Reader states Why on earth doesn’t the Village ask Valley for a payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) is beyond me
Why on earth doesn’t the Village ask Valley for a payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) is beyond me… all Valley does is present ridiculous expansion plans based on ordinance 3066 -which former Mayor Pfund passed to allow them to apply for exceptions to the Village Master Plan – then waste Villagers time and money, and then sue us. Then they pay their CEO $2 million a year for running a single hospital – whereas the others on that list run hosital systems – and they can’t even pay their fair share of the costs for Villages services including Police, Fire, EMT, sanitation, snow removal, road and pothole repair, etc. Some non-profit that is, they’re a bad neighbor.
Reader says I do not understand why this council is so set on altering (damaging, destroying pick your adjective) this town to fit their own wishes.
“Mayor Paul Aronsohn ….he would like to find a way to incentivize the developers to build high end apartments” really? the developers need help? don’t build then.
I do not understand why this council is so set on altering (damaging, destroying pick your adjective) this town to fit their own wishes. The Mayor will NOT be re-elected to this office or any higher office if he keeps pushing through his own agenda while disregarding the majority of residents. He doesn’t even want to poll citizens as other towns have done recently…most likely he knows it will show the proposed changes are not wanted.
Update Ridgewood within the character that already exists and leave Hackensack in Hackensack.
Good lord, this will be huge and horrible. But someone stands to make a ton of bucks on this deal. Certainly not the taxpayers
60 foot tall buildings will become the new norm throughout the CBD if this goes through.
“the devil is in the details” – – that’s the problem with this amendment. it does not say what will or won’t be built. Once the density is changed, the developers can build what they want. There are no controls in place.
we don’t need these monstronsities in town. There are for rent signs on the existing apartment buildings. I don’t see any rush for people to move from their houses to the apartments.
Frankly, I think there is more than enough “density” as it is.
Reader says Community Hospitals Do Not sue the Community they Serve
Three lies by the current Valley Board and Audrey at odds with the fact that they are suing the Village of Ridgewood:
1) Ethics – They say, “We are honest and fair in all we say and do.” Suing the community that built and funded Valley is honest and fair?
2) The Valley Hospital Mission Statement – “The Valley Hospital serves the community…” – see above
3) According to https://www.valleyhospitalfoundation.org/who-we-are-auxiliary-70th-anniversary“Since 1951, The Valley Hospital has existed to care for the people of our community when they need it most. The Valley Hospital opened its doors on August 8, 1951 thanks to the 450 charter members of the Women’s Auxiliary of The Valley Hospital who helped to raise $140,000, enough to fully furnish and equip a new three-floor hospital thanks to their “Third Floor Drive”. The Valley Hospital opened its doors on August 8, 1951 in Ridgewood.” How is that consistent with Valley suing the Village? Audrey is clearly only in it for the money. She should resign post haste.
Community colleges to use controversial PARCC tests for student placement
MARCH 24, 2015, 2:03 PM LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY, MARCH 24, 2015, 10:00 PM
BY HANNAN ADELY
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
In New Jersey’s march to roll out new academic standards and testing in public schools, some of the strongest and most vocal support has come from the state’s colleges and universities.
Now, in the latest measure of faith in the exams, the council of 19 community college presidents announced that they plan to use scores on the new tests for student placement next year. It will be the first time the tests have consequences for students.
“These scores will be a valuable tool for colleges in our work to help high school students avoid remediation and begin study in college-level courses,” the New Jersey Council of County Colleges said in a joint statement Monday.
By embracing the tests — which are designed to measure students’ knowledge of the more rigorous standards — college officials are at odds with many parents who have protested their use in schools and kept their children out of the exams. But higher education officials say the new system will better prepare students for college and prevent many of them from having to take remedial classes.
Should Stars Apologize for ‘Hands Up’ Ferguson Lie?
