News-pourri

  Submitted by Victory Chase. Rockingham State Historic Site, 64 Laurel Ave., General George Washington’s final wartime headquarters, will be holding its annual Candlelight Tours of the house from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Dec. 11. The theme for this year focuses on the help foreigners provided the colonies during the course of the American Revolution, and the holiday traditions …

A handful of applications for home renovations were given the thumbs’-up Dec. 6 by the township Historic Preservation Advisory Commission. Most of the applications were for roof repairs, although two were for major home renovations. Exterior work on buildings triggers a commission review when the building is located in one of the township’s historic districts or is close to the …

Veterans, their families, and advocates are invited to a Town Hall Meeting and Claims Clinic Dec. 14, at the Richard Hall Community Health Center at 500 North Bridge St., Bridgewater. The claims clinic will run from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The town hall meeting, hosted by Lillie Nuble, director of the Newark Regional Office, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, …

The final tallies of the Nov. 8 write-in votes were released this week, and they show that 543 write-in votes were cast, with the bulk of them going to the two late-starting Board of Education candidates. Andre Fryson and Kunal Lakhia announced their candidacies for the school board on Facebook, after well after the filing deadline had passed. Their brief …

  The holidays are popping up all over the township. Sales were the main topic on Dec. 3, with several organizations – the Griggstown Historical Society, the Millstone Valley Preservation Coalition and St. Matthias Home School Association – offering wares for those early shoppers. The old Griggstown Schoolhouse on Canal Road was the site for the “Greens and Goodies” sale …

The repair of faulty roadwork will result in the partial closure of DeMott Lane during the week of Nov. 28. The township was not satisfied with the milling and paving done on DeMott earlier in the fall by Somerset-based DeSantis Construction, so the company will fix the problems, township manager Robert Vornlocker told the Township Council at its Nov. 22 …

Six area families that were “adopted” by a township church will be sure to have a hearty Thanksgiving dinner this year. That’s because the families – two each in the township, South Bound Brook and Somerville – received holiday baskets complete with turkey and all of the fixings. Members of True-2-Life Ministries on Victor Street “adopted” the families for Thanksgiving, …

A bill that will create an unpaid “state oceanographer” position, sponsored by state Assemblyman Joe Danielsen (D-17), was recently signed into law. “Science ought to be at the forefront of public policy decisions regarding the oceans,” Danielsen said in a press release about the new law. “In addition to safeguarding the wellbeing of marine ecosystems – a worthy goal in …

Township Councilman Charles Onyejiaka successfully defended his position and two incumbents and a newcomer were elected to the Board of Education on Nov. 8. School board incumbents Nancy LaCorte and Christine Danielsen won re-election, and newcomer Ardaman Singh won the seat being vacated by board member Julia Presley, who did not seek re-election. In another race involving a township resident, …

The 2016 Somerset County Sheriff’s race will go down as the most expensive campaign for that office in the last 15 years. According to the latest contribution and expenditure reports filed with the state Election Law Enforcement Commission, the two candidates for sheriff – longtime Republican incumbent Frank Provenzano and his Democratic challenger, former township police Lt. Darrin Russo, a newcomer …