Columns/Opinions

Last week, the Livingston Fire Department lost Frank Leck, its longest active member since Charlie Schilling’s passing nearly four years ago. At the time of his death on October 18, Mr. Leck had been serving with the LFD for 64 years, and was an active member up to the day he died. His loss hurts not only the Fire Department, but the entire community, and marks the end of an era.

Mr. Leck joined the Fire Department in August of 1959, at the age of 17. He became a full firefighter in 1963, and was assigned to the Northfield Station. Over the decades, he rose through the ranks, from firefighter to Warden (a position which no longer exists), Lieutenant, and Captain, and was Deputy Fire Chief from 1997 to 1999.

We are just a few weeks from Election Day, on Tuesday, November 7, and campaigns are beginning to accelerate, from the local level on up the chain. This means that voters are learning more about the candidates for whom they are tasked with casting a vote. It stands to reason that the more information citizens have prior to selecting their candidate, the more informed that selection should be.

Here in Livingston, for example, we have one local race this year, for a seat on the school district’s Board of Education. As we have progressed through this election season, the two candidates – Harsh Raju and Fang Gong – have participated in a debate, submitted weekly responses to questions in this newspaper, and been out and about speaking to residents in town. Together, the community, surely, collectively knows more about these two individuals than they did just one month earlier.

In recent months, the main topic of conversation in town has centered on proposed development at the Bottle King property. If the developer is permitted to go forward with the plan, there will be 240 rental units, in addition to retail stores, built on the property. Residents have brought up several concerns, one of which was increased traffic to an already congested area of town, along South Livingston Avenue and Mt. Pleasant Avenue.

These residents are correct, of course. Anyone who has driven that stretch of town during the busiest parts of the day are familiar with its problems. It can take several green lights just to cross Mt. Pleasant Avenue, as traffic regularly backs up for blocks. If someone tries to make a left turn off of South Livingston into a business or onto a side street, one of the two extremely narrow lanes on either side of the roadway quickly backs up. And making left turns onto South Livingston Avenue? Forget about it. Do not even try.

There is less than a month before Election Day on Tuesday, November 7, and this year’s ballot will feature one contested Livingston race. Two candidates, Fang Gong and Harsh Raju, are vying for one open seat on the Livingston Public Schools Board of Education.

Next week, Sunday, October 1, through Saturday, October 7, is National Newspaper Week. The annual observance of the service that newspapers and their employees provide to their communities has been in existence since 1940; what is printed within the pages of newspapers has certainly changed since then, but the importance of the medium has not. And here at the West Essex Tribune, we are proud to be one of the only remaining independent newspapers in the state, bringing our community the stories that matter to them.

My mom was always a fan of fall. As soon as the air began to get crisp, she was at her happiest. As a child, I couldn’t understand that – all I could think was that winter was coming and that I hated snow. For most of my younger years, my favorite season was spring. I loved spring for a variety of reasons, but the top two were that my birthday is in May, and spring signaled the coming end of the school year.

Years later, as an adult with small children of my own, spring held the same appeal for me. I loved seeing the school year draw to a close, because it meant more time with my kids, long summer days outdoors, ice cream cones, the beach, and all those wonderful things that came with the warm weather.

Welcome to the Tribune!

While the West Essex Tribune’s regular readership will not notice many changes to this week’s issue, some are picking up our paper for the first time. This week’s edition is a TMC (Total Market Coverage) issue, the third of four newspapers this year that we will mail to every home in Livingston.

We who make the Tribune are so proud to work and live in a town that values community reporting, and we do our best to be an essential part of your weekly media diet. While there are many other places to get news on a state and national level, no other newspaper exclusively covers Livingston.

Joe Fiordaliso

Livingston has lost an icon with the passing of Joseph Fiordaliso. The dictionary defines an icon as “a person or thing regarded as… worthy of veneration;” and Mr. Fiordaliso certainly fit that definition. Before becoming a grandpa, he was known affectionately as “Joe Fee-o;” but once his precious grandchildren arrived he was always “Papa Joe.”

His ready smile and affable way were the gateway to his caring personality. He started his career as an educator and that desire – to teach and to help others – followed him throughout his life. A graduate of Montclair State, he taught at Vailsburg and Bloomfield High School for 18 years before founding We Drive, a service that used the client’s car to take customers to their destinations.

This coming Monday marks the 22nd anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the fall of the World Trade Center, the crash of Flight 93, and the attack on the Pentagon.

Much has changed in the decades since that terrible day, but in Livingston, each and every year, we still take the time to honor the seven township residents we lost.

Luke A. Dudek. Jeffrey Brian Gardner. Donald Thomas Jones II. Ming-Hao Liu. Joseph P. McDonald. John M. Pocher. Kenneth Albert Zelman.

These seven Livingstonites became part of a nationwide tragedy that forever altered the face of America. Our country’s confidence in the security of its citizens and its institutions was shaken to its core, and nothing has been the same since. In the years that followed, towns across the nation held ceremonies to honor the more than 3,000 people who lost their lives in the attacks, including our own service in Livingston.

Livingston’s Zoning Board will move its meetings to in-person only, beginning Tuesday, September 12. After holding its public sessions online through Zoom for several years, the Zoning Board will now return to the Town Hall chambers. Conference sessions that precede the public hearings will take place inside the nearby conference room in the same building.

This makes the Zoning Board the final governing entity in Livingston to return to in-person meetings. But unlike the Township Council and the Livingston Public Schools Board of Education, the Zoning Board currently has no plan to livestream its meetings. Like the Planning Board meetings, Zoning Board meetings are expected to be uploaded to the town’s YouTube page at a later date.