By Christian Toto | March 21, 2015 | 10:41 PM EDT
Many Hollywood stars rallied to decry the lack of an indictment in the death of Ferguson resident Michael Brown late last year. Some took their outrage a step further. Nelly. The cast of Selma. Pharrell. Beyonce. Jay Z. They all protested Brown’s death after an altercation with police officer Darren Wilson by striking the now famous “hands up” pose. Brown allegedly had his hands up when Wilson fatally shot him, or so the media repeatedly told viewers based on unconfirmed accounts. News anchors and star athletes also played upon the meme. They all were dragged into a lie, or as The Washington Post describes it, a “four Pinocchios” level lie.
CNN Confronts Stephen A. Smith for Wanting Black Americans to Vote GOP – And He Doesn’t Back Down
By Jennifer Van Laar
In a speech earlier this week, ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith urged black Americans to vote Republican at least once. Smith also said that by blindly voting Democrat blacks label themselves “disenfranchised.”
Smith was interviewed by CNN’s Michael Smerconish to offer further explanation of his comments:
“We’ve bought it hook, line, and sinker … The vast majority of black Americans look at the Republican party as the enemy. We look at the Democrat party as our support base.
Because of it, they have a license to take us for granted. The Republican party has a license to summarily dismiss us because they believe they’ll never get our vote anyway, and then we end up finding ourselves devoid of any kind of representation whatsoever because nobody is really competing to garner our vote and our support.
I wanted folks in my community to stand up and recognize that if you go to a house or you go buy a car or whatever the case may be, you don’t just see something you want and say, ‘I want that. Tell me what the price is and I’ll pay for it.’ Somebody has to flatter you in order to garner your dollars and your support.
I think the same should apply to politicians who want to represent us.”
Smerconish agreed that most Republicans “never even make the ask” for the black vote, but that Rand Paul seems to be doing just that. Smith had some advice for Rand Paul:
“He can highlight some of the inconsistencies and the discrepancies the opposing party might be throwing in our direction, things that we may not know.”
“If you’re running for the presidency, you have to surround yourself with a bunch of folks that look like us.”
Smith contends the Hispanic community has already figured this out and this is why immigration reform is such a hot topic. He believes the black community should be following this lead, and pressing both parties more on issues important to their community.
After Smerconish expressed his hesitation to embrace identity politics, and a fear this would lead to “Balkanization,” Smith replied:
“I am a black man, from a black community, and I’ve watched us suffer religiously, whether it’s with unemployment … whether it’s incarceration, whatever the case may be.”
“I think that the interest of the country is paramount and should usurp all other interests. but if you’re talking to me about my community, I’m going to speak on what’s affecting us and how we can alleviate those concerns.”
Smith ended by saying he isn’t advocating for one party over the other, but rather advocating for blacks to not be so transparent in their support for one party over the other.
MARCH 24, 2015 LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY, MARCH 24, 2015, 11:51 AM
BY CHRIS HARRIS
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
RIDGEWOOD — Anthony Daniels still needs a miracle.
With any luck, that miracle will come April 18, when another donor drive will be held in Hillsdale, aimed at finding possible matches for the 23-year-old Ridgewood man, who has been battling an aggressive form of Hodgkin’s lymphoma for several years.
The drive is being organized by Delete Blood Cancer — the U.S. unit of the German Bone Marrow Donor Center.
During the drive, which runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Hillsdale’s Veterans Park, healthy people ages 18 to 44 will undergo a cheek swab. Volunteers must be willing to donate to any patient.
A match could mean a lifesaving bone marrow stem cell transplant for Daniels, a former Fordham University business student and onetime Ridgewood High School hockey player who was 20 when he was diagnosed with the immune system cancer.
A number of drives were held last year to help find Daniels a donor. His search for a match continues, since less than 1 percent of the population has his same DNA markers.
Inexplicably, Daniels’ two brothers are a match for each other but not for him.
Monsanto chief admits ‘hubris’ is to blame for public fears over GM
OLIVER WRIGHT Monday 23 March 2015
The American company that produced the world’s first genetically modified crop has admitted for the first time that its “hubris” in promoting the technology contributed to a consumer backlash against genetically modified food.
