Free Fun for Young Children! – lots more pictures coming !
Ridgewood NJ, Touch-a-Truck 2015 Rolls Into Ridgewood May 14 Join Us for a Day of Imagination & Fun! Imagine taking a seat behind the wheel of a real police cruiser ready to roll, climbing aboard a shiny fire truck as you prepare to battle a blaze, exploring up-close a fleet of the other emergency and public works vehicles you’ve only seen at a distance on the streets of Ridgewood. Treat your children to a day of hands-on adventure, featuring opportunities to climb on board the vehicles that touch their lives, when “Touch-a-Truck 2015” rolls into downtown Ridgewood’s Memorial Park at Van Neste Square on Thursday, May 14 (Rain date: Thursday, Oct. 8) . Ridgewood emergency and public works vehicles will be ready for action along the Oak Street side of the park from 9 a.m. – 2 p.m. as the local heroes who serve the Village also will be on hand to share their favorite tales about the exciting work they perform every day. As an added bonus, they’ll be a Safetytown Kiddie-Car Driving Track hosted by the Ridgewood Police Department and Little Ivy Learning Center. . . a special Truck Storytime hosted by the Ridgewood Public Library and more! Touch-a-Truck, a free event co-sponsored by the Ridgewood Chamber of Commerce and the Village of Ridgewood, is coordinated by Ridgewood’s Little Ivy Learning Center as part of its ongoing commitment to serve our community’s children and their families. We look forward to meeting your family on Touch-a-Truck Day!
Building Department Hosting Free Building Safety Conference – May 20
May 15, 2015
Ridgewood NJ, “To help raise awareness of building safety, the Ridgewood Building Department will proudly celebrate Building Safety Month during May. Building Safety Month is a public safety awareness campaign to help individuals, families, and businesses understand what it takes to create safe, resilient, affordable, and energy-efficient homes and buildings.
The public is invited to attend the Ridgewood Building Safety Conference on May 20, 2015 at 7:00 p.m. to be held at Village Hall in the fourth floor courtroom. In keeping with this year’s national Building Safety Month theme, “Resilient Communities Start with Building Codes”, Ridgewood Building Department staff will present a two hour forum focusing on fire safety, disaster safety and mitigation, backyard and pool safety, energy efficiency and green construction.
We will also be discussing department operations, such as the recently enacted “Permit Amnesty Program”, how to effectively navigate through the construction permit application process, scheduling and inspection procedures.”
Ridgewood NJ, Stage I watering restrictions begin on June 1st. Odd-numbered addresses may irrigate only on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Even numbered addresses may irrigate only on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. Irrigation using a hand-held hose is allowed at any time. Details are available on the Ridgewood Water website, water.ridgewoodnj.net.
During the summer months, water use increases dramatically due to lawn and garden irrigation. Ridgewood Water strives to provide the maximum allowable amount of water. The supply is sometimes exceeded by the demand during hot and dry weather The excess demand lowers the reserves in storage tanks, jeopardizing the ability to fight fires..
June 1st – Stage 1 Water restrictions began and will continue to the end August.
Explanation of WATER RESTRICTIONS:
Stage I, Stage II, Stage III and Stage IV emergency regulations shall become effective upon declaration of each stage by the Village Manager of the Village of Ridgewood. Stage I shall become effective without such declaration on June 1 of each year and shall remain in effect through August 31 of that year except for any period where Stage II, Stage III, or Stage IV emergency regulations are declared. Exceptions to the user restrictions, such as for irrigation of newly planted lawns or shrubs, for cleaning cars or houses, for filling swimming pools or other such outdoor water usage, shall be determined by the Village Manager of the Village of Ridgewood or a Village of Ridgewood employee designated by the Village Manager. Use of any private well shall be exempt from these regulations, provided that said well is first registered with the local Health Authority.
Stage I Moderate Mandatory restriction of irrigation to Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays for properties with odd-numbered addresses and Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays for properties with even-numbered addresses. Irrigation using a hand-held hose shall be allowed at any time. No irrigation shall be allowed on Mondays except for the use of a hand held hose.
II Severe Mandatory restriction of irrigation to Tuesdays and Saturdays for properties with odd-numbered addresses and Wednesdays and Sundays for properties with even-numbered addresses. No irrigation shall be allowed on Mondays, Thursdays, or Fridays except for the use of a hand held hose. Irrigation using a hand held hose shall be allowed at any time.
III Pending/Critical Mandatory restriction of irrigation to the use of a hand held hose on Tuesdays and Saturdays for properties with odd-numbered addresses and Wednesdays and Sundays for properties with even-numbered addresses. No irrigation of any kind shall be allowed on Mondays, Thursdays, or Fridays.
