August 13, 2014 • www.theobserver.com • Vol CXXVII, No. 12
COVERING: BELLEVILLE • BLOOMFIELD
• EAST NEWARK • HARRISON • KEARNY • LYNDHURST • NORTH ARLINGTON • NUTLEY
Eyesore will soon be gone By Ron Leir Observer Correspondent
KEARNY – At the top of the Oval, there’s a small square which, in about a month, should be flat. Yes, the fenced-off, vacant two-story house at 484 Schuyler Ave. surrounded by overgrown vegetation, with a shed in the backyard, is coming down. The building – next to the entrance of Kearny’s Gunnell Oval recreation complex – has been sitting empty for at least a decade, according to town Public Works Director Gerry Kerr, and now that the town is aiming to make over the environmentally compromised Oval, it will be removing the adjacent eyesore. Its last owner was listed in Kearny tax records as Matilda Dorothy Horn. In 2008, the town was offered the property, which was appraised at a fair market value of $200,000, and in December 2008, it authorized the purchase through a bond ordinance which justified the move as an acquisition for a public purpose, apparently with the expectation that the property could be added to the Oval. In 2009, the town canceled the balance of real estate taxes see DEMOLITION page
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Prepping for opening Photo by Ron Leir
Principal Robert Zika (l.) and Vice Principal Patrick Ragnoni show one of the classrooms at Lincoln Middle School being readied for the start of classes next month.
By Ron Leir Observer Correspondent KEARNY –
W
hen the bell rings for the opening of classes at the newly reconfigured Lincoln Middle School in Kearny Sept. 4,
maintenance staff cleaned classrooms on the building’s second floor to prepare them for the estimated 441 grade 8 students who will be their new occupants. “Our custodial staff has been phenomenal,” Blood said. “Everything should
everything will be ready for the incoming seventh- and eighth-graders, said Acting Superintendent Patricia Blood. Last week, after the school district completed its summer school and Ticket-toRead programs at Lincoln,
be up to snuff when school resumes.” A projected 411 seventhgraders will fill in classrooms on the building’s first floor, thus making a total of 852 students. see LINCOLN page
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Homicide charge in fatal crash A Union City truck driver has been charged with vehicular homicide in connection with a N.J. Turnpike crash that claimed the life of a Kearny man in June. The N.J. State Police,
working with the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, arrested Henry Flores, 55, without incident at his home July 31. Detectives reportedly have determined that Flores was using a cell phone when his
tractor-trailer caused the chain-reaction accident on the Turnpike in Carlstadt. Several people were injured, and Jeffrey Humphrey, 43, was pronounced dead at the scene. Humphrey, a lifelong Kearny resident, was a medical
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technology instructor at Montefiore Medical Center and was also the leader of a musical group, The Jeff Humphrey Trio. He was the brother of Kearny Public Library director Josh Humphrey. see CRASH page
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