Community Corner

Parking Garage, Fraud Scam, 3-Alarm Fire: Top Bloomfield Stories of the Week

Week of July 22-28, 2012 on Bloomfield Patch.

 

Mayor: "$5 Million for Parking Garage Will Reduce Our Debt"

 The Bloomfield township council approved a resolution seeking to appropriate $5 million to help pay for the new town center parking garage – rather than $3 million, as previously requested.  Parking Authority Attorney Joe Baumann, who introduced the resolution, said it included an amendment that promised one hundred percent of the annual excess revenues of the Parking Authority would go to Bloomfield taxpayers to prove "we're all on the same team.” 

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“We were going to get fifty percent,” Mayor McCarthy informed the council.  “Now we would get the whole one hundred percent.”

The resolution was approved by the council, with Councilman Joanow being the only dissenting vote.  

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Mayor McCarthy said the additional $2 million appropriation has already been earmarked for the project and would not increase residents' tax burden. "It's a good move credit-wise because it reduces the debt of the town," he said. 

 

A Bloomfield man was charged yesterday for his alleged role in a $15 million mortgage fraud scam that spanned five states and involved fraud, conspiracy and attempted murder, according to New Jersey U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman.

Charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering, Willie W. Richardson, 64, of Bloomfield was one of eleven individuals arrested yesterday by special agents of the FBI and IRS–Criminal Investigation. 

In addition to the conspiracy charges, one of the eleven defendants was charged with attempted murder for recruiting another individual to kill a straw buyer who was a witness to the mortgage fraud scheme.  The FBI report states that the straw buyer was lured into a wooded area in Mobile, Alabama and shot multiple times. The victim survived. 

“According to the indictment, these defendants created false documents and used straw buyers to convince lenders to give them $15 million for properties that were worth far less,” said U.S. Attorney Fishman in the statement. “Members of the scheme were willing to launder money – and even to kill – in order to get their hands on the profits and cover their tracks.”

 

Multiple families were evacuated and placed in emergency housing on Wednesday night after their apartment building at 77-79 Washington Street caught fire.  Though Bloomfield Fire Chief Joseph McCarthy said no one was severely injured, the 3-alarm blaze caused extensive property damage. 

“There were no civilian injuries but a couple of firefighters were banged up a little,” McCarthy said. 

UPDATE:  On Thursday McCarthy told Patch that the cause of the fire was an unattended candle in the top floor of the residence.

"The families were relocated to emergency shelter by the Red Cross," he said.

 

A multi-car accident on the Garden State Parkway on Monday morning caused at least seven injuries, one of them serious, according to Bloomfield Emergency Medical Technician Alex Burde who was at the scene.

Burde said two victims were rushed to University Hospital in Newark, one with life-threatening injuries.  The other had a possible broken leg, he said.

Police and emergency personnel said the cause was a car driving northbound in the southbound lanes. 

The accident occurred near the Brookdale rest stop at Exit 151.  The Parkway was closed off for hours in many miles in each direction. 

 

A state-ordered, one-month shut down of Heartbreakers Go-Go Bar will go into effect in September unless the owner pays $10,000 in back fines, said Bloomfield Attorney Brain Aloia at Monday's town council meeting.

The fine, part of an unpaid balance of $56,019 for past violations, will close the bar from 2:00am September 7th to 2:00am October 7th. 

But council members and Police Chief Christopher Goul said they are not as concerned about the unpaid fine as about the effect Heartbreakers is having on the community. The council said a discplinary hearing to address the matter will take place at the upcoming August 13 meeting.

Councilman Bernard Hamilton said “I think we need to bring [the owner] back in here because issues that happen inside the establishment affect people in the street,” he said, noting that it was unfair to neighborhood businesses in the redevelopment area that were “trying to build themselves up.”

 

BLOOMFIELD COMMUNITY VOICES

An opinion editorial written by Sue Ann Penna, Executive Director of Citizens for Limited Government.

 

An opinion editorial written by Cary Heller on behalf of Bloomfield Joint Venture and Bloomfield Transit Villages.

 

Residents discuss the future of Bloomfield.

 

Obituaries

Funeral services were this week held for Deshon Johnson, an Essex County College student who was killed by a NJ Transit bus in Bloomfield on his way to work.  He aspired to be a singer, rapper, artist and writer. Johnson lived in raised in East Orange and later, Montclair, where he graduated from Montclair High School.  He was the only child of Naomi Johnson. 

"Naomi Johnson had her own accident when she was hit by a car years ago ... and her wonderful son gave up his own ambitions to stay with his mom and help her recover," said Montclair Deputy Mayor Bob Russo. "That is a wonderful thing, and to lose him like this is a heartbreak."

 

Sanzari, a 1982 graduate of Bloomfield High School, was raised in Bloomfield.  He owned The Mane Place II Salon in Verona.  Family and friends remembered him fondly.


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