MyVeronaNJ.com published 555 stories in 2023, plus more that ran only on our Instagram channel: Short stories, long stories, stories about the people, places, and things that define Verona, from schools and sports to government and community service.
If you didn’t get to read them all, don’t worry. You can always go into any section on the site and scroll back. Some stories resonated more than others, according to our site analytics. Here’s the news and themes that caught Verona’s attention this past year:
1.VHS Teacher Charged With Sexually Assaulting Student. Matthew Swajkowski, who had been a Verona High School science teacher, was taken into custody by the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office on September 22 and charged with sexual assault and endangering the welfare of a child. The school district put him on administrative leave, but the year ended without an arraignment or plea. He has a scheduled court appearance on January 19, 2024.
2.Affordable Apartments Rise On Former Cameco Site. Since 2017, Verona has faced a state mandate to build more affordable housing. Not low-rent apartments, but dwellings within the budget of an early career teacher or first responder. The Town Council authorized the purchase of sites to develop and keep out of development early on, but it wasn’t until this past October that construction finally began on three affordable housing buildings near the Community Center. Although they won’t be ready for occupancy until late in 2024 and early in 2025, the developer has already opened the waiting list. You can read everything we’ve published on affordable housing here.
3.Verona First Responders Lead Response To Claridge II Fire. When a fire broke out on an upper floor of one of the condominium towers on July 3, Verona sprang into action. The Verona Fire Department sent four engines and a ladder truck, and the Verona Rescue Squad responded with three ambulances, two command vehicles and 20 people. The response also drew in fire departments from 11 other towns, as well as 12 EMS services. Residents were evacuated and allowed back four days later even though there was only one working elevator on the west side and none working on the Manhattan-facing side of the building. Fire inspectors later determined that the fire had been accidental.
4.Carjacking On Floyd Road. A daylight attack on resident left Verona on edge for a few days, but Verona Police Department detectives quickly identified and arrested a suspect. The carjacking came amid a string of auto thefts, burglaries and attempted burglaries at Verona homes, part of a pattern of crime across several Essex County towns that was exacerbated by Verona residents’ tendency to leave their houses and cars unlocked. The VPD repeatedly reminded residents to lock up and call 973-239-5000 if they saw something suspicious.
5. A Hero In A Swimsuit. High school reporter Daniel Frenklakh profiled Alana Drost who, despite being born with Down syndrome, has became an accomplished swimmer who participated in the Special Olympics. Drost has also been active in community service, holding an event to make holiday cards for seniors in nursing homes. The profile highlighted another important trend at MyVeronaNJ: High school students have written many stories for the site, sometimes as part of their senior Capstone project. Former Capstone student Julia DiGeronimo had another of the year’s favorite stories, a profile of her family’s “seven fishes” dinner on Christmas Eve.
6. Concept Plan For New Police, First Responder HQ Unveiled. For decades, various Town Councils have sought to relocate our first responders from buildings that were in poor condition and barely met their needs. The town secured a location in February and on Monday, December 18, Solutions Architecture presented its concept plan for a combined first responder headquarters. We don’t know what the work will cost, but the Council will be holding events in the new year to let the public explore the plan in greater detail.
7. Volleyball Wins State Championship. You don’t have to live in Verona long to learn that we are mad about youth sports. Our student athletes train and play hard, and their efforts are often rewarded with championship titles. So it was in 2023 for the girls volleyball team, which won the NJSIAA Group 1 championship, and the 8th grade boys suburban basketball team, which won its first title. There was news in other sports too, with VHS choosing to not renew the contract of Kevin Batty, head football coach since 2018, and replace him with a coach from Glen Ridge football.
8. Verona To Get An Indie Bookstore. What do you do when you have good retail frontage on Bloomfield Avenue but don’t need it all for your existing business? You turn it into an independent book store. That’s what Josh Jacobs, the owner of Hearth Realty, and his wife Lauren Jacobs did in 2023 and when The Collective Bookstore opened in September, it held a signing by an illustrator who had grown up in Verona.
9. Contentious Elections. There were elections for both the Town Council and the Board of Education in 2023 and they seemed to have endless twists and turns. Mike Boone and Dominic Ferry ran for the BOE, but Ferry didn’t participate in either an in-person candidate forum or a virtual forum. Boone won by almost a two-to-one margin. In the Town Council race, both Christine McGrath and Alex Roman ran for re-election, and they were challenged by Christian Strumolo, who wound up having his own challenges. In the closing days of the campaign, Verona residents got a letter on Strumolo campaign stationary falsely asserting that Roman and McGrath supported a cannabis dispensary at Pilgrim Plaza. Roman and McGrath easily won re-election, but the drama wasn’t over. A citizens’ campaign lobbied hard for McGrath, the top vote getter, to be named mayor, even though that isn’t the rule that the Council follows when it picks the ceremonial mayor from among its members. At its July reorganization meeting, the Council chose Dr. Christopher Tamburro to be mayor and Jack McEvoy to be deputy mayor.
10. Slavery In Verona? Yes, Here Too. As part of his Capstone, George Donnelly took on one of the most unusual stories ever published on MyVeronaNJ. Working off research compiled by a descendant of one of the first European settlers in our area, Donnelly reported that seven individuals in what is now Verona had been slave owners, including a man often recognized as a founder of Verona’s pre-Civil War economy, Dr. Christian Bone.
Finally, two notes on the news. Some readers ask why we publish obituaries. They have been a key element of MyVeronaNJ’s coverage since the beginning and, unlike local print media, we don’t charge for them. We publish obituaries because the residents of Verona are key elements of every story we tell. What they do, where they volunteer, the lives they live and the legacy they leave behind. And every year, we remind readers of all the lives lost in the last 12 months.
As a digital news platform, we also have stories that draw reader interest long after they are first published. In 2023, that was our 2016 story of VHS graduate Vincent Lombardi, who played himself in “Sully,” the Tom Hanks movie about the plane that landed in the Hudson River.
