Jimmy Nunez, 31, was identified earlier this week by the Essex County Prosecutor’s office as one of 11 members of an alleged car-stealing ring, according to various news reports.

Tobias said Nunez was charged in the borough Thursday with three counts of auto theft, two counts of burglary, and one count of theft of movable property. Municipal Judge Richard Thompson set Nunez’s bail at $75,000 with no option to post just ten percent. Nunez was in Essex County Jail Thursday, Tobias said.

Other complaints are pending against Nunez by Rumson, Tobias said.

Detective Christopher Isherwood has been working with an Essex County Prosecutor’s Office Task Force set up to investigate an auto theft network since October of 2011, Tobias said.

Here’s what NorthJersey.com wrote about the alleged auto-theft ring earlier this week:

The arrests stem from Operation High-End, a long-term investigation conducted by the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office, the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, the Newark Police Department and the New Jersey State Police, involving high-end autos that were stolen from affluent communities from Bergen to Ocean Counties.In addition to the above agencies, the Jersey City and Millburn Police Departments provided assistance.

The investigation began when the Newark Police Department began recovering a number of luxury automobiles that had been stolen from various communities in New Jersey. The law enforcement agencies represented here today formed a task force.

Through hundreds of hours of surveillance, detectives determined that members of this organization would travel to affluent communities throughout northern New Jersey and would search for luxury automobiles. The thefts would occur during the early morning hours and most often, the vehicle owners had left the keys in the car. Most of the cars were then resold for a fraction of their value. Other vehicles were dismantled for parts. Several of the stolen vehicles were recovered during the course of the investigation and have been returned to their owners.

By JOHN T. WARD

A fire that appeared to start in mulch caused limited damaged to a Red Bank auto dealership Sunday morning.

Volunteer firefighters, responding to an alarm at Red Bank Nissan, on East Newman Springs Road, arrived shortly after 10 a.m. to find a portion of the western wall ablaze beneath metal siding panels, they said.

The fire appeared to have started in mulch that abutted the facade, allowing the flames to contact the structural wood underneath, firefighters said.

The blaze was quickly brought under control without any evident damage to the dealer’s cars, though the showroom filled with smoke.

By JOHN T. WARD

A 19-year-old Fair Haven woman home from college for Easter weekend died as a result of a pre-dawn accident on Harding Road in Little Silver last Friday, police said Monday.

Jillian Dinger, of Spruce Drive, died at Jersey Shore Medical Center in Neptune eight hours after being struck by a car driven by another Fair Haven resident at about 3:15 a.m., said police Chief Dan Shaffery.

Authorities are still piecing together the circumstances under which Dinger, a 2011 graduate of Rumson-Fair Haven Regional High, was found alone and severely injured near the center line of the road, opposite the entrance to the Alderbrook condo community, he said.

Shaffery said Dinger was struck by a 2007 Nissan Altima driven by Robert Post, 53, who called in the accident to police.

On arrival, police found Dinger lying just to the south of the road’s center line, which serves as the Fair Haven-Little Silver border.

Post’s vehicle had sustained damage to the front end on the driver’s side, Shaffery said.

The victim was wearing “all-dark clothing,” he said. No charges have been filed against Post, “and none are expected to be filed against him,” Shaffery said.

Dinger was medevaced by a helicopter that landed at nearby Red Bank Regional High and taken to the hospital, where she died at 11:14 a.m. Shaffery said.

Borough police and a team from the Monmouth County Serious Collision Analysis Response Team (SCART) are investigating, and are retracing Dinger’s steps and communications to determine as fully as possible her state of mind and destination at the time she was hit, Shaffery said.

Police have determined that she was last visiting a home on nearby Prospect Avenue in Little Silver, Shaffery said. The results of a toxicology test will not be available for two-to-four weeks, he said.

Dinger was a freshman at the State University of New York at Albany, where she was majoring in psychology, according to her obituary, which appeared Sunday in the Asbury Park Press. Shaffery said she had come home for the Easter weekend.

Dinger had worked at the Sands Beach Club in Sea Bright, according to her obituary.

A roadside memorial of lillies, balloons and candies was erected Sunday at the scene of the accident.

A measure to boost business development in downtown Red Bank has had its intended effect and should probably end this summer, Mayor Pasquale Menna tells redbankgreen.

The temporary ordinance repeal, adopted in August, 2010, has helped spark a burst of activity so strong that “we may have a parking deficiency again soon,” Menna said.

The moratorium relieves developers whose projects require variances for parking deficiencies, based on formulas in the town’s land-use laws, to pay hundreds of dollars per parking space into a dedicated parking improvement fund. In order to qualify for the waiver, they have to get their building permits within six months of variance approval, and obtain certificates of occupancy within one year.