IV Critical Irrigation is prohibited at any time. Exceptions for irrigation using a hand held hose may be allowed under conditions prescribed by the Village Manager of the Village of Ridgewood.
For the first time in 32 yrs. we are starting to question why we are staying here. High taxes, no kids in school, watching services go south( have you ever seen the corner of Linwood and Maple look that bad on Mothers Day, or Ben Franklin the morning after it is used by whoever the night before ?)the garbage political games, developers going nuts (along with a non profit), etc. It was once the positives far outweighed the negatives as this being a top notch town in which to live; unfortunately, that gap has narrowed substantially.
Ridgewood making changes to controversial ordinance
MAY 15, 2015 LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, MAY 15, 2015, 12:31 AM
BY MARK KRULISH
STAFF WRITER |
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
Arguably one of the village’s most well-known ordinances has been amended to address concerns dealing with some of its language.
The amendment was presented to the Village Council last week.
Ordinance No. 3066, which sets forth the fees and processes involved in applying for an amendment to the master plan or development regulations, was originally passed in July 2007. The ordinance has become the subject of controversy as many believe it enabled the multiple master plan amendment applications that have dominated the agenda at Planning Board meetings.
Part of the basis of revising Ordinance 3066 was to ensure that the Village of Ridgewood is in full ownership of its master plan document and retains the exclusive right to amend it, said Councilwoman Susan Knudsen.
“We own this document, it is our policy document,” she said. “The prevailing concept throughout this revised ordinance is this is our master plan.”
A committee consisting of Knudsen, Mayor Paul Aronsohn, Planning Board Chairman Charles Nalbantian, Vice Chairman Richard Joel, Village Planner Blais Brancheau, and Planning Board attorney Gail Price has been working for the past couple months to differentiate between a typical development application and a master plan amendment.
By state law, a site plan, subdivision or variance application forces the Planning Board, or the Board of Adjustment in some cases, to act on them within a certain period of time and go immediately to a hearing process.
San Francisco (AFP) – The head of the nonprofit group that oversees the world’s Internet addresses expressed confidence Thursday that it would be privatized and out of US government control by year’s end.
Fadi Chehade’s comments came despite criticism in the US Congress, where some lawmakers have resisted the plan to end Washington’s key management role in the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
Chehade said all the necessary components for a new stewardship scheme are accounted for and there will be “major legitimizing endorsements” from several countries in coming weeks.
“It is now up to the community to wrap them up, put them in a nice little box with a bow and ship them to Washington,” Chehade said, of the pieces of a plan to supplant a contract ICANN has with the US Department of Commerce.
The comments come a year after the US government said it would end its technical oversight role for the Internet domain system, with the stipulation that it be managed without direct control by governments or intergovernmental bodies like the United Nations.
The US plan seeks to turn over this function to what Chehade calls a “global multistakeholder community.”
Chehade said a growing number of countries, including China and Brazil, have voiced support for this new system.
“When we started we heard things like the UN would take over or China will fragment the Internet. Everyone was in threat and defense mode,” he said.
ICANN is in charge of assigning Internet domain names and the numbering codes that lie behind online …
“Now that China has come to the table, and Brazil has done the same, government after government is showing support.”
Chehade said some 150 countries now support the shift of ICANN oversight away from the US government to a globally representative group of governments, civil society and businesses.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Rep. Scott Garrett (NJ-05), Chairman of the Congressional Constitution Caucus, issued the following statement after voting against the USA Freedom Act, H.R. 2048, today because it did not do enough to protect the privacy of innocent Americans:
“The American people demand transparency from their government, and they demand that their basic Constitutional right to privacy is upheld with every vote we take in Congress. I fully support our country’s anti-terrorist capabilities, but today’s bill does not do enough to protect the privacy and Fourth Amendment rights of millions of innocent Americans. In particular, we need to ensure the destruction of information collected about people who have no ties to terrorism, fully stop bulk data collection under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, and put an end to warrantless searches that government officials have used as justification for a mass collection of emails and phone calls. The only thing this bill does is further codify the ability of the government to trample our Constitutional rights.”
The USA Freedom Act does NOT:
Prohibit bulk data collection Require the destruction of records not connected to terrorist investigations Prohibit the government from conducting warrantless searches of communications of U.S. persons
Posted: 05/13/2015 10:36 am EDT Updated: 05/13/2015 10:59 am EDT
By Anjali Enjeti
You remember childhood, don’t you?
We wore our house keys around our necks like dog tags, walked home from school alone and let ourselves inside while our parents were still at work. We crossed busy intersections during rush hour to purchase bubble gum cigarettes with change from empty soda cans.
