TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – The Newark Public Schools Board of Education prepared for the upcoming 2024-25 by bringing in a mix or familiar and new members onto its leadership positions during its April 16 reorganizational meeting.
Board President Hasani Council, Business Administrator Valerie Wilson and other NPS administrators oversaw the swearing in of newly elected or re-elected board members Helena Vinhas, Vereliz Santana and Shawn Haynes to the board.
A majority of participating registered city voters elected Vinhas, Santana and Haynes to full three-year terms onto the nine-member board April 18. Former board president Haynes was elected for the second time; Santana and Vinhas were first vacancy appointees.
Kanileah Anderson, whose election was unopposed, was sworn to complete the remaining year of an unexpired term. All four elected candidates ran on the Mayor Ras Baraka-endorsed “Moving Newark Schools Forward” ticket.
The newly-minted nine member panel re-selected Council as its board president. Santana and member Alison James-Frison were designated first and second vice president. (NPS and the South Orange-Maplewood School District select two board vice presidents.)
UPDATE: The city’s unaccompanied 11 p.m.-5:30 a.m. youth curfew that started on May 3 is in effect on weekends-only through Monday June 17. It goes seven days a week starting with the last day of school here, Friday June 21 into the start of the 2024-25 School Year.
IRVINGTON – Mayor Anthony “Tony” Vauss has announced that the visitation and funeral service for his mother, Dorothy Jean Vauss, has been set for 11 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. here at the Transcend Worship Center May 18.
Dorothy Jean Vauss, 70, died from a sudden unspecified illness at an Essex County hospital April 29.
Mrs. Vauss, who was born May 20, 1953, was an annual attendee at son Tony’s State of the Township Address here at the Transcend Center.
Sons Tony Vauss and Christopher Bembry and daughter-in-law Dr. April Vauss are among her survivors.
NJTransit bus riders are to anticipate detours at Clinton Avenue between Grove Street and Harrison Place that Saturday.
EAST ORANGE – “Local Talk” is trying to find out whether two former mainline Protestant church buildings, who have been set alongside each other on Main Street/Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard for 150 years, will have a shared fate or a separate fate.
The former Renew and Inspire Souls Everywhere/Calvary-Roseville Methodist Church sanctuary at 400 Main St/MLK Blvd. have been on the real estate listings for almost a year. RISE Methodist had moved to an unannounced address.
Christ Episcopal Church’s sanctuary remains at 422 Main/King, to RISE/Calvary-Roseville’s west. The building is being enveloped by ivy, its parking lot officially or unofficially used by a taxi or limo company.
CEC’s congregation has been folded into the Church of the Epiphany/Christ Church at Orange’s 105 Main St. in 2017, The edifice has been earmarked by the East Orange Planning Department’s Lower Main Street Streetscape plan as “community space.”
The Lower Main Street plan, which had its latest phase completed in March, had been drawn up before the COVID pandemic and before 200 Main/King had been put up for sale.
Consideration on whether 400 King Blvd. will join 422 as a community space should be given carefully in light of how private hands had levelled the 191-year-old Brick Presbyterian Church up the road on April 4.
ORANGE / MONTCLAIR – Montclair police officers asked more than, “Is this handgun yours? to an Orange man between April 28 and 30.
Anthony Anderson, 30, has been charged with the unlawful possession of a weapon. Anderson awaits a pre-trial hearing as of press time.
Montclair police said the story began with a passer-by waving down a patrol officer along the 500 block of Bloomfield Avenue at about 5:15 a.m. that Friday.
The citizen pointed to a bench where a 9 mm. Sig Sauer was resting unattended. An inspection found seven rounds of bullets in what the police considered as an abandoned pistol.
MPD detectives tied Anderson to the left behind gun after reviewing local surveillance recordings.
WEST ORANGE – Neighbors and visitors of the Eagle Rock section’s Crystal Lake neighborhood got mixed news from the township’s Zoning Board of Adjustment here May 2.
The board approved Crystal Eagle LLC’s site plan application for 424 Eagle Rock Ave. The site plan application calls for renovating the 1969-built Eagle Rock Lanes bowling alley with some improvements to the parking spaces, directional signage and landscaping.
