TOWN WATCH
NEWARK – The Newark Public Schools Board of Education, by denying a proposed two-year extension of Schools Superintendent Roger Leon’s contract extension Sept. 25, presented the following math lesson:
Four “Yes,” + Two Recusals + Two Absententions + One Absent = Extension Failure by One Vote. The measure needed five affirmative votes from the nine members to pass.
Board Co-Vice Presidents Vereliz Santana and Allison James-Frison and members Josphine Garcia and Louis Maisonave were for the 2028-30 estimated $60,000 extension. Helena Vinhas was absent from that Thursday night’s public hearing in the Ann Street Elementary School auditorium. Members David Daugherty and member Melissa Reed abstained; Daughter was elected in April, Reed was appointed by colleagues in June to fill a vacancy.
Board President Hasani Council and member Kanaleah Anderson – citing relatives employed by NPS and thus indirectly supervised by Leon – abstained. Council, the only board-designated spokesperson to the media, did not comment on the vote or the proposed extension’s details. Leon himself left without commenting on the vote.
Before the board entered into an hour’s executive session prior to their 4-2-2-1 vote, they listened to a hour of public hearing speakers who mainly questioned the extension for the lack of transparency and in contrast to the district’s lack of responsiveness to reading achievement and bullying. Supporters of six-year superintendent Leon cited the increased graduation rates and in keeping his Project 2020 10-year facilities improvement plan on track.
“The public was given a short window to respond, yet the board’s considering a decision that’ll affect our schools the next five years,” said Carlos Castaneda of the Movimiento Cosecha immigrants rights advocacy group. “Our families deserve a superintendent that tackles inequities head-on.”
Some observers believe that the extension denial was in reaction to an “automatic” contract extension in 2023 after the board failed to meet a deadline. Leon, hired in 2018, is the first superintendent under the district and board’s 2020 full autonomy. The scheduled full board meeting, after five hours that Thursday, was reset for Sept. 29 at the board headquarters.
IRVINGTON – Township and county detectives may still be questioning “two suspects” who were apprehended after a gunfire exchange with Irvington police officers at a business district motel Sept. 24.
Irvington Public Safety Director Tracy Bowers said that his officers were responding to a 911 call of “a crime in progress” and “a man with a gun” at 50 Ball St., just before noon that Wednesday.
IPD officers had arrived at the Gallery Holiday Motel when an unidentified man began firing at them and they shot back. The neighboring Augusta Street Elementary entered automatic lockdown for 45 minutes.
Four people, a civilian woman and three IPD officers, were taken to University Hospital. Two officers and the woman were taken in for observation. One report has an officer shot in the back and, in another, a sergeant was supposedly grazed by a bullet. A large volume of police officers cordoned off parts of Ball Street while they searched for any additional suspects.
It is not clear whether the two suspects included the purported shooter. The ECPO Major Crimes Task Force detectives have taken the investigation’s lead. Further details, as of press time, are to be announced.
EAST ORANGE – While a former Orange police and Essex County Sheriff’s Office member has pleaded guilty in federal court Sept. 11 to bank fraud and conspiracy charges (see below), there has been no development on the status of an alleged co-conspirator from East Orange.
Complaints against Isiah J. Jordan, 27, had been lodged by federal prosecutors in Newark June 24 along with Ryan L. Terry on a count each of bank fraud and conspiracy to commit bank fraud.
Jordan and Terry were named in running a five-person ring where checks stolen from the mail were deposited in bank accounts they owned – and withdrew the proceeds before the banks in three counties could record the transactions in the latter nine months of 2023.
Jordan had appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Leda Dunn Wettre June 27 to post a $10,000 bond and was released on bail. He faces maximums of 30 years in a federal prison and $1 million should he pleads guilty or a jury convicts him – and at the sentencing judge’s discretion.
“Local Talk” presumes that Jordan is having a separate trial from Terry’s.
ORANGE – Jan. 21, 2026 is when a former Orange Police Department and Essex County Sheriff’s officer will learn the price for misinterpreting “To Protect and Serve” as meaning “To Protect and Serve – Yourself.”
