TOWN WATCH
EAST ORANGE – East Orange School District is to welcome Dr. Christopher Irving, of Paterson, as its latest Superintendent of Schools Aug. 1 – which is also his second anniversary of starting his current job with the New Jersey Department of Education in Trenton.
The district’s Board of Education, at their June 12 meeting, had approved Irving’s appointment by Mayor Theodore “Ted” Green and his annual contract of at least $240,000. The starting salary here is $57,000 more than being NJDOE Assistant Commissioner of Field Services and $20,000 more than when he was Teaneck Superintendent of Schools 2017-22.
Irving, of Paterson, resigned from Teaneck to take his Trenton-headquartered job. As field services commissioner, Irvington traveled to public school districts among New Jersey’s 21 counties.
Patersonians remember Irving for more than being a native son. Irvington had been a Paterson BOE member 2010-17, half that time as its president. He has also been a political ally of Assemblyman Benjie Wimberly (D-Paterson).
“East Orange is a great opportunity and a wonderful community,” Irving told a reporter June 20. “I’m excited to serve in a district in a predominantly Black town.”
Irving succeeds outgoing super Dr. Abdulsaleem Hasan. His resume includes being a previous East Orange Campus High School Principal and John L. Costley Middle School assistant principal; he too had worked in the NJDOE Field Services Office.
NEWARK – The Essex County Prosecutor’s Office is looking for the person who shot a man dead in a Central Ward city park here June 13.
Responding Newark Police officers said that they went to Boys Park at Sussex Avenue and Duryea Street on gunfire reports after 9 p.m. that Thursday. It was there where they found Raymeer Shakim Tarver, 35, lying by the basketball court with “apparent gunshot wounds.”
Tarver was rushed to nearby University Hospital – where he had died at 9:42 p.m. Born Aug. 24, 1998 in Philadelphia, he became a Newark Public Schools scholar-athlete. He played basketball at the Chancellor Elementary School and for the Jackie Robinson Bears in Newark Pop Warner football.
Tarver moved to Trenton, where he had worked for a local furniture company and a pair of warehouses – most recently FedEx in Hamilton. Parents Rayshaun W. Marshall and Trikesheia Tarver, son Nymeer Joseph Tarver, brothers Vernel Tarver, Rayshaun Marshall, Jr., Jafar Marshall and Breion Turner; sisters Mu-Zanhi Steed, Mu-Nira Steed and Ray Onna Marshall are among his survivors.
Tarver’s Janazah prayers and burial were held June 25 at Trenton’s respective Campbell Funeral Home and Fountain Lawn Memorial Park.
ECPO Homicide Unit detectives are hoping someone saw something around 9 p.m. June 13. The Boys Park basketball court is within a half-mile radius of Interstate 280, the NJTransit Orange Street Light Rail Station, a homeless shelter, two charter schools and the Essex County Delaney Youth Detention House.
IRVINGTON – Township police detectives have been seeking the motorist who struck and injured a pedestrian at a major intersection here June 7.
Responding Irvington police officers were summoned to Stuyvesant and Madison avenues just after 11:25 a.m. that Friday. They had found a woman with a head wound there. The victim – a 55-year-old Newark woman – said that she was struck by a car which had fled the scene.
Local EMS took her to University Hospital for treatment of her non-life-threatening wounds. Buses on NJTransit’s No. 94 route were locally diverted at that time. A description of the striking vehicle and other details have not been disclosed as of press time.
Kearny Arrests Man for DWI
An Irvington man may have returned to the Kearny Municipal Court for his initial court date by now – but not while driving his car.
KPD officer Tom Collins said that he had noticed that the silver BMW being driven by a man later identified as Ibn A. Cuffie, 38, had repeatedly failed to take the turn leading to the Burger King drive-thru, and stopped at the nearby Ultra station at 1 a.m. May 12. Collins approached the car – where he found an open alcoholic beverage in the cup holder and, in the back seat, a 12-year-old boy.
