TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – Last rites for New Jersey’s only African American woman athletic director, Central High School’s Syidah O’Bryant, were held here at Metropolitan Baptist Church June 2. O’Bryant, 49, lost her two-year fight against ALS, Lou Gehrig Disease, here at RWJBarnabas Health Newark Beth Israel Medical Center June 23.
O’Bryant was a lifelong Newarker except for studies at Charlotte’s John C. Smith University. who more than returned to University Hospital to be the assistant coach of the Peacocks girls basketball team she had once played on. The future St. Peter’s University holder of a master’s in education and administration also assisted at Shabazz and was Newark Tech’s head coach before getting the AD call from CHS in 2014.
O’Bryant was also a Seventh and Eighth Grade teacher for 10 years at Avon Elementary School. Parents John Walker and Jacqueline Travis Bryant, sister Samerah Bryant and brothers Alboo White and Maurice Ware are among her survivors.
Gamer on Gamer Crime in Florida
Nassau County, Florida authorities have been holding a Newark man since June 24 for attacking one of their own residents with a claw hammer over a video game dispute.
Nassau County Sheriff Bill Leeper said Monday that Edward King, 20, flew from Newark Liberty International Airport to Jacksonville on his way to the other online gamer’s Fernandina Beach address. King, said Leeper, was dressed in all black clothing, mask and gloves while he entered the victim’s residence and used a claw hammer on him.
IRVINGTON – Mayor Anthony “Tony” Vauss and a capacity audience here at the Transcend Worship Center witnessed the four “Team Irvington Strong” ward council members who were re-elected May 14 get sworn into their new four-year terms. July 1.
Orlando Glen Vick, Jamilliah Z. Beasley, Dr. October Hudley and Vernon Cox were formally returned to their respective North, South, East and West Ward seats. Beasley’s colleagues then returned her as Council President.
Teen Boy Shot
Detectives from the Irvington Police Department and the ECPO Homicide Task Force have been looking for the person or persons who fatally shot a 17-year-old boy since July 3.
Irvington Public Safety Director Tracy Bowers said his officers had responded to a “shooting in progress” report from the 1100 block of Grove Street at 1:26 a.m. that Wednesday.
Medics rushed the youth, who had “multiple gunshot wounds,” from the 2.5-story house to Newark’s University Hospital. He was declared dead at 2:17 a.m.
EAST ORANGE – City police officers have been looking for at least two people who opened fire on each other on South Burnett Street here June 19.
Neighbors and witnesses said that two individuals confronted each other, pulled out their handguns and traded a dozen shots at each other on the block just south of the Central Avenue intersection just before 7:30 p.m. that Friday.
The people so told responding East Orange police officers before they ran for shelter. The combatants had fled by then.
That night’s police blotter and Police Chief Phyllis Bindi said no one was injured in the gunfight. Two houses and around five parked cars, however, took bullets.
The incident remains under active investigation.
ORANGE – Mayor Dwayne D. Warren and his three “Moving Orange Forward” at-large council members were officially sworn into their new four-year terms here at the Orange Preparatory Academy auditorium stage July 1.
Warren was sworn into his fourth straight mayoral term that Monday night, followed by now-second term councilmen Wheldon “Monty” Montague III and Clifford Ross.
Warren’s fourth term will be breaking a three-way tie with William Howe Davis (1942-54) and George Huntingford Hartford (1878-90) as Orange mayors with three consecutive terms. Davis resigned in 1954 to become the N.J. Director of the Alcohol Control Board. Hartford is best known as a co-founder of the A&P 1859-2015 supermarket chain.
Adrienne Wooten was sworn into her third straight term – and was appointed as Council President. Outgoing president and North Ward Councilwoman, Tency Eason, was named Council Vice President.
South African Mishap Kills Mother, Son
Although funeral arrangements for Dr. Daniela Small-Bailey and son Sidanii Bell have not been set as of press time, their July 4 loss in South Africa is being felt here, in Englewood, Passaic and in the republic.
Small-Bailey, 57, and Bell, 35, according to the South African Police Service, were in a white four-door cab when it had a head-on collision with a marked police pickup truck on the R540 between Dullstroom and Belfast at 4:20 p.m. local time that Thursday. The mother and son were visiting relatives. The police officer and another woman in the other car were also killed.
Small-Bailey was principal of Englewood’s Dr. John Grieco Elementary School since 2013 and had been an assistant principal since 2004 at other Englewood Public Schools. The ordained minister was senior pastor of Passaic’s Bethel AME Church. Bell, who died July 5, was a South Ward digital marketing specialist and a mixed martial arts boxer.