Speaking to The Independent, the chief executive of Monsanto conceded that the company had failed to appreciate public concerns over GM technology when it was introduced nearly 20 years ago.
And he also said that the company had suffered by making “the wrong call” when it failed to rebrand itself in the aftermath of the botched launch of GM in Europe.
But Hugh Grant claimed that unless public attitudes towards biotechnology changed it would be impossible to feed the world’s growing population and called for a more nuanced debate on the potential uses for GM technology in the developing world.
“There never had been a lot of trust in companies, particularly not big companies and certainly not big American companies,” he said.
“Saying ‘Death to America’ is easy,” Mr. Rouhani said in a speech in the city of Karaj, according to the state-run Mehr News Agency. “We need to express ‘Death to America’ with action. Saying it is easy.”
Sen. Cotton: Believe Iran’s leader when he says, ‘death to America’
By Jordain Carney
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) on Monday stepped up his opposition to the nuclear talks with Iran, warning that the regime of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei should not be legitimized by the United States.
“The gravest threat to our national security is a nuclear-armed Iran, and this man, Ayatollah Khamenei,” Cotton said from the Senate floor.
The Arkansas Republican referred to a speech the Iranian official gave over the weekend in honor of Nowruz, the Persian New Year. The crowd chanted “death to America” as Khamenei spoke.
“What was his response to that chant? He said, ‘Yes, certainly, death to America,’ ” Cotton said. ” ‘Death to America.’ Remember this is the leader whom with the United States is negotiating today.”
Cotton has been a vocal critic of the international negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program. He spearheaded an open letter, also signed by 47 Republican senators, to Iran’s leaders that suggested that any deal could be overturned after President Obama leaves office in 2017.
Obama released his own video message last week in honor of Nowruz. In that video, the president pressed Iranian officials to take “the best opportunity in decades” to bolster the U.S.-Iranian relationship by accepting a deal to roll back the country’s nuclear program.
03/24/157:30PMBoard of Adjustment Work SessionAvailable 03/25/157:30PMVillage Council Public Work SessionAvailable 03/25/157:30PMVillage Council Special Public MeetingAvailable 03/31/157:30PMBoard of Adjustment Public Meeting 04/01/157:30PMVillage Council Public Work Session 04/07/157:30PMPlanning Board Public Meeting – Village Hall Court Room 04/08/158:00PMVillage Council Public Meeting 04/14/157:30PMBoard of Adjustment Public Meeting
Meet the Manager – Tuesday, March 24th 4:30pm to 7:30pm
Village Manager Roberta Sonenfeld will hold office hours for Ridgewood residents and business owners on Tuesday, February 24th between the hours of 4:30pm to 7:30pm. This is an opportunity to share your thoughts and provide input to Roberta. These sessions will be scheduled at 15 minute intervals and will be held in the Council Chambers on the 4th Floor of Ridgewood Village Hall. Please contact Beth Spinato at 201-670-5500, ext. 203 to make an appointment. Walk-ins are welcome but should realize that the schedule may already be booked. We will announce the schedule for these meetings on a monthly basis.
What the Domino’s CEO Would Change on Taxes, Obamacare
Stephen Moore / @StephenMoore / March 22, 2015
Here’s a question that has been puzzling Patrick Doyle, the CEO of Domino’s, for months, as he puts it: “How do we list the calorie content of our pizzas on a menu when we have 34 million different variations of pizza?” The new menu labeling law, a creation of the Affordable Care Act, could require his company to do just that.
It’s a textbook case of a mindless and arcane regulation, of Washington bureaucrats imposing on businesses costs that will have no effect on public health. “We’ve been voluntarily doing menu labeling for over a decade,” Doyle says. “We even have an online calorie calculator we call the ‘Calo-Meter’ for every possible pizza order, and it tells customers what happens if they substitute, say, sausage for mushrooms, because we strive to be very nutrition-conscious.”
