TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – Petitions by a Newark housing advocacy group, who wants the city’s 20 percent rent control increase halved, is in the hands of Essex County Clerk Chris Durkin (D-Roseland) and his Election Division staff.
Durkin and his staffers are verifying the group’s petition signatures to pass the minimum signature number for their question to be considered for the Nov. 5 General Election ballot. Any ballot question, by law, has to have the signatures of at least 10 percent of a locality’s registered voters.
The group, in mid-August, said that it had more than enough signatures to pass muster.
The prospective question is asking registered Newark voters to consider bringing the maximum rent control increase limit down from 20 percent to 10 percent.
Newark’s Municipal Council, earlier this year, had increased the cap limit from five percent in 2023 to 20 percent.
It is presumed that the group’s ballot question’s voting results will be binding. Orange, by contrast, held back-to-back non-binding and binding public questions on whether to switch its board of education selection format from mayor-appointed to voter-elected. A majority of participating voters favored switching to the elected model both times.
IRVINGTON – The Irvington Police Department and Public Safety Director Tracy Bowers is among those “Local Talk” area law enforcement agencies to take a bow for their part in bringing a gang member to plead guilty in Newark federal court Aug. 15.
U.S. Attorney-New Jersey District Philip Sellinger said that Kareem Green – also known as “Try Me” of the Rollin’ 60s Neighborhood Crips, pleaded guilty to one RICO count that Thursday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan D. Wigenton. “RICO” stands for the Racketeer Influenced and Corruptions Act.
Green confessed to working with another gang member to distribute March 5, 2021. He also affirmed that he ordered another gang member to shoot a victim on two separate occasions: April 5 and 11, 2021. Green was a Rollin’ 60s set member 2015-Sept. 22, 2022.
Green is being held pending a sentencing date. He is facing up to $250,000 in fines and 20 year’s federal imprisonment for RICO and 20 years and up to $1 million for narcotics trafficking.
Besides IPD and Bowers taking a bow, Sellinger also praised the Newark, East Orange, Bloomfield, Elizabeth and Edison police departments, the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office and Essex County Sheriff’s Office, the New Jersey State Police, the Union County Prosecutor’s Office the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation and six federal agencies for their part.
EAST ORANGE – The to-be-announced reopening of the Park Oval off Grove Street and Eaton Place, which has been undergoing a renovation since December, will also set the date for the fifth ward baseball diamond taking alongside Paterson’s Hinchliffe Stadium and Birmingham, Ala.’s Rickwood Field.
Oval Park, which has a long-set “late summer 2024” reopening date, will be the third former Negro League home diamond with Hinchliffe and Rickwood – three of such literal handful ball parks or fields that still exist. All three have had recent renovations and celebratory reopenings.
In Oval Park’s case, the Newark Eagles, New York Black Yankees, Brooklyn Brown Dodgers, Brooklyn Colored Giants, Baltimore Eagles, Asheville Blues, Chicago Giants and Birmingham Black Barons had played here between 1920 and 1950. The Newark Eagles, N.Y. Black Yankees and Chicago Cubans had also played home games at Hinchliffe; Birmingham called Rickwood Field home.
Records are not clear which teams had called Oval Park home, which games were between each other for a regular season or played “exhibition” games with outside of Negro League teams.
Main contractor Neglia Engineering had used part of the nearly $6 million in funding to install a new football gridiron with an “EO” logo at its center. There had been several scholastic, amateur and pro or semi-pro team that played here going back to the 1880s. They include the Orange Tornados athletic club of the 1920s – which inspired the NFL Orange Tornados.
Other improvements thanks to state open space and green acres funding include a new quarter-mile running oval, new grandstands and new night lighting.
ORANGE – Results who were at Aug. 28’s planning board hearing may call that panel’s suggestion or bluff by asking the City Council of the tax abatement rationale of an under-proposal South Ward project at the latter’s Sept. 3 meeting.
One of the planning board members told a public speaker Aug. 29 that the Payment In Lieu of Taxes figures are the province of the council and not the planners. The question was among those asked about a site plan application for 512-22 Scotland Rd.
512 Scotland LLC wants to replace 512-522 Scotland at Hillside Avenue, with a five-story, 30-dwelling unit building. The units would be 23 one-bedroom apartments, two six bedroom units and one studio apartment. Its amenities include ground floor parking, a private fifth floor patio and a gymnasium.
It is not immediately known whether 512 Scotland would include any affordable housing units nor how many parking spaces will be allocated. The proposed building is within the Central Valley Redevelopment Area.
The public speaker had asked how the $400,000 proposed annual PILOT (its term length was not mentioned) is based on the $18,000 in annual property taxes that the current two properties pay. The proposal would demolish a closed doctor’s office at 514 Scotland and a 2.5 story house at 518 Scotland.