WEST ORANGE – Community Coach 77 ‘riders joined their NJTransit bus and rail counterparts in grumbling about July 1 fare increases here – after a fashion.
CoachUSA, citing “operational costs,” June 28, announced the following fare increases from Livingston effective Monday: 10-trip book – $99.35; 20-trip book (good for 45 days after purchase) – $188; 40-trip book (good for 90 days) – $353.50; Monthly passes – $331.50.
CC77, like NJT riders, may be mumbling “Paying more money for the same old service” under their breath. NJTransit’s woes on one hand, especially on the Northeast Corridor lately, have been well chronicled.
The CoachUSA-run 77 route has had ebbs and flows of service quality the last 14 year or so. The 77 serves Livingston, West Orange, Orange and East Orange riders before going express to New York’s Port Authority Bus Terminal.
NJTransit riders, taking their first fare increase in 10 years, have the hope of the increase going to the statewide public carrier’s operating and capital project improvements.
CoachUSA, however, has put CC77 up for sale among other bus routes as part of its June 11 Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. There is Renco Holdings, a venture capital company from Manhattan, expressing interest in CC77 but has not closed on its purchase.
There is a Livingston municipal rush hour minivan stopping in West Orange before going to South Orange Village Station. Boxcar, a Boston outfit running rush hour buses from Maplewood Station, is conducting a survey on starting a parallel CC77 service.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – The South Orange-Maplewood School District and its legendary Columbia High School track and field coach are facing lawsuits from two women who said Leonard Klepac had sexually abused them during the late 1980s.The duo has also named former CHS Athletic Director Robert Curcio for allegedly neglecting to supervise Klepac.
It had been recently publicized in late June that a judge found Klepac guilty in a March summary judgement after he had stated in court records that he had sexual relations with her. The other plaintiff’s suit is being litigated – and both have a joint suit against SOMSD.
CHS did not have a girls track and field team when Klepac arrived as coach and physical education teacher in 1975. Klepac, before he left for Eastern Carolina University and the University of Texas in 1998, had turned the Columbia Cougars running team into a powerhouse, winning 15 state titles. Some athletes were sent out to Florida and Texas for national meets – some of whom, like Joetta and Hazel Clark, joined the USA Olympic team. (Neither Clarks are the plaintiffs.)
The two women, now in their 50s and filed suit in 2020, said that Klepac had left them with chronic PTSD and “injuries permanent in nature.” They said that the two-town school district’s officials had failed to check Klepac.
They were 16 and 17 when Klepac, in his mid-40s, began making sexual remarks. He had befriended them and their parents to where they allowed him to take one or the other to motels in mostly interstate meets.
The plaintiff, in the suit that resulted in the March summary judgement, said that there were between 50 to 60 assaults in motels or in his van or his private Newark office. Klepac, said the same plaintiff, said he tried to visit her at her college dormitory.
Klepac, now a retired Mercer County resident, said in court papers that he had “consensual” sexual activity with them when they were 17 when the state minimal consent law was at 16.” The summary judgement found him liable for violating the state’s Child Sexual Abuse Act.
BLOOMFIELD – New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin, on June 24, said that the office’s Division of Civil Rights has filed a complaint against Ironworkers Local 11, which has an office here, for discriminating against some of its members.
The DCR is accusing Ironworkers Local 11 of “systematically bypassing Black union members for jobs, giving those members less desirable assignments and creating a hostile work environment.”
Regarding the hostile work environment, the suit alleges that 2008-22 business manager Raymond Woodall, “it’s leadership and members, in using racist slurs, sexist and homophobic language and distributing homophobic materials.” Local 11, as a hiring hall, is accused of bypassing “qualified Black union members for jobs in favor of similarly situated non-Black members.”
Nor had Local 11, continued the suit, “had made no meaningful effort to discipline those conducting discriminatory conduct.”
Former ironworker Kesha Green brought the allegation with her complaint to the DCR – which had issued a finding of probable cause. It had verified that the local had retaliated against Green for raising complaints.
Woodall and other Local 11 leadership were replaced in July 2022. The local has otherwise denied the allegations.
Local 11 had moved to 1500 Broad St, here in the Brookdale section, after its former Bloomfield Centre office on Ward Street had to make way for the Royal residential-commercial redevelopment.