That isn’t good enough for the feds. The Food and Drug Administration is now insisting that every one of the chain’s 5,000 stores post menu boards on the wall with calorie counts. “It’s crazy and it doesn’t help consumers,” Doyle says, because “90 percent of Domino’s orders arrive by phone or Internet and are for delivery, so fewer than one of 10 customers will ever see these signs.” The signs will cost about $2,000 at every store, and each change of menu will require new ones. That is about $10 million of extraneous costs nationwide for Domino’s. Thank you, Washington.
Other than that, Doyle is having a good day when I visit him at the Domino’s world-wide headquarters in Ann Arbor, Mich. And a very good year, with sales up 12 percent in the past quarter alone.
The headquarters are a few miles up the road from where the original Domino’s Pizza opened in 1960. Doyle, who is 51, is tall, stocky, affable and appropriately a Michigan man through and through, having grown up in Midland and earned a degree at the University of Michigan. In his five years as CEO, annual sales have climbed to $9 billion from about $2 billion. Some 250,000 workers wear a Domino’s uniform and sell roughly one billion pizzas each year. During the Super Bowl, Domino’s was taking a dizzying 1,400 orders a minute.
Making pizzas may not be the sexiest business—though it’s a $125 billion world-wide market. But while investors obsess over finding the next Facebook, the share price of Domino’s has soared from $13 in 2010 to just over $100 today. It has been among the top performing stocks in the Fortune 100.
Doyle has helped take the company global, with stores operating in 80 nations and expansion plans throughout Asia. In sales, Domino’s is now the No. 1 restaurant chain in India. Sub-Saharan Africa is also among the company’s fastest-growing markets, with a billion people and a growing middle class. “We’ve discovered Africans love pizza,” he says. “They order them on their mobile phones.”
Things weren’t always flying so high in Ann Arbor. Doyle became CEO after two of the company’s worst years, and sales were still sliding. One of his first decisions was to take an unorthodox approach: “We held a series of focus groups with consumers and we discovered that people hated the pizza. So we ran these TV ads featuring Americans complaining about how bad Domino’s pizza tasted.” Then Doyle appeared on screen with an apology and promise: “We hear you America. Sometimes you know you’ve got to make a change. Please give us another try.”
He adds with a laugh that the one thing in his career that impressed his children was when they were in a New York restaurant and comedian Amy Poehler spotted him and shouted, “Hey, you’re the pizza guy.”
In the three months following those ads, Domino’s had its fastest rise in sales in company history. “I think consumers really appreciated that we were direct and honest with them,” he explains. That ad campaign is now considered a textbook crisis-management story, with its lesson in honesty as a best commercial policy.
Domino’s is also riding the digital revolution. “In a lot of ways we’re really a technology company,” Doyle says. “We’ve adapted the art of pizza-making to the digital age. Globally, we’re already at a run rate of about $4 billion of digital sales.” He adds that digital drives sales by making ordering easier and more efficient, and saves money on bad orders because customers “take their own orders so they make fewer mistakes.”
His goal is to have every iPhone in the world equipped with a Domino’s app, and the company is working with Ford Motor Co. on a voice-activated technology that will let motorists order a large thin-crust pepperoni with onions while driving home from work.
The atmosphere at company headquarters feels more like Silicon Valley than a fast-food company. Most employees here are computer programmers and technicians monitoring in real time what people are ordering, how long it is taking to fill an order, and the online complaints and comments that stream in. Their mission is to streamline the pizza-making process from the time the order arrives to when the pie is handed off at the customer’s front door. If the goal is delivery in 30 minutes or less, every innovation that shaves 10 or 15 seconds is a major money saver when you’re selling a billion pies a year. Although the Domino’s menu also includes such things as sandwiches, pasta and chicken wings, 80 percent of its sales are pizzas.
Doyle is unconditionally bullish on the U.S. economy. “The big story since the recession is that American households and businesses have become lean and efficient and have paid down debts. Consumers finally have money and they are starting to spend it,” he says.
Meanwhile, as the head of one of the nation’s biggest employers, Doyle sees the effects of what he calls a “tightening of the labor market” firsthand. “Frankly, right now, it’s getting harder and harder to hire. We have shortages of truck drivers and delivery people.”
