By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer

According to local officials, Maplewood police have recently upped outreach efforts to increase the number of women and minorities hired as officers in the department.

Steps included advertising in black and Hispanic newspapers, and reaching out to area churches, including two in the mostly black community of Irvington.

Police Chief Robert J. Cimino, appearing Jan. 21 for a budget…

By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer

Kings Supermarket, an anchor store in Maplewood Village, has expressed a willingness to consider moving across the street to the site of the current post office, Mayor Vic De Luca said last week.

At a Jan. 19 community meeting devoted to the…

By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer

New carpeting in Maplewood Memorial Library and crime-fighting equipment are among the $4.5 million in big-ticket items that heads of municipal departments in Maplewood asked for this year.

The projects and their costs were outlined in documents made available at the budget hearing Jan. 21, the first in a series of such township committee meetings.

Officials made it clear Saturday that…

By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer

The entire athletic field at Maplewood’s DeHart Park has to be torn out and resodded because of a mistake made during the installation, the township said.

Plastic netting is throughout the grass field, said Mayor Vic De Luca, who expressed concern that someone might get injured playing there.

He could not explain the presence of the netting but made clear that the township will not be…

By Michael D’Onofrio and Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writers

A proposed Chinese-language charter school that would have served South Orange-Maplewood, along with West Orange, was rejected last week by the state’s top education official for a second time.

The office of Acting Commissioner of Education Chris Cerf would not discuss why he turned down the Hua Mei application, one of 17 charter-school applications statewide that Cerf was considering.…

By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer

The streets of Maplewood were safer in 2011.

Police reported a sharp drop in burglaries that contributed to an overall 8.9 percent decrease in major crimes.

Homicides and car thefts also decreased, said police Chief Robert J. Cimino Jan. 11 when releasing crime statistics. Cimino lauded the work of the officers in the department, and cited the benefits of intelligence sharing with other…