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>Ridgewood Fire Department will seek accreditation
Wednesday March 21, 2012, 11:52 AM
BY JOSEPH CRAMER
STAFF WRITER
The Ridgewood News
The Ridgewood Fire Department will be seeking accreditation in the coming year, a designation intended to increase organizational and procedural efficiency and which could provide discounted insurance for the village, officials said.
According to Fire Chief Jim Van Goor, only two other municipalities in New Jersey – Bloomfield and Summit – have accredited fire departments.
“We’re looking to be the third,” he said.
Accreditation is a process whereby a fire department reexamines its policies and procedures by using a set of criteria to gauge performance and efficiency. Guidelines are provided by an accreditation company. Officials said that with budgetary stresses mandating a stronger look at department efficiency across all village services, the time was right at this stage to pursue the designation.
https://www.northjersey.com/news/143653006_Ridgewood_Fire_Department_will_seek_accreditation.html
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U.S. drug scarcity puts lives in jeopardy
By Barbara Williams — The Record (Hackensack, N.J.)
HACKENSACK, N.J. (MCT) — Dan Schiavello shouldn’t be alive.
His doctors expected his Stage 4 cancer to kill him long ago. He’s survived because of a chemotherapy drug that has attacked the tumors in his body, shrinking most and even eliminating some.
But now, that drug is no longer being made.
He has been scrambling to find Doxil, the medication that has been his lifeline the last five years. He spends hours every day on the phone and on his computer searching for a dose and has traveled hundreds of miles for an infusion. He has found himself in a world where people are willing to put a price on his survival, like the pharmacist who offered to sell him a dose from a secret stockpile for $14,000 in cash.
https://www.morrisdailyherald.com/2012/03/20/u-s-drug-scarcity-puts-lives-in-jeopardy/a88v6yp/
> Ridgewood Teachers : Fair share of what?
Fair share of what? Is there some big money pool that we can all get a share of? I believe that they are looking for a bigger share of what I make. That is not a fair share, that is just a grab.
The union makes this mistake every time. When any regular person is up for evaluation – in is case it is a group evaluation – they are prepared with examples of how hard they have worked and how they contributed to the company’s goals. If an employee came in demanding their fair share, they would be shown the door. Union workers think that because they represent a large group they do not need to explain anything. No accomplishments, just show me the money.
>Ridgewood Teacher :Watch out what you wish for
Watch out what you wish for, general public! I am a teacher. You all keep saying that we should join the public sector if we are so unhappy. If we did, that would create a glut in the marketplace on jobs (an ever bigger one than there is now) and we’d be competing with YOU for your jobs. Want that? I don’t see any of you in the private sector beating down our doors to come into the trenches and teach today’s distracted youth.
I work hard at my job every day. NO, I am not complaining. I am proud and stating a fact. I am asked EVERY year to do more and more. Now I am liable to report each and every bullying instance I hear/see/hear tell of, etc. I can get sued if I don’t and something happens. More paperwork, more distraction from doing my job, which is to teach.
>NJ has mandated that teachers pay a greater share of healthcare premiums. But the annual increase is still FAR FAR below the actual increase in costs.
Information has been seriously miscommunicated and this needs to be corrected.
For over forty years, Ridgewood teachers have contributed towards health care costs. In June, a legal mandate was passed whereby public school employees were required to contribute additional money towards health care; a four-year phase-in was created. This year, the REA’s medical contribution to the BOE is $800,000the following year $1.4 million culminating in 2013-14 with medical contributions to the BOE reaching $2.1 million based on current premium costs. As health costs rise, so does the % of contribution. In three years, the Ridgewood BOE will have collected over $4 million in employee contributions. This money comes directly from teacher contributions and isn’t being culled from add’l school taxes. Teachers are asking for a fair contract based on a more equitable distribution of these BOE funds
How about if you REALLY correct the misinformation and tell the WHOLE story. What percentage of his/her health care premium does the individual teacher currently pay? What percentage does the teacher pay for family care? And what are the yearly increases in the percentage, based on the law?
I’ll let you fill in those percentages (forget the total $$ amount, it means nothing without context).
How much is the real COST of the premiums increasing this year? I’ve got that one — 20%. And that’s a typical annual increase.
What do you mean that in three years the BOE will have “collected” $4 million in employee contributions? Where do you think that money will be? Not sitting in the bank, no, it will have been spent each of those three years — every last penny of it plus MUCH MORE — on paying your premium costs. Where do you think the rest of the money to pay the FULL premium cost will have come from? Yes, as you put it, “culled from taxes.” Now can you see the problem?
You are making the mistake — as teachers’ union groupthink has done for generations — to think that any funds which the district has must be “distributed” equitably. When some aid comes in, or a savings is reached, the union’s immediate thought is “give some to the teachers.” That is no way to run a business.
You are correct, the state of NJ has mandated that teachers pay a greater share of healthcare premiums. But the annual increase is still FAR FAR below the actual increase in costs. With the state cap on the amount the district can raise taxes, the system simply cannot continue to stand. The deficit between costs and income can only come by cutting programs.
