Amazingly friendly Ridgewood deer…just hanging around this afternoon! photo by Village of Ridgewood Mayor Susan Knudsen
Mark Your Calendar:
VILLAGE COUNCIL WORK SESSION – Wednesday, March 01, 2017, 7:30PM
MEET THE MAYOR – MARCH 4, 2017 – 9:30 A.M. TO 11:30 A.M
Caucus Room – Village Hall 4TH floor – Please call the Village Clerk’s Officet 201-670-5500 ext. 206 to make an appointment or just stop by… those with an appointment will be seen first at time of the prescheduled appointment.
VOLUNTEER FAIR FOR 55+ – SUNDAY, MARCH 5TH
For those age 55+, let us help you redefine your free time and connect with just the right volunteer opportunity to match your skills, interests and availability. Please stop by our Volunteer Fair on Sunday, March 5 from 2-4pm in the Library’s Auditorium and meet representatives from many organizations. A great chance to sign up or explore some options. We hope to see you there. Sponsored by the Ridgewood Library and Age Friendly Ridgewood
Ridgewood NJ, The now infamous letter to the editor from Kira Semler required 2 corrections.The Semler letter to the editor of the Ridgewood news caused a furor on social media at the time. Initially, the letter suggested among other things that the former “breath of fresh air ” Village manager was fired when in fact she resigned.The misinformation in the letter was later edited out by the Ridgewood News but not before the damage was done.
The Ridgewood New has now for a second time corrected the letter, the “clarification ” came this past week just as the social media firestorm was dying down. The Ridgewood reaffirmed critics of its editorial policy that the former Village manager did in fact resign on September 6th and she was relieved of her duties on the very same day.
As previously reported the staff of the Ridgewood blog had noticed the letter but felt it was what we call a “put up job” where a local special interest, usually a supporter of the former mayor and his schemes puts up a relative or friend to promote garagezilla and to attack the current council.
Ridgewood provides the perfect recipe of demographics for all the excessive spending, nepotism, well-intentioned (but unsustainable) projects, and varying degrees of opportunistic action. These perfect conditions are:
1. A relatively wealthy community.
2. A community that rotates (many move here just to put their kids through school and then move on).
3. A largely Democrat population. This isn’t meant as a liberal bash, but just that liberals are far more likely to naively support program after program. The political thieves know this.
4. Ridgewood’s population is mostly un-focused on local matters due to careers and social lives.
Updated February 24, 2017
Posted February 24, 2017
By Bobby Olivier | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
For a huge swath of New Jerseyans, work means commuting, and commuting means public transportation. NJ Transit and the PATH host more than 700,000 daily riders between bus and rail.
And unfortunately, not every New Jersey commuter is a perfectly polite passenger. In fact, some seem put on this earth — or train car — just to devolve our daily routines into maddening frustration and rage.
Here are 12 of the most loathsome types of New Jersey commuters, from the phone talkers to the eaters to the ones who WON’T. STOP. STARING at you. Commuting is enough of a pain without these human nightmares fooling with our sanity.
In the most shocking mix-up in Oscars history, Moonlight won best picture at the Academy Awards — but only after presenter Faye Dunaway announced La La Land as the winner, setting off mass confusion inside the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.
“I want to tell you what happened,” co-presenter Warren Beatty explained after the mix-up was revealed. “I opened the envelope, and it said ‘Emma Stone, La La Land.’ That’s why I took such a long look at Faye and at you. I wasn’t trying to be funny.”
“Well, I don’t know what happened. I blame myself for this,” Kimmel joked after the moment. “Let’s remember, it’s just an awards show. I mean, we hate to see people disappointed, but the good news is we got to see some extra speeches. We have some great movies. I knew I would screw this show up, I really did. Thank you for watching. I’m back to work tomorrow night on my regular show. I promise I’ll never come back. Good night!”
Tue, February 28, 2017
Time: 4:00 PM – 4:45 PM
Location: Evolved Medicine, 1250 E. Ridgewood Ave., Ridgewood, NJ 07450
Ridgewood NJ, NEW Mindfulness Meditation Class for Teens & Young Adults on next Tuesday Feb 28th from 4:00–4:45pm. I am offering the class at Evolved Medicine’s offices in Ridgewood located at 1250 E. Ridgewood Ave. Evolved Medicine is one of the only functional medicine practices in the country to focus on adolescents & young adults and Dr. Stephanie Strozuk is a big advocate of meditation for her clients, so it is naturally a great fit! The class will be inclusive and suitable for everyone, especially youthful beginners in high school, college, or early adulthood.
