May 13, 2015 • www.theobserver.com • Vol CXXVII, No. 51 Visit our
BUSINESS DIRECT on
COVERING: BELLEVILLE • BLOOMFIELD
Mapping out a new future
By Ron Leir Observer Correspondent
see BENEFITS page
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Page 23
• EAST NEWARK • HARRISON • KEARNY • LYNDHURST • NORTH ARLINGTON • NUTLEY
Santos retreats on F/T KEARNY – Don’t blame some members of the Kearny governing body for holding more than one public job – they’re simply showing their skills at multitasking. That’s the contention of Mayor Alberto Santos, who doubles as the clerk to the Hudson County Board of Freeholders. Santos’ comments, made at the April 28 mayor/Town Council meeting, came in the context of his defense of why Kearny elected officials – as “full-time” employees – should be entitled to collect state health benefits if they are so inclined – including the “newbies” elected to the council since the state health benefit law was amended in 2010 mandating local contributions by employees. At that meeting, the mayor and Town Council voted for the introduction of an ordinance “declaring the members of the Town’s governing body to be full-time elective officers ….” A public hearing on the ordinance was slated for May 12 but Santos told The Observer last week he would ask the council to pull the ordinance
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Observer file photo
Tracey Marinelli has landed a new job in Little Falls.
By Ron Leir Observer Correspondent LYNDHURST – ith a bit more than three years remaining in her contract, Lyndhurst’s chief school administrator is leav-
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ing. Tracey Marinelli, who has served in the Lyndhurst school district’s highest post since 2010, was hired April 28 by the Little Falls Board of Education to take over July 1, as its new superintendent, at $145,000 a year.
It’s the cat’s meow! By Karen Zautyk Observer Correspondent
KEARNY – Last year, this community was embroiled in a cat fight. The claws were out. The fur was flying. And various other feline-related metaphors. The source of the
controversy was the feeding of colonies of feral cats by members of Kearny’s colony of humans. Luckily, sanity -- and governmental intervention -- prevailed. Under an ordinance adopted by the Town Council in November, Kearny established a Trap/Neuter/Return
201-460-8000 LYNDHURST OFFICE 761 Ridge Road, Lyndhurst, New Jersey C21Semiao@Century21.com
As part of her duties, Marinelli will also be principal assigned to the district’s School 3 for grades 3 and 4. Little Falls, with an exclusively elementary school enrollment of about 900, has no high school and sends its 8th-grade graduates to
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(TNR) policy, which Mayor Alberto Santos envisioned as becoming “a model for the state.” Having recently been given a tour of various colonies, we think he might be right. We didn’t know what to expect, having stupidly envisioned people just going
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Passaic Valley Regional High School. Lyndhurst has more than 2,300 students. The Little Falls school budget is nearly $16 million, much less that the approximately $37 million that the
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out and dumping bags of kibble hither and thither. What we found was a wellplanned, carefully monitored and tightly administered program, one that reportedly has already -- humanely -reduced Kearny’s feral cat population. see CATS page
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201-991-1300 KEARNY OFFICE
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