Such real-world experience makes Domino’s a barometer of sorts. “My take is that the official statistics are underestimating the strength of the labor market. Look, it has been a long, slow recovery. We’re now six years into it and we’ve finally reached the point where there seems to be more demand for labor than there is trained supply.” For job seekers “that is great news, right?”
As for those who fret that only the rich are getting richer and upward mobility isn’t possible, Doyle says they should pay more attention to what happens at Domino’s. “Over 90 percent of our 900 franchisees started as an hourly worker in the store,” he says. “Most of them started as delivery drivers at minimum wage. They work their way up. They become a manager. Then they come in, they apply to buy a store.” So from earning $7 or $8 an hour, they now earn $80,000 to $100,000 by operating a franchise. Many have become millionaires. “This is absolutely a story of upward mobility in America.
If he were economic adviser to the president, what reforms would he recommend to accelerate growth and hiring? Without hesitation he says: “Simplify the corporate tax. It’s a killer. We pay 38 percent at Domino’s.” He’s including state and local taxes, but that’s a huge burden, especially given that many large corporations pay below 10 percent. “Just get rid of all the loopholes—and make it fair with a broad base and lower rates.” Then he adds, only half-kidding: “No one in Washington ever woke up and said ‘let’s have a loophole for pizza makers.’” Sounds like he needs a lobbyi
One of Doyle’s biggest worries is that the Domino’s franchise-owner model—which is also used by thousands of other retail and restaurant stores—has come under assault from trial lawyers, unions and the National Labor Relations Board. These groups want to treat a Domino’s or Popeyes franchise store and the parent company as “joint employers.” This would mean a locally owned store with a few dozen staff would still have to comply with, for instance, the ObamaCare rules that only apply to firms with more than 50 workers. Seattle passed a minimum-wage law last year that treats franchise restaurants as big businesses that must pay a super-minimum-wage that phases up to $15 an hour.
“You’ve got 20 million people today employed in the franchise industry in the U.S. Part of why small business owners want to be in a franchise is because they’re getting support from each other, and they’re getting support and ideas from a company. Franchise stores have dramatically higher success rates than people who are just doing it all on their own,” Doyle says. “Why destroy a model that is almost uniquely American and has been a tremendous success for 50 or 60 years? This would be horribly detrimental.”
Doyle is optimistic about the world economy and how the digital revolution will continue to lift living standards for billions in the coming decade. Even in sub-Saharan Africa per capita incomes are growing at 5 percent annually. “I’m a free trader. I just believe in my core that free markets, technology, innovation, cheap energy and globalization will be triumphant and will make people better off.” They will also, not coincidentally, make people order more pizzas on their smartphones.
Obamacare Is Really Expensive for Small Businesses. Surprise!
Lousy news for growing the economy, creating jobs, and overall increasing prosperity
“Complying with the health care law is costing small businesses thousands of dollars that they didn’t have to spend before the new regulations went into effect,” reports AP business writer Joyce M. Rosenberg. This should be a surprise to exactly nobody. In general, government mandates have poor track record of making people’s lives less expensive and complicated. Specifically, businesses around the country have reported over the past year that Obamacare raised their healthcare costs and they anticipated more hikes to come. Hiring—especially of full-time employees—has taken a hit as a result.
Writes Rosenberg:
The Affordable Care Act, which as of next Jan. 1 applies to all companies with 50 or more workers, requires owners to track staffers’ hours, absences and how much they spend on health insurance. Many small businesses don’t have the human resources departments or computer systems that large companies have, making it harder to handle the paperwork. On average, complying with the law costs small businesses more than $15,000 a year, according to a survey released a year ago by the National Small Business Association.
Last summer, Federal Reserve Banks around the country surveyed businesses in their regions. In the service sector, about 82 percent of businesses told the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas that the Affordable Care Act raised costs for them in 2014; 91 percent expected increased costs in 2015.
Here is the photo of The Kensington Assisted Living Facility in Westchester.