MONTCLAIR – Dr. Renee E. Baskerville and an all-new Township Council were inaugurated in a July 1 ceremony here at the Montclair Council Chamber.
Baskerville received the mayor’s gavel from Sean Spiller – the man she had lost to in the 2020 mayor-council elections by 156 votes. She had risked her Fourth Ward council seat in a bid to become mayor in an all-seats-open election.
Montclair’s first African American woman mayor then witnessed her “Team Montclair” running mate, Susan Shin Anderson, sworn in as an at-large councilwoman and appointed as Deputy Mayor. Carmel Loughman, who ran on outgoing councilman Robert “Bob” Russo’s “Montclair Good Government Team,” was sworn into the other at-large seat and appointed as a Class III member of the Montclair Planning Board.
“Clean Government Advocate” Erik D’Amato, Eileen “Genuinely Cares” Birmingham, “Team Montclair” runner Rahun Williams and independent Aminah Toler were sworn into their Ward seats. It remains to be seen whether Montclair’s new elders will put aside their nonpartisan campaign banners and govern. (Montclair does not hold municipal-level partisan party elections.)
Bomb Threat Clears Library
Montclair Public Library Trustees President JoAnn McCullough confirmed on July 1 that the previous day’s bomb threat that cleared the Montclair Mail Library was tied to a children’s drag story hour that was set at 5 p.m. that Sunday. The New Jersey Attorney General’s office has taken the investigative lead in what is considered as a bias crime.
An employee had received an e-mail at 3:58 p.m. that Sunday that a bomb had been “placed” there, at 185 Bellevue Ave. and at 40 North Fullerton Ave. 40 North Fullerton – The First Congregational Church of Montclair – had long finished its worship services. MPL’s branch at 185 Bellevue is never open on Sundays.
McCullough, MPD Lt. Terence Turner and the ECPO said that municipal police and the Essex County Sheriff’s Office K-9 unit were deployed to all three sites and swept the premises in the “false alarm.” The 11 staff members and 47 members of the public – 25 of whom had registered for the “Story Hours with Harmonica” – were evacuated.
BELLEVILLE – It was not long after the four ward candidates, who were just sworn into Belleville Council office July 1, that some of the newly constituted panel signaled that the 2024-25 term will be different.
Tracy Williams-Muldrow, Frank Velez, incumbent Vincent Cozzarelli, Jr. and Diana Guardabasco were sworn into their respective First through Fourth Ward council seats that Monday. While Guardabasco ran on Mayor Michael Melham’s “A Better Belleville” ticket and previous ABB runner Cozzarelli understated his connection, Williams-Muldrow and Velez ran under their ‘Believe in Belleville” banner.
The foursome then took their places alongside Melham and at-large council members Thomas Graziano – who he named as Deputy Mayor – and Naomy DePena. Graziano and DePena ran on the ABB platform with Melham.
Williams and Velez abstained on several reorganization appointments, with Velez saying that he had not had the opportunity to review the appointees’ resumes. Velez then called for an end to social media sniping among Belleville elders and appealed for transparency.
Deputy Mayor Graziano agreed with Velez on transparency – and moved to not reappoint Anthony Iacono as Town Manager. (A family commitment kept Iacono away that night.)
That “non-reappointment” resolution failed on a 2-3-2 vote. Graziano and Velez voted “Yes,” Melham, Cozzarelli and DePena voted “No” and Williams-Muldrow and Guardabasco abstained.
NUTLEY – Mayor John V. Kelly III and the old-new Board of Commissioners have had a 42-day governing head start on the other towns who had their newly-elected elders sworn in on or by July 1.
Kelly, 39, in the township’s May 21 reorganization meeting, officially took his fellow commissioners’ appointment as Nutley’s latest and youngest mayor. The grandson of the late Hon. John Kelly, Sr. received the most votes among the five commissioners at their May 14 election. (The elder Kelly was Nutley mayor 1988-92 and a former assemblyman.)
Kelly, who doubles as Public Affairs Commissioner, reappointed the Hon. Alan J. Genitenpo and Jonathan Bruno, Esq. as respective Municipal Judge and Municipal Attorney.
Alphonse “Al” Petracco, outgoing mayor Dr. Joseph Scarpelli, Thomas J. Evans and Mauro G. Tucci., Sr. were inaugurated and returned as respective commissioners of public safety, public works, revenue and finance and parks and public property.
Although all five incumbents ran individual campaigns, a majority of participating Nutley voters returned them into office from among a field of seven candidates.
