint.
That is what the two day laborers told responding Bloomfield Police Department officers at the 60 Orange St. just after 11:30 a.m. It was their description of the suspect and his car that helped Newark police arrest that man.
The victims said that a silver Mercedes-Benz with a temporary rear license plate pulled up to them and asked them to come in. The driver then pulled out a handgun and demanded cash – money that they did not have. They fled the car and called 911 when it pulled away.
It was that afternoon that the BPD Detective Bureau got a call from their Newark colleagues. One of that city’s police patrols spotted the car and gave chase. NPD officers arrested the driver – Almeen Mohammad, 27, of Newark – after he had crashed his Benz and tried to flee on foot.
Mohammed has been charged on two counts each of robbery by threat of bodily injury, possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose and possession of a firearm without a permit.
The Trinidad and Tobago citizen has also been charged with carjacking by threatening occupant with bodily injury, unlawful taking of a means of conveyance, resisting arrest by failing to stop a motor vehicle, obstructing the administration of law, possessing a controlled dangerous substance, possession with intent to use drug paraphernalia, possessing a handgun without permit and unlawful possession of a weapon.
Mohammed is also being held on $10.500 worth of arrest warrants, including $7,500 alone from the BPD. The remaining warrants are from the Haledon Police and Municipal Court and Wayne Police.
MONTCLAIR – An outgoing ward councilwoman, at the April 10 Township Council meeting, accused two of her sitting colleagues of previously verbally abusing her.
Mayor Sean Spiller was about to call for an executive session at the end of the public speakers’ segment that Wednesday night when Second Ward Councilwoman Robin Schlager asked to be allowed to make a prepared statement.
Schlager, who is not running for May 14 re-election, said that she had suffered verbal abuse from At-Large Councilman Robert “Bob” Russo and Fourth Ward David Cummings Russo is running for re-election; Cummings cited changes in employment for declining re-election.
Speaking while shaking and in a tearful voice, Schlager said one of the two incidents happened Oct. 25, 2022, where she said Russo responded to one of her questions by “yelling at me” and, “came around 6the table I was sitting and physically lunged at me.” A police report was later filed.
Schlager added that Cummings used profane, “hateful” and “foul” language at her and Councilwoman Lori Price Abrams. Although Cummings had apologized to her, and the incident was brought up at the Oct. 18, 2023 meeting to succeed the resigned Councilman Peter Yacobellis, Schlager said that she has not talked with Cummings since.
Neither Russo nor Cummings were present on April 10, which Schlager said did not matter. Cummings confirmed that he had apologized to Schlager. Russo, on April 11, thought it curious that what happened on Oct. 25, 2023 was brought up 18 months later.
GLEN RIDGE – The Glen Ridge Public Schools’ Board of Education are poised to take a final vote of its proposed 2024-25 budget April 30 – which may or may not include the district funding a long-running elementary school reading program.
Borough educators, including an elementary school teacher and the Glen Ridge Education Association, asked the BOE March 25 to include funding an intensive math support program for struggling Kindergarten-Sixth Grade students. This year’s edition has two teachers assisting 140 students across four of the borough’s public schools.
The program had been funded by a state Title One grant for nine years. That state funding, however, will evaporate for 2024-25. Failure to fund at the district level would return these students to a basic skills teacher. Both program teachers – and their $122,000 Supervisor of Interventions – would be laid off.
Outgoing Superintendent of Schools Dirk Phillips said, at the March 26 meeting, that the district is seeking to provide smaller primary class sizes. Those teachers will therefore provide this supplemental instruction in the regular classroom.
Glen Ridge, like most other school districts, does not put their following year’s school budget up before voters. All public school districts must have their coming year’s budgets finalized for incorporation into the State of New Jersey June 30 Fiscal 2025 budget.
BELLEVILLE – This township’s mayor may have the answer to the upcoming question: “When is a State of the Township Address NOT a State of the Township Address?” “Local Talk” reads the answer as: “When it is actually the mayor’s civic association fundraiser.”
Mayor Michael Melham has scheduled his 2024 SOTA for 6:30 p.m. April 29 at Nanina’s in the Park. The event, hosted by the Michael Melham Civic Association, is a ticketed event – make that a Paid Admission ticket event.
“Local Talk” did a double take while seeing the SOTA at Nanina’s announcement on April 10. First, there have been previous “State of” addresses requiring admission tickets. – as have had in recent years with Newark Mayor Ras Baraka’s State of the City Address at NJPAC.
The first problem is that this April 29 SOTA requires prospective audience members to pay to hear it. The April 10 announcement added “Tables SOLD OUT,” leaving individual seats in the catering hall for sale. There will be no tickets sold at the door.
Ticket payment is to be made out to MichaelMelhamCivic.org via QR code. It appears that the proceeds are to fund the group’s turkey giveaways, cultural parades, Three Kings Day and the annual Winter Festival.
The question is important on two counts. The first is whether the admission tickets for funding a civic association are tax deductible.
The second is that the funds do not go to A Better Belleville’s 2024 mayor-ward council election campaign. ABB campaign manager Melham is running for re-election May 14 along with a full slate of four council candidates.
NUTLEY – The township’s board of education and Superintendent of Schools Kent Bania, at their April 17 meeting, announced that the public school district has run up an about a $7 million deficit.
Nutley’s educators said that a Feb. 7 audit of NPS’ 2022-23 budget found accounting and financial issues. Those issues were independently confirmed on March 13.
The Essex County Superintendent of Schools Joseph Zarra, also of Nutley, and the New Jersey Department of Education were notified with an eye towards finding relief funding to fill the deficit. NPS has meanwhile put Board Secretary / Assistant Superintendent of Business David DiPisa on administrative leave and posted “help wanted” notices for an interim Business Administrator.
Both Superintendent Bania and Board President Salvatore Ferraro limited a detailed explanation of what caused NPS to get into a $7 million hole, given the continuing investigation. They do indicate that misstated revenue projections and unbudgeted expenses had led to a shortfall of cash reserves. They said that the 2022-23 and the 2021-22 school year budgets had failed to take into account price increases in transportation, special education and healthcare expenses and payroll.
Nutley educators said that no significant academic and/or extracurricular programs – including preschool and the Nutley High School Class of 2024 graduation – for the current 2023-24 year will be affected. There may be minimal changes to the 2024-25 school year – but that may mean freezing employee hiring or reducing staffing by attrition.
Ratification of a final 2024-25 budget is due on May 14 so NPL can send it to County Superintendent Zarra’s Newark office and for the June 30 State Budget inclusion. NPS has 60- days – May 14 – to submit a Corrective Action Plan. NJDOT may meanwhile appoint a monitor to Nutley, like it had when Belleville’s BOE racked up a $4.1 million deficit in 2014.