Public speakers’ questions in the virtual planning board meeting revealed that a traffic plan on the motorized tenants’ impact on local traffic volume. Scotland Road, also known as Essex County Rd. 638, has only one travel lane in each direction between Highland Avenue and the South Orange border.
WEST ORANGE – Some of West Orange’s favorite sons and daughters gathered at the Thomas A. Edison National Park Aug. 15 to honor the late Gov. Brendan T, Byrne’s on what would have been his centennial year.
Members of The Friends of Thomas Edison NHP and the Downtown West Orange Alliance unveiled a plaque that Thursday night summarizing the 47th Governor of New Jersey along the Main Street side of the former Edison labs.
The dignitaries included widow Ruthi Byrne, former governors Richard “Dick” Codey (2002-06) and Christie Todd Whitman (1994-2001), Mayor Susan McCartney and mayor-turned-State Senator John McKeon.
The marker was erected at the former Thomas A. Edison Laboratory where son Charles Edison’s 1927-1961 presidency of the company overlapped his 1941-44 term as governor. C. Edison and Byrne were the second and third governors from West Orange or resided here with Gen. George McLellan (1877-81) and followed by Codey.
Byrne, who was born here April 1, 1924, most likely visited Edison NHP and dodged traffic while walking across Main Street as a youth. The future governor and part-time comedian was a West Orange High School Class of 1942 was taking classes in Seton Hall University until he enlisted with the U.S. Army Air Corps. He resumed pursuing a law degree at Princeton after is tour as a B-17 navigator in World War Two’s European Theater ended in 1945.
Lt. Byrne was a private lawyer for a Newark and an East Orange firm until he was appointed by Gov. Robert B. Meyner to the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office in 1958. He was appointed as a State Superior Court Assignment Judge William T. Cahill in 1970.
Judge Byrne resigned to successfully run for governor in 1972. Gov. Byrne established the state energy and public advocate departments, set state through municipal spending limits, signed the Pinelands Protection Act and created the state income tax.
Byrne died from a sudden illness Jan. 4, 2018 and was given a military funeral.
Councilwoman Michele Casalino and a Friends representative donated a copy of “Gov. Brendan Byrne: The Man Who Couldn’t be Bought,” to the West Orange Public Library.
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – New South Orange-Maplewood School District superintendent Jason Bing, at the school board’s Aug. 25 meeting, noted progress on the district’s technology and facilities fronts.
Bing said that some of the facilities improvements that were being made over the summer will be ready on or by Sept. 5. Those revisions include a new retaining wall at Maplewood Middle School, a new front sidewalk before South Orange Middle School, a new sidewalk horseshoe at Seth Boyden Demonstration School, a new sidewalk and ramp at Montrose Early Learning Center and a new handicapped access ramp at Tuscan Elementary School.
The new superintendent of schools said that replacing the sub-Olympic-sized swimming pool at Columbia High School with an expanded Media Center and a new student center is coming along. The new construction prompted cancellation of this year’s district pre-school year convocation. He thanked Facilities Director Tom Giglio, staff and contractors for their work.
On the technology front, he thanked its director, Keith Bonds for setting up 75-inch LED screens in five classrooms. Teachers there can plug in their laptops and show online lessons before students.
The developments could be viewed as progress on Bing’s “First 100 Days Plan” he had unveiled at the BOE’s July 25 meeting. Technology is one of the 10 major areas the superintendent wants the district to focus on; the facilities revamps fall into “Organizational Review.
The other eight areas are: Developing key relationships, Financial review, Curriculum review, Career and technical education/workforce readiness, Human resources, Observations, Public relations and communication and Transportation. The 10 areas are driven by four mission values: equity, excellence, integrity and teamwork.
BLOOMFIELD – NJ Historic Sites Council denied NJTransit’s application to renovate Bloomfield Station over the plan’s raising of the 1912 station’s platform height.
NJTransit had been raising platform heights so its Arrow III and later trains can load and unload passengers faster and improve handicapped riders’ access. The council, at its Aug. 15 meeting, said that the stations would have to be removed to clear the proposed high-level platforms.
The former DL&W Bloomfield Station, like most NJTransit’s Morris & Essex and Montclair-Boonton Line stations, have been on the national and state historic registers since 1984.
The council’s ruling may be reversed should NJTransit provide an alternative. It had built short high-level platforms at the ends of South Orange and East Orange stations. The council had approved NJTransit’s high-level platforms and replacing the 1903 westbound waiting room at Newark Broad Street Station by keeping the original elements as much as possible and installing historic markers about the station.
