JULY 30, 2015, 7:05 PM LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, JULY 30, 2015, 7:46 PM
BY ABBOTT KOLOFF
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
MAHWAH — Police have arrested one of two men allegedly involved in the theft of a bag of about $150,000 in cash that had been accidentally left on a curb this week and are looking for the other suspect, saying in a news release on Thursday that the pair already spent some of the money, using cash to purchase an SUV.
Alton Harvey
Alton Harvey, 42, of Hillside was arrested Wednesday afternoon as police conducted surveillance in Irvington of the white van allegedly used by the suspects on the day of the theft and a Chevrolet Tahoe that had been purchased with money from the bag, Police Chief James Batelli said Thursday. Police are also looking for Jamar A. Bludson, 35, of Newark, he said.
Video surveillance cameras recorded the passenger of a white van removing the bag from the lawn, Mahwah Police Chief James Batelli said.
Police said that Harvey drove the van and that Bludson, the passenger, was the person seen on video surveillance picking up the satchel of money from the curb. The bag had been left there accidentally by two workers for an ATM company located on Industrial Avenue. Police have not identified the company for security reasons and company officials have not responded to messages seeking comment.
JULY 30, 2015 LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, JULY 30, 2015, 11:07 AM
BY MATTHEW SCHNEIDER
STAFF WRITER |
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
Ridgewood will have a new maintenance company serving its schools this upcoming year.
Aramark, a food service, facilities and clothing provider, will be taking on the role in 2015-2016, providing services to the district.
“Thank you for allowing us to serve this community,” said Patrick Gallagher, New Jersey district manager for Aramark, at last week’s Board of Education meeting. “We’re very excited about this opportunity.”
“We’re committed to work with problems as they arise, with the goal of service improvement and support for the district, district’s administration and goals,” said Joseph Aidala, general manager of Aramark Education.
The company, founded in 1959, has served schools, sports facilities and healthcare centers.
“Our on-site management team is active throughout the district and is interacting with our employees and the district stakeholders,” Aidala said. “Our sites are currently on a summer cleaning program for the school opening.”
For the summer cleaning, Aramark not only makes sure everything is neat, but also examines everything in the classrooms and offices, ensuring all is in working order, company officials said.
The classified emails stored on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private server contained information from five U.S. intelligence agencies and included material related to the fatal 2012 Benghazi attacks, McClatchy has learned.
Of the five classified emails, the one known to be connected to Benghazi was among 296 emails made public in May by the State Department. Intelligence community officials have determined it was improperly released.
Revelations about the emails have put Clinton in the crosshairs of a broadening inquiry into whether she or her aides mishandled classified information when she used a private server set up at her New York home to conduct official State Department business.
While campaigning for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, Clinton has repeatedly denied she ever sent or received classified information. Two inspectors general have indicated that five emails they have reviewed were not marked classified at the time they were stored on her private server but that the contents were in fact “secret.”
The email issue, however, has distracted from Clinton’s campaign for days and already has hurt her in public opinion polls. Besieged with questions, she has found herself caught in a murky dispute between State Department and intelligence officials over whether emails on her server were classified.
JULY 31, 2015 LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, JULY 31, 2015, 12:31 AM
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
Wealth shouldn’t determine future of community
To the Editor:
The litigation with Valley Hospital over its $780 million expansion plan is in the news again. I’m having a lot of trouble trying to reconcile Valley’s position with my understanding of what democracy is all about. I thought the people in the village, through elected officials, determine the nature of the village. We have established a master plan that presumably gives guidelines of a general nature about the village, such as defining ourselves as a residential community as opposed to, say, a home for heavy industry like the oil refineries that we see from the NJ Turnpike. We also have zoning specifying the maximum height of buildings, etc. All these plans and regulations were established by officials elected by the citizens of Ridgewood.
Now along comes Valley who seems to be saying: “Your master plan and zoning regulations are restricting our expansionary vision. Change your regulations!” Valley has been here for a long time, and it certainly knew our regulations when it decided to build and operate in Ridgewood, but now it has decided it wants to change the regulations established by the citizens of Ridgewood. Hmm. I know a number of people who have settled in Ridgewood because they like the community as it is, its ambiance, its schools, its zoning and other regulations. If we now give in to Valley, have we not abandoned an implicit trust?
The Valley litigation says to me democracy is not about the majority of citizens deciding on our regulations. No, instead it says to me it’s about wealth deciding the fate of the community. Valley, with its $780 million allocated for expansion (where did a non-profit, suburban hospital get $780 million anyway?), can out-litigate the Village of Ridgewood simply because the village doesn’t have Valley’s budget of discretionary funds. This is democracy?
JULY 31, 2015 LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, JULY 31, 2015, 12:31 AM
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
Who will benefit from high-density housing plans?
To the Editor:
My family moved to Ridgewood in the early 1950s, living first on Lincoln Avenue then buying our family home in 1957. I was born here and went through the public schools, for which my father worked most of his adult life. So if anyone has seen “change” in this town, I have.