This new plan means that Public Storage’s 2021 bid to build a three-story self-storage warehouse here is all but dead. Crystal Eagle, which listed storage warehouse as one of the revamped building’s uses, also leaves open the reopening of Eagle Rock Lanes, which had closed in 2020.
The bad news is that those who want to visit Crystal Lake next door will not have a sidewalk to use. The attorney for Crystal Eagle argued that installing a 300-foot-long sidewalk to the lake would eliminate some of the 30 on-site parking spaces.
424 Eagle Rock Ave – or Block 111, Lot 1.08 – is a flag-shaped lot which abuts the lake. The lake is the centerpiece of its namesake private amusement park that was open until the 1950s.
The lake’s property became abandoned until the Oskar Schindler Performing Arts Center opened there in 2001. The lake is only accessible by a dirt path.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – Members of the South Essex Fire Department, with help from six neighboring departments, put out a house fire in the village’s Seton Village section April 29.
SOFD dispatch received calls from the South Orange Police Department and neighbors off Irvington Avenue at about 5 p.m. that Monday. The first fire and police units found heavy smoke coming from the rear door of a 2.5 story wood frame house.
The deputy chief at the scene promptly had firefighters unroll hydrant water lines. He also sounded two alarms, one for all SOFD hades and the other for mutual aid.
Mutual aid came in the form of units from Irvington, East Orange, West Orange and Union. Other Units from Orange, Montclair and Millburn covered the village and township’s fire stations.
Three South Orange Rescue Squad vehicles joined the scene. SOPD units meanwhile detoured local traffic, which included NJTransit 107 route buses.
SEFD and mutual aid subdued the blaze by 5:50 p.m. and began an overhaul for any hot spots. The house was unoccupied; there were no recorded injuries.
BLOOMFIELD – The New Jersey Schools Development Authority helped the Bloomfield Public Schools’ renovation work by giving it $3.9 million in grants April 29.
The SDA’s Regular Operating District grant program awarded BPS’ application with four grants. The grants are to go for projects in the Berkeley and Brookdale elementary schools. Two grants are to go for window replacement; the other two are to replace ventilators in both schools’ gymnasiums.
It is not clear whether the window and gym ventilators being replaced were built with the original school buildings or any of their additions. The Berkeley School opened in 1868; the Brookdale School in 1902.
Bloomfield’s four grants, each covering 40 percent of the projects, were among the $450 million the SDA awarded to projects throughout the state in September. The state agency awards between 40 percent and full funding to school renovation and/or new school construction projects.
The SDA and its Schools Construction Corp. predecessor have been involved in public school building renovation or construction projects here and in other Local Talk public districts since the 1990s.
BELLEVILLE – Although the identity of the 23-year-old township man who was declared dead along a Monmouth County beachfront May 4, his relatives and friends are likely making his funeral arrangements here as of press time.
Spring Lake police officers said they were summoned to the shoreline off Saint Clair Avenue on a swimmer in distress report just after 2 p.m. Saturday. They arrived to find a man face down in the surf.
SLPD officers pulled out the man and “initiated life-saving measures.”
They were soon joined by Spring Lake Heights, Belmar and Sea Girt police and Spring Lake’s fire and EMS departments. The SMART Team of off-duty lifeguards coordinated the multi-agency rescue effort.
First responders rushed the man to Neptune’s Jersey Shore University Medical Center – where he was later declared dead.
NUTLEY – The township became the first in the nation April 30 to sign up to the Association of the U.S. Navy Municipal Government Partnership/Pilot Program – and some of Nutley’s active or retired armed services members may give thanks for it later on.
Nutley Commissioner John V. Kelly III and ASUN Lt. Commander Steve Rogers arranged the partnership that Tuesday. Rogers is perhaps better known as a retired Nutley Commissioner, NPD officer, first aid squad member and host of the 1980s WWDJ 970 AM “The 777th Precinct” show.
ASUN, for its part, will give Nutley residents who are active members or retired reservists access to administrative, financial, health, social and/or spiritual resources, programs and/or programs. The pilot program is for active or retired members of the Navy, Marines and Coast Guard.
Nutley, for its part, will give ASUN referral access to township resources to refer back to.
Both parties will also collaborate in promoting the pilot program during certain military and veterans’ events throughout the year.
Details are found at Nutley’s Department of Veterans Affairs’ Daniel Jacoby at (973) 284-4951, ext. 2428.