Bloomfield had its eastbound waiting room renovated and reopened in 2005, thanks to a $1 million federal grant provided by the late Cong. Bill Pascrell (D-Eighth Congressional District).
The approval is contingent on NJTransit making the station whole by buying its street level from the township. Bloomfield bought the ground floor from Haberman Corp., of West Orange, as part of its Town Centre redevelopment plan. Haberman, until 2000, had wanted to open a restaurant where the westbound waiting room was until around 1970. The then-Erie Lackawanna sold that space to a vendor who put in a pizzeria and, later, a florist’s shop.
MONTCLAIR – The Mills Reservation hiker who was found unconscious Aug. 24 by Montclair and Cedar Grove first responders may have been likely released from a local hospital by press time.
Acting Montclair Fire Chief Robert Duncan said his first units had responded to a missing persons report made 8:30 p.m. that Saturday from 36 Warfield St., They and Cedar Grove police officers conducted a search in the darkness for the hiker.
They found the hiker unconscious and wedged between a tree and a cliff face some 75 feet above the ground; she had fallen 20 feet down from the cliff’s edge.
Firefighters and police officers used rope lines to rappel to the hiker and fastened more lines to the ground. They carefully extricated the hiker and lowered her to earth 30 minutes later.
A Montclair Ambulance crew, waiting at 36 Warfield, then took the hiker to the local hospital/ Duncan said that no one was injured in the rescue.
GLEN RIDGE – The newly-arrived Glen Ridge Public Schools superintendent, Kyle Arlington, is fine-tuning what he calls the “Capturing Kids’ Hearts” initiative for the 2024-25 school year.
Arlington, who came from Kenilworth to succeed the retired Dirk Phillips over the summer, is launching “Kids’ Hearts” with the Glen Ridge Educational Foundation. The program aims to support students’ emotional and social development among the Pre-Kindergarten through Second Grade ranks.
The initiative, which is found in some other public school districts, aims to reduce social anxiety, strengthen students’ voices and create self-managing classrooms. The program will be found in Glen Ridge’s four elementary schools.
2024-25 is also the year when the district’s physical education and health curriculum is up for review. PE and health were last reviewed in 2019. It and other curricula are on five-year review cycles.
Arlington will be fine-tuning this year’s central office initiatives by continuing meet-and-greets among parents, students and other stakeholders in the borough’s six-school district.
BELLEVILLE – Those at Ronnie’s Service Center here at 605 Washington Ave. may remember this summer as one of looming mortality.
On the institutional level, the Belleville Planning Board, on June 27, approved plans to replace the longtime automotive garage and filling station at Washington and Greylock Parkway’s northwest corner with a five-story, 51-unit apartment building.
On the personal level, the Enrite-branded gas station suffered the loss of its mechanic, Joseph B. Costa, 35, on July 28 at the Clara Maass Medical Center.
The property owners took advantage of Belleville’s elders designating the corner as an Area in Need of Redevelopment a few years ago by submitting a site plan application to the planning board last spring.
Costa, who was a Nutley resident July 28, was born in Morristown Oct. 29, 1988 and came here by way of Newark and Bloomfield. The Bloomfield High School Class of 2006 had a passion for cars and motorcycles. He and wife Michelle Rizzo-Costa lived in Bloomfield until she died in 2022.
Parents Manuel and Maria Costa, brother Michael and stepdaughter Riley are among his survivors. His Funeral Mass was held in Bloomfield’s Sacred Heart Church Aug. 3, followed by a private cremation.
Ronnie’s was a Texaco station until parent Texaco-Chevron withdrew from the Northeast market in 2001.
NUTLEY – New Jersey Department of Education’s appointed monitor issued her first veto here at the Nutley Board of Education meeting Aug. 26 – and a Nutley Public Schools employee may be thanking her for it.
The NBOE voted 5-2 that Monday night to deny a resolution that would have allowed the unnamed employee to collect $27,957.71 in unused vacation time. The circumstances on why the Nutley Public Schools staffer not using that time up to now was not elaborated.
Board President Salvatore Ferraro and Vice President Joseph Battaglia abstained from the vote. The other members – Salvatore Balsamo, Thomas D’Elia, Lisa Danchack-Martin, Daniel Fraginals, Charles Kucinski, Teri Quirk and Nicholas Scotti – noted “No.”
State Monitor Jeanette Makus, however, overrode the board’s denial. Makus, after the session, said that she vetoed the vote in the best interests of NPS students and cited the legal expenses the district could face should the employee bring court charges against the employer.
Monday night was Makus’ first veto since coming aboard May 7. NJDOE had assigned her to NBOE as a condition of granting the district a $7 million loan to have it cover its suddenly-discovered 2023-24 budget deficit.