Please pass this along to any teens or young adults in your life (or their parents)! You can explain that mindfulness meditation is simply “exercise for the mind.” A few of the benefits include being more relaxed, less stressed, and more mindfulness around eating habits, emotions, and personal environments at school or home.
For any questions or to RSVP, you can reach me at [email protected] or by phone 201-657-4420.
Ridgewood NJ, Local Author, YOOJIN GRACE WUERTZ, will sign her new book: Everything Belongs to Us ($27.00). Books available: February 28th.
Yoojin Grace Wuertz
Sunday, March 5th @ 2:00pm
Local Author, Yoojin Grace Wuertz will be here to sign her new book:
Everything Belongs to Us
Two young women of vastly different means each struggle to find her own way during the darkest hours of South Korea’s “economic miracle” in a striking debut novel for readers of Anthony Marra and Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie. Seoul, 1978. At South Korea’s top university, the nation’s best and brightest compete to join the professional elite of an authoritarian regime. Success could lead to a life of rarefied privilege and wealth; failure means being left irrevocably behind.For childhood friends Jisun and Namin, the stakes couldn’t be more different. Jisun, the daughter of a powerful business mogul, grew up on a mountainside estate with lush gardens and a dedicated chauffeur. Namin’s parents run a tented food cart from dawn to curfew; her sister works in a shoe factory. Now Jisun wants as little to do with her father’s world as possible, abandoning her schoolwork in favor of the underground activist movement, while Namin studies tirelessly in the service of one goal: to launch herself and her family out of poverty.But everything changes when Jisun and Namin meet an ambitious, charming student named Sunam, whose need to please his family has led him to a prestigious club: the Circle. Under the influence of his mentor, Juno, a manipulative social climber, Sunam becomes entangled with both women, as they all make choices that will change their lives forever.In this sweeping yet intimate debut, Yoojin Grace Wuertz details four intertwining lives that are rife with turmoil and desire, private anxieties and public betrayals, dashed hopes and broken dreams—while a nation moves toward prosperity at any cost.
Bookends is a legendary New Jersey Landmark! We are known for our incredible author events and have hosted well over
1,000 authors in the past 15 years!
Can’t make a signing? We take phone orders for signed copies.
Call now at 201-445-0726!
All books MUST be purchased from BOOKENDS for any of our events and a valid Bookends receipt must be presented for entry.
Appearing authors will only autograph books purchased at Bookends and must have valid Bookends Receipt.
Availability & pricing for all autographed books subject to change.
First In Line Certificate use is the the discretion of Bookends. Blackout dates may apply.
Bookends cannot guarantee that the books that are Autographed will always be First Printings.
Autographed books purchased at Bookends are non-returnable.
While we try to ensure that all customers coming to Bookends’ signings will meet authors and get their books signed, we cannot guarantee that all attendees will meet the author or that all books will be signed. We cannot control inclement weather, author travel schedules or authors who leave prematurely.
Bookends, 211 E. Ridgewood Avenue, Ridgewood, NJ 07450 201-445-0726
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, They have been on the leading edge of nearly everything since the first of them were born in mid-1946.
Now the earliest baby boomers are on the verge of another big moment – and it’s one that many of them might prefer to avoid. This year, the first baby boomers began turning 70½, which means by law they are required to begin making withdrawals from their 401(k) and IRA accounts – whether they want to or not.
“Basically, the reason for these mandatory withdrawals is that Uncle Sam wants his tax money,” says Alexander Joyce, president and CEO of ReJoyce Financial (www.ReJoyceFinancial.com).
“These are tax-deferred accounts, so people are able to avoid paying taxes on the income they contribute to them. But that’s true only for awhile. The money is taxed when you withdraw it. And when you turn 70½, even if you would like all the money to stay where it is, you have no choice but to begin taking money out of it.”
The first year, about 3.65 percent has to be withdrawn from the tax-deferred retirement accounts. Each year after that the withdrawal percentage increases based on an IRS formula.
Fail to withdraw the money – or withdraw too little – and you face a hefty penalty.
But there are strategies retirees can use to avoid the tax, Joyce says. He usually recommends his clients consider moving the money to an asset-based long-term healthcare program.