Cuffie, said Collins, was arrested for DWI, driving with an open alcohol container aboard, driving on a suspended license and endangering the welfare of a minor after failing a field sobriety test. He also had an outstanding arrest warrant from Jersey City. He was released into a relative’s custody, the boy to his mother and the BMW impounded.
ORANGE – It appears that the city’s Highland Avenue Railroad Station restoration project has been further delayed and, when finished, may be less than what Orange had envisioned in 2015.
City Business Administrator Chris Hartwyk, at the City Council’s June 12 meeting, said that he and other city officials are deciding whether to scale back r the 1918 station’s renewal scope or seek out additional grants or other funding from NJDOT, NJTransit and or the State Office of Historic Preservation.
Hartwyk, responding to a public speaker’s request for an update, said that he had rejected Roseland’s Bright View Engineering’s $70,000 bid to provide “administrative services” in November.
The BA said that he rejected the bid because the restoration cost had exceeded the amount of the grant Orange has received. Inflation was not the main cause for the rejection.
The condition of the building had substantially deteriorated from the beginning of the project to when the bid walk-through took place,” said Hartwyk “The plaster ceiling has collapsed in several places, parts of the building had been broken into and removed and there were deteriorations due to the weather.”
Bright View had submitted its $79,000 bid on Jan. 14, 2020. That was before the global COVID-19 pandemic and Orange receiving at $1.2 million Federal Highway Administration grant in September 2022. The FHA grant is in addition to the $600,000 awarded by NJDOT in 2016.
Highland Avenue Station in the Valley section has been serving Orange, West Orange and South Orange riders since before 1918 and it, like most of the Lackawanna Railroad’s M&E stations, were placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. The service is down to six daily round trips; its ticket agent was pulled, and waiting were closed by then-owner Conrail in 1976.
WEST ORANGE – The Wonder Group, Inc., who has recently moved into part of the former Mayfair Farms banquet hall at 481 Eagle Rock Ave., is asking the West Orange Planning Board July 10 for some outdoor expansion permission.
Wonder wants to expand its 420-square-foot outdoor barbecuing area to 2,650 sq. ft. The additional space will allow Winder to add nine more smokers to meet client demand.
Wonder had moved into Mayfair Farms after the latter ended its 80-year run July 5, 2022. It uses the main building’s indoor and outdoor kitchen areas for its first of a two-stage food preparation process.
Think of Wonder as Blue Apron and similar customized prepackaged food delivery services – but with a chef driving up in a kitchen-equipped van. The chef will make the final food preparation while parked curbside or on a driveway prior to presentation.
Wonder vans had been seen here and elsewhere in “Local Talk” land since 2022. What Mayfair buildings and grounds not used by Wonder has been approved for replacement by a 3.5-story assisted-living facility.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – The man who gave out the diplomas to the graduating Columbia High School Class of 2024 at West Orange’s Richard J. Codey Arena June 19 was an unannounced late arriving guest – Frank Sanchez.
Sanchez, dressed in a cap and gown, walked down the aisle and took his guest seat in the arena’s audience after the “Star Spangled Banner” and “Lift Every Voice and Sing” anthems were place. The currently suspended CHS principal received sustained applause after he was introduced. He then took the podium’s stage for diploma distribution.
No one has gone on record as of press time why Sanchez was invited and given an official function. It did not violate the “do not enter school property” he has been under since his Jan. 2 suspension.
Sanchez’s presence and function seemed fitting to some of the Class of 2024 members and parents. He was hired as two-town school principal June 30, 2020 – before the Class of ’24 had entered as freshmen.
A State Superior Court-Newark grand jury entered a “no bill of indictment” against Sanchez June 12 regarding a March 9, 2023 hallway altercation with a sophomore student. The ECPO’s charge of second-degree child endangerment was dropped.