Our playgrounds were construction sites, heaps of dirt, creeks filled with snakes and turtles we collected as pets. We climbed trees, muddied our Garanimals, scaled fences between neighbors’ backyards. We spent Memorial Day to Labor Day barefoot, the soles of our feet blackened like coal, dirt clumping underneath our toenails. Skateboards, roller skates and bikes defined our boundaries — our Baby Boomer parents would scoff if we asked for a ride somewhere. They were too busy reading the newspaper, watching soaps or drinking beer on the stoop with the neighbors.
We were told to come in at dark, not a second earlier.
We had our kids late. Probably too late. Now we’re cranky, sleep-deprived 40-somethings changing chlorine-free, biodegradable diapers while Dora the Explorer morphs into a hormonal teen right before our very eyes. We claim we don’t regret waiting because we “needed to get established in our careers first” and “wanted to save enough money,” even though we know damn well we have neither viable careers nor anything resembling a nest egg.
We cart our children to chess, robotics, baseball practice, ballet, cello, swimming lessons and birthday parties. Though they run our lives like lunatic ringmasters, we insist such activities make them well-rounded / social / intellectual / competitive / creative.
They are rarely out of our sights. They’re our extensions, buds hanging off our stems, the quality, durability, and character of their bloom wholly dependent on our careful, measured, intentional nurturing. We stuff them into slings as babies, backpacks and strollers as toddlers, tie them with leashes as preschoolers and use GPS and apps to monitor their whereabouts as teens.
Ridgewood NJ, The RHS History Bowl A Team finished ninth out of 150 teams in Arlington, VA at the national championship competition. Additionally, the team of Ben Bechtold and Thomas Cleary finished in the quarter finals of the competition. Other team members with media permission to be listed are Kumal Raza, Regina Park, Minha An, Thria Bernabe, Tristan Kane and Peter Goodman.
After crunching the numbers, the Tax Foundation has determined today marks Tax Freedom Day in the Garden State — the day when many New Jersey residents have finally earned enough money to pay all of their taxes for the year.
New Jersey and Connecticut have the latest Tax Freedom days of any state in
Salute to a recruit to Zadroga Act 9/11 aid renewal
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Wednesday, May 13, 2015, 7:05 PM
An atta-boy to New Jersey Republican Rep. Scott Garrett for enlisting on Tuesday as a cosponsor of a bill that would provide continued health coverage and monetary compensation to rescue and recovery workers who were sickened at Ground Zero.
What with so much going on in Washington, Garrett had apparently overlooked the duty until that morning, when a reminder in this space noted that he was the only member of the New Jersey delegation without his name on the measure.
With Dan Donovan, sworn in that night to represent Staten Island and a nub of Brooklyn, Garrett joins budding GOP support for the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act.
Enacted in 2010 after entrenched Republican opposition, the law authorized spending $4.2 billion on specialized medical care for 9/11 responders, along with compensation. The sum was $3 billion short of the amount sought by Democrats and coverage was cut to five years.
Without congressional renewal, thousands of suffering Ground Zero laborers will lose critical health care assistance. In control of both the House and Senate, the Republicans will be crucial to preventing such a catastrophe.
That’s why having Garrett on board helps build momentum and why Donovan gets a thumbs-up for making co-sponsorship his very first legislative action.
Good News – the store has been re-opend by my husband and I. we have expanded the menu and now have, in addition to frozen yogurt, hot pressed flatbread sandwiches, wraps and salads. We also do Juicing and have an extensive juicing menu and we have some of the yummiest Smoothies around! Come on by and see us – 43 East Ridgewood Avenue, Ridgewood, NJ.
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/12/2015 23:45 -0400
Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist Samuel Hersh claimed yesterday that the Obama administration lied to the American peopleabout certain aspects aspects of the 2011 raid that killed Osama Bin Laden. According to Hersh, the United States did not act alone when Navy SEALs were sent to capture or kill the world’s most wanted terrorist. The real story, according to the report, is that members of Pakistani intelligence services were privy to the raid months before it happened and that it was a “walk-in” Pakistani intelligence officer who gave up the location of Bin Laden rather than a CIA operation that tracked him down by following various couriers. Further, it has been claimed that Bin Laden was not buried at sea the way the Obama administration said, but rather, his limbs were simply thrown from the helicopter after the mission (suggesting that some portion of his body, perhaps his head, were retained for posterity’s sake).
It’s a markedly different story than the one President Obama told on the night he announced Bin Laden’s death. In that nationally televised speech the President took credit for ordering the raid and made it clear it was a unilateral action involving only American assets.
The Obama administration has spent the last 24 hours working to discredit the story. Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren said the report from Hersh was “largely a fabrication” with “too many inaccuracies.” The White House says the Hersh’s investigation is riddled with inaccuracies.