Ryan L. Terry, 32, of Piscataway, has pleaded guilty in federal court Sept. 11 to a count each of bank fraud and conspiracy thereof in his part in a stolen check deposit ring March-December 2023.
Terry, since his June 24 charges lodged by the U.S. Department of Justice-New Jersey District, is accused of receiving stolen checks from the mail and depositing them into the ring’s long-standing back accounts. He and other ring members would then withdraw the ill-gotten gain between when the said checks cleared and before the banks recorded the transactions.
One $50,000 check from an unnamed business, for example, was deposited into an account controlled by Terry and his co-conspirators in June 2023. They withdrew that amount in July 2023 and split the proceeds. Terry was further accused in the USDOJ April complaint filing of recruiting other holders of pre-existing bank accounts for the fraud.
Terry, said federal prosecutors, was an OPD officer. Later court records have also listed him as a former Essex County Sheriff’s Office member. The affected banks were in Essex, Bergen and Hudson counties.
WEST ORANGE – A group of township residents and an environmental activist group explained their favoring of a 120-acre mature forest tract bordering Verona as Second Watchung Ridge over its proposed development as the 496 apartment unit West Essex Highlands Sept. 26.
Members of WeCare NJ, the Climate Revolution Action Network and the Ramapough Munsee Lenape Nation said, at 61 Howell Dr. that Friday, that the first group has filed suit against the township and West Essex Highlands, Inc. in State Superior Court-Newark Sept. 19.
West Essex Highlands, Inc. (WEHI), owned by real estate billionaire and NFL Minnesota Vikings team owner Zygmunt “Zygi” Wilf, has had a preliminary and final site application before the West Orange Planning Board since July 2024. The plan, which will soon have its 24th public hearing, features 100 units set aside for affordable housing, open space and walking trails. About 30 acres will be cleared for the four buildings and an access road.
WeCare NJ, however, said that hired consultant Princeton Hydro found the plan would ruin the headwaters of Canoe Brook, which feeds New Jersey American Water and East Orange’s reservoirs downstream, degrade drinking water and cause more flooding. Opponents also cite that utilities would have to be built to feed WEHI, who will then have to go downhill for groceries and other supplies.
Wilf, who has owned the 120 acres since 1986, built the first 300 WEH units on an adjacent 50 acres in 1989 and added The Grande at Pleasantdale Chateau in 1999. A 2004 plan to build 136 units on the 120-acre tract resulted in a pair of settlement agreements with the Wilf organization and West Essex Citizens Against Rezoning Excess. The 2004 plan was denied in a 2006 WOPB vote, 5-2.
“If the proposed (2024) plan succeeds,” states wecarenj.com, “more residential units will exist on 80 acres of the northwest West Orange border than in the entire two square miles of Essex Fells.”
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – The South Orange-Maplewood School District, after a month of public and private deliberations, have accepted NBA player Kyrie Irving and ANTA USA’s $36,000 uniform offer.
The SOMSA Board of Education, in a split vote Sept. 25, accepted Irving and ANTA’s $12,000 annual donation towards Columbia High School basketball uniforms through 2028. Irving, a West Orange Roosevelt Middle School scholar-athlete, had made a similar donation before the West Orange Board of Education.
The former Brooklyn Nets and current Dallas Mavericks shooting guard signed a sneaker marketing contract with Jinjang, China-based Anta Sports in July 2023. Anta, in the last 34 years, has become the world’s third largest sportswear maker behind Nike and Adidas.
Board President Nubia DuVall Wilson said that Thursday night that Superintendent Jason Bing had “vetted this opportunity, which included direct talks with our school community and Irving’s team.
Several public speakers in a prior board meeting questioned accepting the donation from Irving and Anta in light of some of the then-Net’s 2022 remarks on his Twitter feed linking to a documentary that had antisemitic statements. He was suspended five days without pay by the NBA for not clarifying his stance; Irving had apologized for the pain he may have caused to Jews and donated $500,000 to the ADL.