The change was effective through December 31, 2011, and was later extended by the borough council to June 30 of this year.

Menna raised the prospect of allowing the law to sunset at the borough planning board meeting Monday night in the context of Char Steakhouse’s plan to overhaul the former home of Ashes Cigar Bar on Broad Street.

A move by the council to decisively end the moratorium “probably will be soon,” he told Char owner Matteo Ingrao. Afterward, Menna declined to be more specific.

The moratorium “has to be brought up before June,” Menna said.

But he said that vacant stores and office spaces are rapidly filling up, with the potential for a parking shortfall to hit the East Side lots if buildings such as the structure at the corner of Broad and Monmouth streets, which is vacant except for a street-level branch of the Valley National Bank, are ever leased.

“The third floor at the old Natelson’s building is completely occupied,” he said of the space above the Urban Outfitters store, “and the second floor will be done soon.”

Char, a two-story restaurant with some 150 seats, expects to employ 25 to 40 people, Ingrao said, and has just a couple of parking spaces on the Mechanic Street side, including one for handicapped users.

Menna said no tally has been made by borough officials of how much has been waived in fees under the moratorium.

Nancy Adams, executive director of Red Bank RiverCenter, was not immediately available for comment on the moratorium.

The council meets tonight at 6:30 p.m., but there’s no mention of the moratorium on the agenda. Here’s the agenda:RB agenda 020812

Here’s the moratorium ordinance: Ordinance 2010-36

By JOHN T. WARD

It’s “time expired” for racing to beat a $38 parking ticket in downtown Red Bank, officials said Wednesday night.

Say hello to “multi-space, revenue controlled” parking technology, complete with cellphone interactivity.

Fulfilling a pledge made by Mayor Pasquale Menna two years back, the borough council awarded a contract for a yet-to-be-determined number of pay stations that will, among other wonders, send visitors texts when they’re in danger of being ticketed and allow them to extend their stays from the comfort of a restaurant.

Oh, and for the town? A sweet spike in parking revenue, with an accompanying drop in enforcement and maintenance costs, says an executive at vendor Integrated Technical Systems of Wallingford, Connecticut.

After reviewing six bids, the council opted for Luke II machines, made by Digital Payment Technologies, which will cost the town about $12,000 each.

Borough officials said the expense would be borne by the town’s parking fund, holding more than $500,000, money collected over the years from new businesses that were required to dig deep when they couldn’t provide sufficient parking – a requirement that’s now in moratorium.

The pay kiosks will be rolled out as early as next spring in the parking lots at English Plaza, Maple Cove, Marine Park and White Street, said council president Art Murphy. “We’ll get a consensus” on how well they work before additional machines are purchased for metered streets and lots, he said.

The technology is the same used by the City of Asbury Park, which has about 100 of the kiosks, Joe Yorlano, director of sales at ITS, tells redbankgreen. Similar machines are used at the Little Silver train station, and a pilot program is underway in Long Branch, he said.

Red Bank, he said, opted for a pay-by-parking-space system. Each space will be numbered, and a visitor has to enter that number at the time of payment, which can be made with cash, credit card, smart card, or an online account with a third-party vendor.

There’s no need to return to your car to place a receipt on the dashboard, Yorlano said, because the record of the transaction is available wirelessly to the town’s parking enforcement arm.

The machine’s manufacturer boasted recently that parking revenue in Asbury Park soared 60 percent on the installation of the machines,and Yorlano says gains of 30 percent and more are common. One big component of that, he said, is the elimination of “piggybacking,” which now occurs when a paid spot is vacated and taken by another motorist.

“With the multispace system, everybody who parks, pays,” he said.

The system also allows towns to dramatically cut costs, he said. Enforcers no longer have to check individual meters. Instead, they have a digital readout showing which spaces are no longer paid for, and can ticket accordingly.

“There’s also a lot fewer machines,” he said. “In a 70-space lot, you might need just three or four installations,” reducing maintenance expenses.

And while the cost per unit is high compared to single-heads, “municipalities are turning to this concept because the payback analysis is usually in the range of nine months,” Yorlano said. Towns can even sell ads to run on the LCD displays, he said.

Red Bank RiverCenter executive director Nancy Adams said the downtown promotion agency’s member businesses are “thrilled that there are going to be more choices for shoppers, so they don’t have to run out of lunch or a meeting” to feed an expiring meter, and can instead extend their stays via cellphone text.

“It jump starts us into a new century,” said Menna, who recently signaled his intention to have a parking deck built at the White Street lot when he said he would appoint up to three experts in the field as advisors on January 1.

An official account of events was not immediately available, but the vehicle appeared to have struck a fire hydrant, which was knocked off a concrete pad despite being surrounded by steel columns.  (Click to enlarge)

[Update, 11 a.m, December 21: Red Bank police say they have a report of an accident at 5:12 a.m, but that it was handled by Shrewsbury PD. But Shrewsbury Police Chief John Wilson III says his department has no record of the accident.]