But according to NBC News, which has reportedly been conducting their own investigation for the last several years, Hersh’s claims aren’t that inaccurate after all.
Two intelligence sources tell NBC News that the year before the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, a “walk in” asset from Pakistani intelligence told the CIA where the most wanted man in the world was hiding – and these two sources plus a third say that the Pakistani government knew where bin Laden was hiding all along.
The U.S. government has always characterized the heroic raid by Seal Team Six that killed bin Laden as a unilateral U.S. operation, and has maintained that the CIA found him by tracking couriers to his walled complex in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
The new revelations do not necessarily cast doubt on the overall narrative that the White House began circulating within hours of the May 2011 operation. The official story about how bin Laden was found was constructed in a way that protected the identity and existence of the asset, who also knew who inside the Pakistani government was aware of the Pakistani intelligence agency’s operation to hide bin Laden, according to a special operations officer with prior knowledge of the bin Laden mission. The official story focused on a long hunt for bin Laden’s presumed courier, Ahmed al-Kuwaiti.
The NBC News sources who confirm that a Pakistani intelligence official became a “walk in” asset include the special operations officer and a CIA officer who had served in Pakistan. These two sources and a third source, a very senior former U.S. intelligence official, also say that elements of the ISI were aware of bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad. The former official was emphatic about the ISI’s awareness, saying twice, “They knew.”
Source: NBC News
The one thing that President Obama could hail as a success during his tenure as President has now been exposed as an outright lie.
It looks like all those ‘conspiracy nuts’ who took issue with the “official” story following the President’s original announcement of bin Laden’s death were not so crazy after all. There’s a reason millions of Americans have lost trust in their government, and especially with the sitting President of the United States. It’s because we have been consistently lied to about anything and everything of any significance.
MAY 13, 2015, 8:18 PM LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, MAY 13, 2015, 8:24 PM
BY LINDY WASHBURN
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
Consumers would be protected from surprise medical bills when they go to the hospital under a measure to be unveiled Thursday in Trenton by a group of powerful Democratic lawmakers.
Out-of-network charges to insurers would be capped. And in an unprecedented push for transparency, the state would publish a list of the average prices for almost every service, based on data the insurers would be required to submit. When hospitals or doctors and insurers disagree on the appropriate amount for an out-of-network bill, the measure calls for “baseball arbitration” — a state-appointed arbitrator to choose one side’s final offer.
The financial stakes are enormous, and a high-powered offensive from those whose revenues or income would be diminished by the measure is expected, including specialist physicians and hospitals.
“I think it’s going to be a fight,” for passage, said Assemblyman Gary S. Schaer, a Passaic Democrat who chairs the Assembly Budget committee and helped draft the “The Out-of Network Consumer Protection, Transparency, Cost Containment and Accountability Act,” to be introduced today at a noon news conference.
But he pointed to the high-ranking Democrats who drafted the legislation, including state Sen. Joseph Vitale, chairman of the Senate Health Committee, and Assemblyman Craig Coughlin, chairman of the Assembly committee in charge of health insurance, both Wood-bridge Democrats — as well as Assemblyman Troy Singleton of Mount Laurel. Schaer is chairman of the Assembly Budget Committee.
Most lawmakers are expected to agree, he said, that “significant remedial action needs to be undertaken to tackle this issue, which contributes a lot to the rise in health-care costs,” as well as bankruptcies among state residents.
An important way insurance companies control costs is by negotiating contracts with hospitals, doctors, and other health-care providers who agree to accept their reimbursement and become part of their network. Some health plans include coverage for care received from providers who are not part of the insurer’s network.
The out-of-network charges billed by some New Jersey hospitals are among the highest in the country, and insurers say that they drive up premiums for everyone. In addition, patients who receive care from hospital-based physicians – over whom they have no choice – often are surprised to learn that they were out-of-network providers and charge much more than expected.
MAY 13, 2015, 9:57 PM LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, MAY 13, 2015, 10:00 PM
BY CHRIS HARRIS
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
GLEN ROCK — The Borough Council moved Wednesday night to appoint an independent investigator to examine “the general culture within the police department” and the circumstances leading to the recent suspensions of two officers.
A resolution adopted by the council calls for a special “investigation of police department operations” by retired state Superior Court Judge Alexander H. Carver III.
Carver presided over the recent disciplinary hearing for Officer Bryan Scott, one of two officers suspended from the force back in late December.
The suspensions of Scott and Sgt. Christopher McInerney were approved by Chief of Police Fred Stahman following an internal affairs investigation into allegations the officers deleted two pictures from the Police Department’s computer server. In addition, Stahman recommended termination for both officers.
In late March, Scott and McInerney were reinstated by the council.