Board member Liz Callahan cast her dissenting vote, citing the above incident and for other Irving comments that may be considered as anti-science and conspiratorial theories “a very real concern.”
“We recognized that the comments he made in 2022 were hurtful and unacceptable and should never be ignored or excused,” said Wilson. “He has since apologized and is now giving back to the communities who helped raise him. Accepting this donation reflects our values of teaching empathy and repair while modeling for our students that people can learn from their mistakes and positively contribute to their communities thereafter.”
BLOOMFIELD – Former mayor and councilman James “Jim” Gaspairini, 98, was laid alongside his beloved wife Evelyn at Mt. Olivet Cemetery, after a Funeral Mass at St. Thomas the Apostle Church, Sept. 27 – keeping the lifelong Bloomfielder physically here forever.
Gaspiraini, 98, who died Sept. 22, was born Aug. 6, 1927 and was raised along the Watsessing section’s Thomas Street. The Bloomfield High School Class of 1945 graduate would leave Bloomfield to serve in the armed forces 1944-45 for World War Two and 1952-54 for the Korean Conflict and, much later, commute to The Forum men’s store in Caldwell. He used to frequent West Orange’s Francis A. Byrne Golf Course – where he scored a hole in one at age 95.
Gasparini was a three term at-large councilman who was elected mayor in 1990. A majority of voters brought him and fellow Bloomfield Democratic Committee running mates into the Council Chamber. His single three-year term was marked by balancing service provision without raising taxes.
Jim, before serving Uncle Sam, was a scholar-athlete who was on two of legendary Bengals football head coach William T. Foley’s teams 1943-44. The state All-Star player was also deemed class comedian by his peers and was known for his sharp neckties.
After his Korean tour, Gasparini married the former Evelyn J. “Evie” Ambrunn in 1954. They settled in the Brookdale section, where they were charter members of St. Thomas Church and School, and raised sons James W. and Michael and daughter Patricia. His sense of fashion led him to work at Barry’s haberdashery on Glenwood Avenue – first as a salesman and eventually as store manager – for 50 years. He worked for The Forum after Barry’s closed in the 1990s.
Gasparini’s civic association supported the ARC of Essex County with an annual dinner dance whose proceeds went to a Saturday morning bowling league for cognitively challenged adults. He served St. Thomas as a lector, Ecuharistic Minister, maintenance volunteer, acting in parish Broadway plays and as a Knights of Columbus member.
Grandsons James and Joseph and great-grandchildren Vianna and James are also among his survivors. Evelyn,94, who died March 23, brother Joseph and sisters Marion, Victoria and Theresa predeceased him. Memorial donations may go to the ARC of Essex County, 123 Naylon Ave., Livingston 07039 and/or St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, 262 Danny Thomas Place, Memphis, TN 38105.
MONTCLAIR – Township Superintendent of Schools Ruth B. Turner and Interim School Business Administrator Dana Sullivan laid out the paths out of a now-$19.6 million 2024-25 school budget deficit in a special Sept. 26 town hall meeting at the Buzz Aldrin Middle School Auditorium.
One way to plug the last school year’s deficit is to ask the New Jersey Department of Education for a loan. A second way is to put a special school budget property tax question – either for a tax increase or a budget reduction – up for public referendum in a special Dec. 9 election. A third way would be a short-term/long-term hybrid of the two said approaches. Fri. town hall on $18 million school budget deficit.
That was what Turner, who became Montclair Public Schools Superintendent July 1, and Sullivan, who came aboard later that summer, spelled out to the auditorium audience of about 100 that Friday night.
Why the deficit ballooned from $11 million, when first reported in April, to $19.6 million is because Turner and Sullivan have kept finding invoices and past due bills of “unbudgeted expenditures” over the summer About $12.6 in bills were connected to the 2024-25 budget plus another $7 million on the current budget – which was passed in May 2025.
Getting a loan from NJDOE, as in experiences in Nutley and Belleville, will likely mean 30 years of repayment installations to the state agency. The money would also come with the state placing a state monitor who will have the final say in MPS budgeting and spending.