Some of the advantages of doing that include:
• Tax avoidance. There is no tax penalty to move the money from the retirement account to the asset-based long-term healthcare account. • Multiple benefits. The program is an interest-bearing account that provides income if needed, liquidity if needed, and covers long-term healthcare if needed. • Beneficiaries aren’t left out. With traditional long-term healthcare insurance, any unused money goes to the insurance company when the person dies. There is no benefit for beneficiaries. With asset-based long-term healthcare, any excess money goes to the beneficiaries. “Your family will get it, not the insurance company,” Joyce says.
Joyce says he began recommending the asset-based long-term healthcare to his clients about three years ago as it became clear that push was going to come to shove with those required-minimum withdrawals.
“I foresaw the problems that they were going to have with their retirement accounts when they turned 70½,” he says. “Some people plan to take out money anyway to live on, but many others have no interest in taking any distribution from their accounts.”
The baby boom that began in mid-1946 continued until mid-1964, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Today, there are roughly 75 million baby boomers in the U.S., which means plenty of people will be reaching the age 70½ over the next couple of decades.
“Anyone with a 401(k) or an IRA needs to know the rules and what they will be facing,” Joyce says. “I’d also recommend that they start talking to their financial professional about what their options might be so they and their families are able to keep as much of their money as possible.”
About Alexander Joyce
Alexander Joyce is president and CEO of ReJoyce Financial LLC (www.ReJoyceFinancial.com). He’s also a Safe Money and Retirement Income Planning specialist, and has hosted radio shows, such as “The Safe Money and Income Radio Show” and “The Ask Mr. Annuity Radio Show.” Joyce is a licensed professional in Indiana and specializes in working with people who are near retirement or who are already retired, with wealth management, income planning, and asset protection strategies.
Ridgewood NJ, There was a time when nothing was more sacred than going to a baseball game, getting a hot dog and keeping score in the stands. Children from past generations would enter the gates at their favorite baseball stadium and immediately ask their parents to get a scorecard and pencil, so that they could track every play. In the days before YouTube, Wikipedia and baseball reference sites, keeping score was one of the only ways to look back on games and remember what happened – batter to batter.
As technology advanced the art of scorekeeping faded from popular use, and now many fans don’t know what a backwards “K”, “HPB” or a “6-4-3 DP” means. To help bring scorekeeping back to the 21st Century, GameChanger has launched apps for iOS and Android. GameChanger, available for free, is the leading digital scorekeeping app that also helps amateur baseball and softball teams stay organized and informed.
GameChanger features an easy-to-use tutorial that guides even the most inexperienced users step-by-step and pitch-by-pitch. With one click, users simply have to select the virtual field on the screen and a set of dropdown menus will allow them to input the play. The app keeps track of all the action, so that users can review the game anytime, anywhere. In-game stats include everything from pitch counts to first-pitch strike percentage.
Ridgewood NJ, according to Rasmussen Reports most Americans favor screening out immigrants to this country who don’t share our values or a belief in our basic constitutional freedoms.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 61% of American Adults favor a proposal to keep out “those who do not support the U.S. Constitution or who would place violent ideologies over American law. In addition, the United States would not admit those who engage in acts of bigotry or hatred for reasons of religion, race, gender or sexual orientation.” Just 19% oppose such a ban, while 21% are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
This is the wording President Trump used in his initial executive order temporarily freezing refugees into this country and visas for those from seven Middle Eastern and African countries until proper vetting procedures to screen out potential terrorists are in place. The question, however, did not identify Trump as the source of the proposal.
Last August when he first proposed it, 59% of voters supported candidate Trump’s temporary ban on immigration into the United States from “the most dangerous and volatile regions of the world that have a history of exporting terrorism” until the federal government improves its screening procedures. Thirty-two percent (32%) were opposed.
Fifty-eight percent (58%) of Americans believe that criminals should be prosecuted more severely if it can be proven that their crime was motived by the victim’s race, color, religion, national origin or sexual orientation. A new high, this finding had previously been in the mid- to upper 40s in surveys since 2009. Twenty-eight percent (28%) still disagree, while 14% are undecided.
Sizable majorities in most demographic groups favor both the immigration litmus test and so-called hate crime prosecutions.
In an interesting side note Democrats, are less supportive of restricting immigrants with hateful ideologies than they are of prosecuting Americans for hate crimes. Republicans, on the other hand, view restrictions on newcomers to this country more favorably than prosecution of existing Americans.