This a dynamic that must change.
>Readers Respond to teacher raising healthcare costs
Information has been seriously miscommunicated and this needs to be corrected.
For over forty years, Ridgewood teachers have contributed towards health care costs. In June, a legal mandate was passed whereby public school employees were required to contribute additional money towards health care; a four-year phase-in was created. This year, the REA’s medical contribution to the BOE is $800,000the following year $1.4 million culminating in 2013-14 with medical contributions to the BOE reaching $2.1 million based on current premium costs. As health costs rise, so does the % of contribution. In three years, the Ridgewood BOE will have collected over $4 million in employee contributions. This money comes directly from teacher contributions and isn’t being culled from add’l school taxes. Teachers are asking for a fair contract based on a more equitable distribution of these BOE funds
Reader …
…and still, teachers pay orders of magnitude less than private sector employees for health care.
Why don’t you provide some useful numbers, like the per teacher monthly contribution (prorated over a 12 month year) and allow the taxpayers to compare THAT number to the one that they pay in the private sector.
But that would not serve your needs since it would shed some light on how sweet of a deal the teachers have it compared to private sector employees.
You would prefer to be disingenuous and disrespectful to the taxpayers by “seriously miscommunicating” the comparative costs that teachers are paying for health care benefits. Rather than being grateful for having not only a comparatively very, very small health care contribution, but also in many cases a much, much more generous package of health care benefits, you would rather whine and moan and try to greedily and selfishly line your own pockets on the backs of the taxpayer.
You may think that you are very clever and are representing your union well, but in fact you are insulting the taxpayers and increasing opposition to the teacher’s position by exposing the teacher’s union’s greed and scorn for the taxpayer.
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>Aronsohn Calls for New Approach to Budget ,we have one question Paul where have you been for the last 3 years?
by Paul Aronsohn on Mar 19, 2012 • 12:00 am
Ridgewood — Councilman Paul Aronsohn called today for a new approach to the Village’s municipal budget — one that starts from a 0% tax increase and gives residents a greater voice in the process.
“We need to get this right,” Aronsohn explained. ”We need to end business as usual.”
Starting from a 0% Tax Increase
Noting that the Council recently began its consideration of the 2012 municipal budget by working off of a document produced by the Village Manager — one that proposes a 7.6 percent tax increase as a starting point — Aronsohn said that the Council had it “backwards.”
“We have got this backwards,” he claimed. “Rather than assuming a large tax increase and then trying to whittle it down, we should start with budget proposals that assume no tax increase whatsoever.”
“We should explore different ways of absorbing storm-related and other extraordinary costs into that draft zero-growth budget. By doing so, we will get a much better sense of the tradeoffs and have a much better chance of keeping down the residents’ tax burden.”
https://www.paularonsohn.com/press_releases/aronsohn-calls-for-new-approach-to-budget
> Ridgewood Teachers : “They’re just asking for their fair share.”
That is a platitude. You must say specifically what it is you think is unfair and then maybe a real discussion can start.
Educated, professional people with good salaries under the protection of a union, guaranteed job security, nearly incomparable benefit plans and more time off than any of us sounds like the unfair part to all the other people…
The union must appreciate that sentiment among the tax base when the word “fair” is being thrown around – especially in this economy. Without any acknowledgment it can’t be a real negotiation. It doesn’t help the teachers’ argument and drives away the centrists and those genuinely do want what’s best for them, i.e. a fair resolution to this dispute. However, “the best” this year can’t possibly be compared with “the best” of better economic times
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POSTMAN: AYERS FAMILY PUT ‘FOREIGNER’ OBAMA THROUGH SCHOOL
Claims he met young Barack who boasted he’d someday be president
CHICAGO – Did the parents of former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers help finance Barack Obama’s Harvard education?
Did Ayers’ mother believe Obama was a foreign student?
And was the young Obama convinced at the time – long before he even entered politics – that he was going to become president of the United States?
A retired U.S. Postal Service carrier who delivered mail to Tom and Mary Ayers in a Chicago suburb in the late 1980s and early 1990s and claims to have met Obama in front of the Ayers home emphatically says yes to all three questions.
https://www.wnd.com/2012/03/postman-ayers-family-put-foreigner-obama-through-school/
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Obama’s tax hikes threaten a new US recession
By Martin Feldstein
The recent payroll gains and the declining unemployment rate in the United States have raised hopes that the economy will now start growing faster than the tepid 1.7 per cent rate of last year. Optimists are expecting growth rates as high as three per cent for this year and next.
I hope they are correct. The recession that began in December 2007 was deep and painful and the recovery that began in June 2009 has been slow and grinding in spite of unprecedented fiscal outlays and an even larger monetary stimulus. House prices have continued to fall and housing construction remains dormant because of the Obama administration’s failure to reduce the large number of homeowners whose mortgage debt exceeds the value of their homes. Business investment has been depressed by the anti-business rhetoric and policies of Mr Obama’s government.