Sanchez, however, faces a simple assault-disorderly persons charge. Whether he will return as principal remains pending.
MONTCLAIR – The Bellevue Theatre, thanks to a June 10 Montclair Planning Board site plan approval, may soon be getting out of its “pre-production” phase.
The board granted owner Jesse Sayegh’s latest proposal for a three-screen theater and street level retail space in the 102-year-old building. The second floor restaurant’s revival, however, has been replaced with three duplex apartments.
MPC members unanimously approved Sayegh’s latest mixed use with variances for parking spaces and for maintenance and lighting items. The duplex apartments’ details are up for a later planning or zoning board review.
Sayegh has had several takes in getting 260 Bellevue Ave. reopened since his last tenant, Bow Tie Cinemas, stopped screening in 2017 and took a lot of projection equipment with them before the Nov. 30, 2017 lease expired. He had since been looking for a winning combination of mixed use and business partners. Renovations were stopped by Montclair in 2021 for the lack of work permits.
Those in and around the Upper Montclair business district center landmark saw hope for a May 22, 2022 reopening – 100 years to the day of its grand opening – evaporate. Neither Jesse nor Doreen Sayegh have set a reopening date.
BLOOMFIELD – A township man has remained in Newark’s Essex County Correctional Facility since his June 17 arrest for shooting at another motorist in Montclair.
Nelson A. Santos, 42, is being held on two counts of aggravated assault His arrest is in part based on the other driver’s description of his white Tesla to Montclair police.
A Montclair Police spokesman said that they found the victim and his car at Washington and New streets at about 9:45 p.m. that Monday. The victim said that the Tesla driver – later identified as Santos – tried unsuccessfully to pass him and then stayed behind him until they stopped at the intersection.
Nelson, said the victim, got out of the Tesla with a gun and confronted him. He fired two shots before the victim could drive away.
MPD confirmed that the victim’s car was shot in the rear bumper and rear windshield. The road rage incident remains under investigation.
BELLEVILLE – One wonders whether Garfield-bound Superintendent of Schools Dr. Richard Tomko and Nicholas Perrapato, incoming from Garfield, will cross each other’s path while trading places on or around June 30.
The Belleville Public Schools Board of Trustees, at their June 17 meeting, appointed Perrapato as Interim Superintendent of Schools effective. Perrapato is coming out of retirement while the trustees search for a permanent schools super; he may not be interested to be a full-time candidate.
Perrapato has been Garfield’s super 1995-2017 out of his 48-year career mostly there. He oversaw new construction of an elementary and middle school and a preschool and deploying new academic programs. He was a middle school principal the previous four years and, for 12 years before that, an elementary school principal.
Perrapato, a then-William Paterson College graduate, was succeeded by Assistant Superintendent Anna Sciacca Jan. 1, 2018 with 18 months left on his contract. The Garfield Board of Education, citing the failed passage of the 2017-18 school budget voted 8-1 Sept. 25 not to renew his contract.
Sciacca and Garfield Public Schools, on Feb. 23, agreed to her retiring after 40 years; service June 30 – opening the door for Tomko to be considered among other candidates. Tomko, after nine years at the BPS helm, has posted a 100-day transition guide on GPS’ website.
NUTLEY – Those who wanted to use Proponent Federal Credit Union’s ATM or drive-through lane here at 536 Washington Ave. will find them closed – as they have been since June 24.
Proponent is in the midst of moving from that location to new offices at 433 Kingsland St., across from the 114-acre ONE redevelopment tract. It is scheduled to reopen on July 1; a formal grand reopening celebration is to be announced.
It is the second of two moves of Proponent’s Nutley branches in two years. The loan center went to 173 Bloomfield Ave. in late 2022.
Both branch moves were mentioned in Proponent’s 2021 Annual Report. That report said that the move to 433 Kingsland was to happen before Dec. 31, 2022.
Proponent also has a branch in Burlington, N.C.