Not surprising given the recent political rhetoric only 49% of Democrats favor keeping out of the country those who do not support the Constitution or who in engage in acts of bigotry or hatred for reasons of religion, race, gender or sexual orientation. But 65% of Democrats support prosecuting criminals more severely if it can be proven that their crime was motivated by the victim’s race, color, religion, nation origin or sexual orientation.
Conversely, 78% of Republicans favor the constitutional/hate crime litmus test for immigrants, but only 57% support prosecutions based on the same standards.
Just over half of Americans not affiliated with either major party favor both proposals. But 33% of unaffiliateds oppose hate crime prosecutions, compared to just 16% who are against the restrictions on new immigrants.
In the coming-of-age movie “Garden State,” Zach Braff’s character Andrew Largeman bemoans the disorienting feeling of lacking a home:
“You’ll see one day when you move out…You feel like you can never get it back. It’s like you feel homesick for a place that doesn’t even exist. Maybe it’s like this rite of passage…You won’t ever have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself.”
That feeling of home, of belonging, is at the heart of Airbnb’s mission. We seek to build a world in which people can belong anywhere — in over 34,000 big cities and small towns in 192 countries worldwide.
It is a sentiment rooted in the warm embrace of our host community — including 6,100 hosts right here in New Jersey who welcomed nearly 260,000 guests in 2016, double the number from 2015. These guests are coming from across the country and around the world, with 24 percent from outside North America.
The vast majority of Garden State hosts are middle class New Jerseyans who share their homes occasionally to pay for their mortgage, medicine, and student loans, or save money for retirement or a rainy day. In fact, last year, the typical host shared their home for fewer than 4 days a month, bringing in $6,200 to help make ends meet.
Seaside Heights NJ, over 6,884 plunged into the Atlantic Ocean on Saturday for the 24th for the annual Special Olympics Polar Bear Plunge in Seaside Heights.
Many groups raised money from Newark Firefighters, the fraternal orders like the Polar Bear Plunge and Hiram on Ice team.
The water temperatures were reported at 44 degrees and the temperature around 54 degrees, according to organizers, which was much warmer than in years past. Around 1 p.m. the action started with the plunge, thousands crowded the beach dressed as Vikings, polar bears and even Santa Claus.
The annual event raises money for the New Jersey Special Olympics and organizers say they expect to raise more than $1.875 million this year.
By Erin Petenko | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on February 25, 2017 at 7:15 AM
In New Jersey, something beat both Trump and Clinton in the 2016 election: voter apathy.
Nearly 2.2 million New Jersey residents were eligible to vote but didn’t turn out, edging out the 2.1 million votes for Hillary Clinton, according to data from the New Jersey Division of Elections and the United States Elections Project.
Ridgewood is a service orientated community mainly for young families whom reap those benefits more than the empty nesters and matured singles.
The scale is tipped in favor towards young families who buy in for the school system, expect and want more. It is orientated to sports groups, leisure activity programs, young mixers, February recess, Spring recess, etc. They move out after the youngest graduates. The matured residents are basically left in the dust except to pay ever increasing school and property taxes.
There is more use of town services by young families vs. empty nesters as far as double the number of garbage cans of waste, recycleables, and water usage with washers running daily by the young families, the library. The matured residents usage is much less.
For decades, the matured residents were able to age in place in their life long homes since the taxes held fairly steady, with gradual increases over time. But, the housing boom of the 21st C. changed all that, and taxes spiraled out of control. Matured residents thought they would be able to continue to stay living comfortably and safely right in the neighborhood they always loved and not have to “downsize”. For many now its a question of should they sell and move together now, before one dies and then only one is left to make that decision later. These things and more, is not a balanced community.
By Marisa Iati | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on February 24, 2017 at 10:58 AM, updated February 24, 2017 at 11:17 AM
ELIZABETH — The mayor of Elizabeth, where almost half the population is foreign-born, said he won’t give the municipality a “sanctuary city” designation despite concerns of immigration advocates.
Mayor J. Christian Bollwage said this week he believes the “sanctuary” phrasing would put a target on the back of unauthorized immigrants.
“If you become a ‘sanctuary city,’ you’re kind of encouraging the national officials (and saying), ‘Come look at us. Here’s where the people are,'” he said.
The term “sanctuary city” has no official definition under U.S. law, but it usually means local police will decline to help the federal government find and detain unauthorized immigrants.
