Essex County, New Jersey

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Overview

Essex County is the second most densely populated county in the state, after Hudson County. Newark, with a population density of 11,400 people/square mile, is the largest municipality in the county both in terms of area (24.14 square miles) and population (280,000). At the opposite end, Caldwell is the smallest in area (1.2 square miles) and Roseland is smallest in population (5,298); however even these small towns have population densities (6,396 people/square mile and 1,464 people/square mile, respectively) that rival many big cities, and are well above the state's average, which is the highest in the nation.

Essex County also has extreme disparities in terms of income levels. From the time of the race riots in the late 1960s until the mid-1990s, Newark was reviled for its high crime, poverty, and unemployment rates, along with low rates of educational attainment. Things have improved though as, overall crime has decreased by over 60% since 1997.^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]} The west and southwest Essex communities of Millburn, North Caldwell, and Essex Fells are three of the 100 wealthiest towns in the United States.^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]}

While many residents commute to New York City, Organon, Anheuser-Busch, Automatic Data Processing, Inc., CIT Group, Hoffmann-LaRoche, Grainger, Dun & Bradstreet and Prudential have large facilities in Essex County or are headquartered there, and there are numerous factories and large office parks scattered throughout.

Essex County was one of the quickest counties in America to become fully urbanized^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]} and was the first county in the country to create a county park system, to ensure that it did not lose all its land to development.^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]}

The various towns of the county, especially Newark, the Oranges, and the Caldwells can be seen in every episode of the HBO mob drama The Sopranos, which is set in North Caldwell.

The county is also home to Newark Liberty International Airport and Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal.

Government

As of 2006, Essex County's Freeholders are:

• Freeholder President Johnny Jones
• Freeholder Vice President Patricia Sebold
• Freeholder-At-Large Blonnie R. Watson
• Freeholder-At-Large Donald M. Payne, Jr.
• Freeholder District 1 Samuel Gonzalez
• Freeholder District 2 D. Bilal Beasley
• Freeholder District 3 Carol Y. Clark
• Freeholder District 4 Linda Lordi Cavanaugh
• Freeholder District 5 Ralph R. Caputo

Seccession?

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Essex County also has the highest property taxes in the state of New Jersey, which is the state with the overall highest level of property taxes in the nation. This has been an issue of contention for some time between the county's more conservative, upper-class west and its Democratically controlled, lower-income east.

In 2003, the towns of Millburn, Roseland, and Montclair had all voted to secede from Essex County if something was not changed about the towns' taxation. In 2004, the towns of Verona and Cedar Grove followed suit, with the secession bill passing overwhelmingly. However, people in favor and opposed to the secession alike stated that the bills were mostly symbolic, as it would take a lot of work for the towns to actually secede from Essex County. Some critics even claimed that the desire to secede was inspired by racism (due to the fact that Newark and surrounding cities are mostly black, and West Essex's towns are mostly white).

If they were to form their own new county, "West Essex County," they would have to have support from several of the county's towns because what would remain Essex County and what would become West Essex County would each need contiguous borders. There was also talk that the towns who wished to secede might choose to become part of Morris County to their west, Passaic County to their north, or Union County to their south. But similarly there would be difficulties if the towns could not all agree on contiguous borders and coordinate the secession with their new county's government.

The issue of secession was mainly forgotten for a while until in 2005, representatives from the nineteen suburban Essex towns of Caldwell, West Caldwell, North Caldwell, Fairfield, Essex Fells, Roseland, Livingston, Maplewood, Millburn, Cedar Grove, Verona, West Orange, South Orange, Orange, Montclair, Glen Ridge, Nutley, Bloomfield, and Belleville decided to get together and form a committee. They began to discuss a way that they could potentially all agree to either fight the Essex County government to allow them lower tax rates, or to coordinate a breakaway from the cities of Newark, East Orange, and Irvington, which would alone remain as Essex County.

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Geography

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