Putting up a special school property tax increase up for a Dec. 9 public vote means that MPS has to give Essex County its decision on or by Oct. 10. Should the question be a tax increase to fully cover the deficit, Sullivan said that the yearly tax increase would roughly go up by $1,800 on an average assessed home here.
Sullivan and Turner are looking at a short-term loan to NJDOE and a Dec. 9 special question, given that the loan or revenue would not start coming in until February 2026.
GLEN RIDGE – Those NJTransit Montclair-Boonton Line weekend riders who want to travel west of Montclair’s Bay Street station may want to place such requests for Oct. 11-12 on the public carriers Customer Service website page.
NJTransit posted a notice Sept. 30 that the Oct. 11-12 MBL trains will continue west from Bay Street Station due to “track work.” Those trains will make their two-hour rest instead at the Great Notch yard, just north of Montclair State University Station.
Montclair-based Restore Our Transit in Essex County sees an opportunity for NJTransit to make local stops at Walnut Street, Watchung Street, Upper Montclair, Mountain Avenue and Upper Montclair between Bay Street and MSU.
When MPL weekend service to and from Bay Street Station through Glen Ridge and Bloomfield was restored with The Montclair Connection Sep. 20-22, 2022, the service was not extended north to MSU. “Local Talk” believes that Bay Street-MSU weekend service was not provided as a concession to Montclair residents along the right of way who objected to the sounding of train horns.
Neither ROUTE nor advocate partner Lackawanna Coalition have posted any objections from the said Montclair neighbors nor has “Local Talk” know of any such objections as of press time.
BELLEVILLE – Belleville Public School district officials, in two developments Sept. 15-16, can be frank in one matter and subtle in the other.
Superintendent of Schools Dr. Erick Alfonso told a reporter Sept. 15 that the district’s 2025-26 school budget is sound, rumors to the contrary.
“Speculation on social media doesn’t reflect the district’s certified reality,” stated Alfonso, who took the superintendent’s chair July 1. He pointed to the New Jersey Department of Education’s certification of the current budget as balanced. Alfonso added that State Monitor Thomas Egan had left the district in good standing.
The district’s website, on Sept.16, stated that it is taking employment applications for School Business Administrator. The successful applicant would start work on Jan. 1 – and succeed Matthew J. Paladino.
Paladino, on one hand, has been SBA and Board Secretary since 2017. He has been named in lawsuits filed by four former district employees over the summer, on the other hand, of making degrading sexual remarks and of retaliation.
A special BBOET “Executive Session” meeting was posted on Sept. 26 for 5:30 p.m. Sept. 30 in a Belleville High School Administration Wing conference room “to Review Personnel Matters.”
NUTLEY – “Local Talk” has learned that friends and family of the late Geraldine (Manetta) Vitiello, 85, are helping her contribute to the township community beyond her Aug. 27 death.
Vitiello’s family had requested that contributions in memory of one half of Vitiello’s Bakery’s founding duo be made to the Holy Family Restoration Fund, 28 Brookline Ave., Nutley 07110 – “or the charity of your choice.” Geraldine was a Holy Family Eucharistic Minister and a Holy Family Rosary Society member.
Geraldine and Frank Vitiello opened Vitiello’s Bakery, 105 Franklin Ave., in 1967 – a year after they had married and moved here to raise sons Frank and Mark. Vitiello’s Bakery, which closed upon Frank and Geraldine’s 2021 retirement, is now Violante’s Meat Market.
The former Geraldine Manetta was born April 22, 1940 in Elizabeth and had graduated from that city’s Battin High School in 1958 and, with a sociology degree, from Seton Hall University. Away from the bakery, she was a bookkeeper and assistant for Nutley Young Adults for many years.
The Nutley Optimist Club member died Aug. 27 at the Jersey City Medical Center. Husband Frank, sons Frank and Mark and grandchildren Michael and Kaitlyn are among her survivors.
Her funeral at Holy Family Church and burial at North Arlington’s Holy Cross Chapel Mausoleum were held Sept. 2.