Some change has been for the better; for instance, the ethnic and racial mix is a bit more diverse. Some has not. While superficially we are more varied, with a wider range of skin tones and ancestry than in my youth, Ridgewood is increasingly homogenized economically. Growing up, I knew families from all socioeconomic levels. Now, blue-collar and other regular working folks — people who made things — are crowded out, and only investment bankers, hedge fund managers, and others who “make” only money dominate. With that comes a certain mindset, one which, to borrow Oscar Wilde’s quip, knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Of that group, some may have come for good schools or even because they like it here. Others may have moved here for the cachet of a “golden zip code” or snob appeal, or as a rung on the ladder toward someplace more exclusive, say Alpine or Short Hills, or with the hope of making some money in a town where housing values have held steady even in downturns, due to the precise thing that high-density housing would destroy, namely, Ridgewood’s small-town ambiance.
It’s no mystery why the advocates of high-density housing would want it: this being Ridgewood, it will be high-priced, and there will be lots of money to be made in the short run. Unfortunately, when Ridgewood loses the character that made it desirable in the first place and becomes just Fort Lee with a longer commute, values will drop; but by that time, they will have pocketed their profits and have no reason to care.
To discuss in detail all the reasons high-density housing is wrong for Ridgewood would expand this letter to un-publishable length. I will simply end by quoting two Latin maxims: “cui bono?” (Who benefits?) and “res ipsa loquitur” (the thing speaks for itself).
JULY 31, 2015 LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, JULY 31, 2015, 12:31 AM
BY MATTHEW SCHNEIDER
STAFF WRITER |
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
Despite the start of the school year rapidly approaching, the Board of Education and Ridgewood Education Association (REA) have been unable to agree on a new contract.
The current contract, which began on July 1, 2012, expired at the end of June.
Mike Yannone, president of the REA, confirmed this week that the organization’s members are working without a new contract. The REA represents 550 teachers, secretaries and counselors in the Ridgewood school district.
“When our contract expires, we continue to work under the terms of the old contract,” Yannone said. “We will honor the contract, and the kids will be taught.”
However, the optimal result is for an agreement to be hammered out as quickly as possible.
“I would love to be able to talk to the other side,” Yannone said, adding that he understands that setting up a meeting can be difficult over the summer.
The main sticking point of the negotiations is a dispute over health insurance premium contributions.
Ridgewood NJ, A police investigation of reported illegal dumping at the Village’s Compost Facility on Lakeview Drive is continuing according to several sources of The Ridgewood Blog. It is reported that a detective from the Ridgewood Police Department conducted additional interviews with Village employees during the past week.
The investigation is focused on determining when and how an as yet undetermined number of concrete blocks were dumped at the facility, and if any Village employee(s) had knowledge of the dumping prior to their recent discovery. Additional illegally dumped material is said to have been unearthed within the past several days.
Although previous reports received by The Ridgewood Blog indicated that a NJDEP inspector had uncovered the dumped material, no notice of such action currently appears on the NJDEP Enforcement & Compliance Division’s web page.
Posted by Alexander Hendrie on Thursday, July 30th, 2015, 7:15 AM
New documentation released by the House Oversight Committee this week again raises questions on how Lois Lerner’s hard drive was physically damaged and whether there was some kind of deliberate act to destroy data on it.
The House Oversight Committee report cites an officially transcribed interview with John Minsek, senior investigative analyst with the IRS Criminal Investigations (CI) unit. Minsek examined the Lerner hard drive in 2011. In the transcribed interview, he notes Lerner’s hard drive contained “well-defined scoring creating a concentric circle in the proximity of the center of the disk.” The Oversight Committee report states:
“Using the CI unit’s digital forensic facilities, Minsek opened the hard drive and conducted additional tests. Once he opened the hard drive, Minsek noticed “well-defined scoring creating a concentric circle in the proximity of the center of the disk.”
So how did the scoring get there?
Last month, testimony from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) revealed that Lois Lerner’s hard drive had “scoring on the top platter of the drive.” The testimony also noted that the IRS technician that inspected the hard drive believed that additional steps could have been taken to recover data, although this did not occur and the hard drive was later destroyed by an industrial strength AMERI-SHRED AMS-750 HD shredder.
Given these facts, it is logical to question how the “scoring” occurred and whether there was foul play involved. Here it what is known thus far:
According to TIGTA testimony submitted to the Oversight Committee on June 25, 2014, Lerner’s laptop stopped communicating with the IRS server on Saturday June 11, 2011, between 5:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.
According to the same testimony,the laptop was likely physically located in Lerner’s office the moment it stopped communicating with the server:
“Based on consistent network reporting for more than a week, the laptop computer was likely located in Ms. Lerner’s office.”
On Monday June 13, 2011, Lerner reported the laptop inoperable.
Lerner’s laptop was initially serviced by an IRS IT staff technician and a Hewlett-Packard contractor. Of note, the HP contractor thought the hard drive crashed due to a physical impact. According to the TIGTA testimony:
“When asked about the possible cause of the hard drive failure, the HP technician opined that heat-related failures are not seen often, and based on the information provided to him, the hard drive more than likely crashed due to an impact of some sort. However, because the HP technician did not examine the hard drive as part of his work on the laptop, it could not be determined why it crashed.”