[Update to the update, 1:21 p.m.: Sergeant Michael Gallagher of the Shrewsbury PD tells redbankgreen that because of miscommunication, we were mistakenly informed that there was no record of this accident. In fact, he says, the Shrewsbury PD did respond and found a single-vehicle accident in which a 90-year-old Tinton Falls man was briefly trapped in his minivan, which had rolled after he swerved to avoid an animal in the road and struck the fire hydrant. The victim, whose identity was not immediately given, was extricated by Shrewsbury fire volunteers and transported to Riverview Medical Center with "very minor injuries," Gallagher said. No charges were filed and the matter is under investigation, he said.]

By JOHN T. WARD

After 20 years, Rich Bercaw has pulled down the bay doors for the last time at his Sunoco gasoline and service station on River Road in Fair Haven.

Unable to keep up with steep rent and what he described as steadily dropping demand for both fuel and repairs, Bercaw pink-slipped five employees and shut off the lights last Thursday, he tells redbankgreen.

“Sunoco will come in and board it up until they find someone to rent it,” he said, as he loaded equipment into a pickup truck Tuesday. And with a deeply discounted first-year’s rent, “eventually, they’ll get someone,” he said.

Bercaw, though, was finding it increasingly difficult to meet the monthly nut, even after Sunoco reduced his rent two years ago, to $10,000 a month, from $13,000.

“There’s no negotiating with them on rent,” he said.

Sunoco’s media relations office in Philadelphia did not respond to to request for comment Tuesday.

Bercaw, who traveled to the station daily from North Plainfield, in Somerset County, said the volume of gas sales slipped steadily after September 11, 2001, and the decline accelerated after the financial crisis hit in 2008.

And because of the state of the economy, “people only get their cars fixed if it’s absolutely necessary,” he said.

Bercaw also ran the Sunoco station on Broad Street in Shrewsbury for two years, closing it in 2002. “That business never took off,” he said.

Also having to pay into the settlement is the defunct Ashes Cigar Bar nightclub on Broad Street. A third Red Bank watering hole that was sued was spared from the judgment.

The newspaper reports that the case, heard in Superior Court in New Brunswick, involved the death of Ernesto Sta Maria of Old Bridge.

From the Press:

Sta Maria was killed in an accident on Sept. 14, 2007, on Route 35 North in Middletown. His vehicle was rear-ended by a vehicle driven by Christopher M. Brozyna, then 29 and living in Hazlet. Sta Maria was thrown from his sport-utility vehicle and died as a result of his injuries.

Brozyna, who was off duty and driving his personal vehicle at the time of the crash, was treated for minor injuries. A passenger in Brozyna’s car was uninjured. Brozyna’s blood-alcohol level was more than double the legal limit at the time of the crash, officials said. Brozyna, a trooper for 22 months at the time of the crash, pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide and drunken driving.

In February 2009, under a plea deal approved in advance by the victim’s family, Brozyna was sentenced to five years in state prison and ordered to serve 85 percent of it before he can be considered for parole. Under the deal, Brozyna, who already had been suspended from the State Police, had to forfeit his job as a state trooper, was barred for life from public employment in New Jersey and will have his driver’s license revoked for five years after his release from prison.

Chamas filed the lawsuit on April 18, 2008. It later was amended to include four taverns.

Sta Maria’s estate was awarded $3.375 million, attorney Peter Chamas told the Press, with 57 percent to be paid by Brozyna, 33 percent to be paid by the Dublin House and 10 percent by Ashes.

Exempted from the judgment was Fixx, formerly Chubby’s Waterside Café. The jury found the West Front Street club had not served Brozyna when he was visibly impaired, owner Michael Gilson tells redbankgreen.

Dublin House co-owner Eugene Devlin called the judgment “a travesty of justice,” and said his establishment was saddled with judgment because it was the only defendant with insurance. He spoke of suing Brozyna and his girlfriend for what he said was false testimony.

Devlin’s attorney, Terry Bolan of Shrewsbury, said he believed that Brozyna and his girlfriend lied at trial about the order of bars they had visited in order to in increase the possible payout to Sta Maria’s family, and that the jury had deduced that the Dublin House was the only defendant able to pay. But he said the two would not be sued.

Bolan said he is “supremely confident that this was a jury working backward, steering money to an innocent” victim.

Ashes went into receivership and was liquidated last year.

Hundreds of car lovers turned out for the 11th annual edition of an fall favorite: the Fair Haven Fire Department’s Autumn Car Show.

They found the firehouse yard bumper-to-bumper in beautifully designed examples of automotive art and engineering.