Village Council Meeting Wednesday on Redevelopment Zone
*** Important Information about Redevelopment Zone ***
Ridgewood NJ, TOMORROW, Wednesday, March 25th, at the end of the Village Council Meeting, there will be a CLOSED Village Council Session to address “Contract Negotiations for the North Walnut Street Redevelopment Zone.”
The Village Council is moving forward with closed-door discussions to evaluate two proposals for the Redevelopment Zone. We recommend that you attend this Village Council meeting (or watch the televised feed) if you have questions about the Redevelopment Zone.
One proposal is for an assisted living facility that would feature commercial space on the ground floor and five floors of residential space. The 5-story building would include a parking garage with 135 parking spaces set aside for public parking, and is expected to generate 18,000 visits per year by the residents’ family and friends. The second proposal would feature 13 duplex apartments in the luxury price range and a massive parking garage that would accommodate 230 standard parking spaces, 118 set aside for residential and retail. (During his presentation, the developer said the parking garage could theoretically accommodate 627 cars with a semi-automatic parking system where cars are stored on pallets and are stacked to save space.) Both proposals would be built to the maximum allowable height of 60 feet.
Most likely, the Village Council will choose one of these two developers to build at the site without engaging residents and without undertaking a Comprehensive Master Plan Review. The American Planning Association guidelines for the state of NJ encourage local government and redevelopers to increase their levels of outreach and engagement efforts as a way to ensure public involvement throughout any redevelopment planning process.
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In response to many of you who have asked about CBR’s position with respect to the Redevelopment Zone, we have quickly prepared some thoughts below, but admit that these are only preliminary thoughts…… We encourage anyone who feels that such an important decision requires more public input and more review, to attend the meeting in Village Hall at 7:30 pm on Wednesday night.
Insights from CBR: Attached is a picture of an Assisted Living facility in Westchester, NY owned by Kensington, the same developer whose proposal is currently in front of the Village Council. The dimensions of this building are actually smaller than what is being proposed for Ridgewood. If three of our five council members favor the Kensington proposal, a similar facility could easily be erected in downtown Ridgewood next year! The Ridgewood building would be 60 feet tall and would have a 5 or 6 story parking garage in the rear. Please look at this picture and notice the garage in the background. The garage would sit on N. Walnut Street. The other proposal is from Langan Development and would include retail space along Franklin Avenue on the first floor of an L-shaped residential building, with a significant parking structure also accessed from N. Walnut Street. The density of the development, which includes 3-bedroom / 2.5-bathroom duplex units, is 12-units per acre.
At CBR, we have always been concerned with development that is out of scale with the surroundings. The sheer size and scale of these developments is even larger than any of the high density developments that have been proposed so far. We are not sure why our Village Council would even entertain building something that is so mega-sized in downtown Ridgewood!
Redevelopment should occur with ample public input. We feel as if our Village Council has not encouraged public input and is moving along very quickly. In fact, are you even aware of the size of these proposals, or that the Village of Ridgewood owns this very valuable piece of real estate in our CBD? Most residents are not. Usually, when a municipality is undertaking a massive redevelopment, they are very excited and community support is strong. We feel as if the community has been left in the dark. Even residents on Walnut Street are unaware of the proposals.
To be clear, this is not a discussion about assisted living or housing. This is a discussion about developing within the character of our town. We are wary of moving forward and building a 60-foot high building in the center of our town without a clear vision for the future. Once again, we have sophisticated developers on the scene ready to “save the day” while our town officials have not done adequate due diligence. This will most certainly pave the way for builders in the future to argue their case for sympathetic zoning benefits. Why is there a big rush / push to urbanize our downtown? And why have the residents been kept out of the planning process? This is a serious issue. Other towns value public input, while Ridgewood seems to have a disdain for its residents and their input.
By way of background, years ago the Hillman family owned the Walnut Street parking lot and our village government took it away from them on the principle of eminent domain, to build a parking garage. Sadly, for years, our village never dealt with funding in order to construct a parking garage. Municipalities all over Northern NJ have addressed their parking problems, issued referendums, bonded out the construction of their own garages and moved forward with viable parking plans.