While engaging in the mundane task of gathering financial statements for a “secure retirement” meeting with my husband’s and my adviser, this Baby Boomer stumbled upon documented proof that our nation does not have the guts to confront one of its most serious economic problems. The realization came when I pulled from my files a document statement innocently titled, “Your Social Security Statement.” At first glance, the statement did not appear menacing.
I was told I could expect to receive a benefit of “about $2,136 a month” upon reaching age 70 — which certainly seems like good news. But immediately I thought of a parallel of President Obama’s infamous Obamacare promise: “If you like your Social Security, you can keep your Social Security.” Then, as if on cue, I saw an asterisk with the following message: The law governing benefit amounts may change because, by 2033, the payroll taxes collected will be enough to pay only about 77 percent of scheduled benefits. My full form:
“Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably,” the great Homer Simpson once observed. “The lesson is: never try.”
That’s probably how the so-called “smart set” within the Republican Party feels these days. Ever since Mitt Romney’s 2012 defeat—a loss that caught everyone off guard except for people who followed public opinion polls or read a newspaper—we Republicans were promised a tough, new approach to the presidential primary process.
No longer would the “non-serious candidates”—a term the bigwigs applied to people like Michele Bachmann or Herman Cain—be permitted to dominate the news cycles. This time the GOP would be a well-oiled machine, with a handful of candidates who quickly and quietly made way for the coronation of King Bush the Third.
And yet here we are.
The first GOP debate, televised on August 6 on Fox News, is already a total backfire for the establishment. Based on the latest polls, it will likely include every single one of the candidates the Republican elite despises: Donald Trump, Mike Huckabee, Ben Carson and Ted Cruz—and banish to the losers’ consolation round exactly the types of candidates the establishment presumably wants to showcase: a female business leader, an Indian-American son of immigrants and the consensus-building governor of the crucial electoral state of Ohio.
The controlled, somber and oh-so-civilized process that the GOP promised its donors is now the biggest free-for-all in American political history. The blame for this, of course, is all being thrown in one direction.
The author of legislation in the House to defund Planned Parenthood in the wake of controversial videos lamented the lack of a vote before the chamber departs for a monthlong summer break.
“I stand here profoundly disappointed that the House will leave town today without taking a vote on my legislation to defund Planned Parenthood,” Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) said on the House floor on Wednesday.
“Today, I’m reminded of the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: ‘Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.'”
House GOP leadership has indicated a measure to defund Planned Parenthood won’t come up for a vote anytime soon.
“In order to enact legislation to defund Planned Parenthood, we need more Republicans and Democrats in both the House and the Senate to support our efforts,” a House GOP leadership aide told The Hill this week.
Ridgewood NJ, Judicial Watch continues to press Clinton on Various actions taken at the State Department as well as her involvement with the Clinton Foundation .But Hillary Clinton has a demonstrated record of showing contempt for the rule of law.
She refused to tell the truth about the deadly Benghazi terrorist attack that took place on her watch as Secretary of State She violated the law and avoided accountability by using secret email accounts as Secretary of State She abused her public office to funnel money to personal accounts – much of which is now sloshing around her vanity “charity” that could be renamed “The Clinton Corruption Foundation.”This is all unacceptable.
In this country our leaders are bound by the rule of law. She must be held accountable for her actions.
Sign the petition now to demand that Hillary Clinton answer for her corruption!
photo Courtesy of Boyd Loving Facebook page
Paramus Accident Results in Assault on other driver
July 28,2015
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Paramus NJ , Paramus EMS personnel transported one (1) person to The Valley Hospital following a 10:30 PM crash on Route 4 eastbound near Route 17. The male driver of one (1) vehicle involved in the crash assaulted another driver and a construction worker who came to that driver’s aid. Paramus PD officers subdued the assailant and placed him under arrest. He is now in the Bergen County Jail.
the staff of the Ridgeood blogRidgewood NJ, Kings Food Markets is proud to announce that Zaro’s bakery will be expanding their delicious bakery selection into each of our stores! Zaro’s products range from layer cakes to pastries, specializing in kosher baked goods including rugelach, challah and babka. Be sure to stop by your local Kings today and enjoy the new selection.
112 N Maple Ave, Ridgewood, NJ 07450
(201) 493-4924
The New Jersey State Police and Rutherford Police Department are seeking the public’s assistance with locating a missing “at risk” person:
Alfred “Fred” Fiume, 53, white male, 5’10”, 260 pounds, brown hair, brown eyes was last seen on July 26, 2015 at 9:30 p.m. Mr. Fiume did not show up for work today in Jamesburg, N.J.
Mr. Fiume’s cellphone was pinged in the area of Gravel Hill Road, Monroe Township this morning at 7:57 a.m. He may be operating a blue, 2007 Toyota Corolla with N.J. license plate C37ATM.
If you have information that can assist in helping safely locate Alfred “Fred” Fiume, please call 911 or contact the New Jersey State Police Missing Persons Unit at 609-882-2000 ext. 2554 or Rutherford Police Department at 201-939-6000.