Both proposals will give Ridgewood a mere 100-135 additional public parking spaces, in return for approval to build on a prime piece of village-owned property that sits in the center of our downtown. 100 plus parking spots? Our parking deficit is estimated to be 1,000 parking spots or greater. The Kensington facility will amount to 98 housing units on little more than an acre. While we like assisted living and suspect that our Village Council is hoping to bring in much needed tax revenue from this business, we have not seen or know of any financial studies that prove this is the best choice for this property. We are also not sure an assisted living facility belongs smack in the the center of downtown. The promise of an additional 100 parking spots is questionable, as these spots could easily be filled by visitors, volunteers, and members of local groups that cater to the assisted living residents. We believe this business will add to our Village’s parking woes rather than solve an age old problem.
Why not build a two or three story parking deck on this property? The property was acquired by the Village for the purpose of parking! CBR has raised the idea of funding and building a parking deck but feel as if it has fallen on deaf ears. For some reason, a few Village Council members are suggesting that residents will not support funding a 2 or 3 story parking deck at this location. Why is the Council so sure that residents won’t support a parking deck on this lot — when we haven’t even been included in the discussions? And on the flip side, why is the Council so sure that the residents of this town will support a 6-story building when there is nothing in the CBD that is currently 6 stories tall? A parking deck with 300 or more spots, dedicated to employees and customers, will increase sales in all of our shops and businesses downtown. (This could, in turn, increase overall tax revenue).
How does all of this fit into Ridgewood’s plan for the future? We wish we could answer that question! Unfortunately, there is currently no plan for the future of Ridgewood. There are separate discussions taking place behind closed doors all over town and no one, except the residents, seem to understand the importance of having a long-term vision for the future of this town. We think we are in the midst of a very sad time in our town right now. Instead of feeling positive about our future, we feel very uncertain.
New Jersey Ranks #1 in Highest Property Taxes in the USA
The 10 worst states for property taxes
Chloe Della Costa, Cheat Sheet 10:32 a.m. EDT March 21, 2015
U.S. property taxes can vary dramatically by county as well as by state. Since property valuation is complex and highly changeable with the market, value is not necessarily equal to cost or price. Depending on state law, property assessments are done anywhere from once per year to every five years. Then the value assessment of a home is multiplied by the local tax rate, or millage rate, to find the property tax amount owed by the homeowner. In states or counties where property taxes are generally higher, the burden can be great enough to persuade homeowners to consider selling so they can pick up and move elsewhere.
The Tax Foundation compiled Census data from 2004 to 2009 on property taxes on owner-occupied housing, ranked by state. States were ranked three ways: median property taxes paid on homes, taxes as percentage of median home value, and taxes as percentage of income. For simplicity’s sake, this list will focus on percentage of home value.
This methodology allows for a comparison that shows, all things being equal, which states would generally have the highest property taxes for a home.
Parking fees for Ridgewood’s pay-by-phone service are set
March 23, 2015 Last updated: Monday, March 23, 2015, 10:14 AM
By Mark Krulish
Staff Writer |
The Ridgewood News
An ordinance establishing fees for paying parking meters through cell phones was adopted unanimously by the Village Council on March 11 after a minor tweak was made to allow for a reduction on the transaction fee.
The new ordinance seemed set for passage as it was, but during the public hearing, a member of the audience noted the language contained in the new mandate could potentially mitigate any discounts that may be offered by ParkMobile.
At metered spots in the village, parkers will continue to pay 50 cents an hour and will have the choice to use quarters or ParkMobile. A 35-cent transaction fee is added for those using the new technology.
In places where meters will not be available, such as the Park & Ride on Route 17, commuters will be able to utilize ParkMobile, Ridgewood Parking Permits (RPP) or daily passes.
Boyd Loving, a South Irving Street resident, said the ordinance up for consideration would not allow for ParkMobile to reduce the transaction fee if they chose to do so in the future.
