Developer says Ferriero wasn’t the only consultant paid through Teaneck law firm
MARCH 11, 2015, 7:03 PM LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11, 2015, 9:56 PM
BY PETER J. SAMPSON
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
Former Bergen County Democratic leader Joseph A. Ferriero was not the only consultant whom the Mills Corp., the original developer of the former Xanadu complex, paid through a Teaneck law firm, a retired Mills Corp. executive testified Wednesday at Ferriero’s racketeering trial.
Under cross-examination for a second day, James Dausch said that Kay LiCausi, a former staffer of Sen. Bob Menendez, and the late Rep. Robert Roe also were paid by the Virginia-based Mills Corp. for lobbying or consulting services through the DeCotiis law firm.
Dausch testified that he believed the firm’s founder, M. Robert “Bob” DeCotiis, “tried to manage the consultants working on political stuff through his office” in order to maintain coordination of their actions.
From Mills’ point of view, Dausch added, the consultants’ bills would be easier to review if they were all listed on one monthly invoice from the law firm.
Ridgewood settles resident’s sewage ‘blowback’ case for almost $22,000
MARCH 11, 2015, 9:59 PM LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11, 2015, 10:04 PM
BY CHRIS HARRIS
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
RIDGEWOOD NJ— The village has agreed to pay $21,920 to settle a resident’s claim for repairs to her finished basement that flooded when the municipality cleared its sewer lines last September.
The settlement was approved Wednesday night by Mayor and Council.
Resident Jill Feeney said she reached out to village officials soon after discovering the carpet in her basement was soggy and stank.
“It literally smelled like the men’s room at Penn Station on a hot day,” Feeney said Wednesday, noting one foot of sewage-contaminated water was forced up through the drain in her basement’s sink by the village’s work.
As village crews worked to unclog a sewer line next to her Stevens Avenue home in September, Feeney said a pocket of pressurized air formed within a nearby sewer line — the pipe leading to her basement’s sink. The air escaped through the sink, and the contaminated water followed, tainting everything it touched.
Plumbers refer to this rare phenomenon as “blowback.”
N.J. Assemblywoman Schepisi recovering from brain aneurysm
MARCH 11, 2015, 2:39 PM LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11, 2015, 2:43 PM
BY DUSTIN RACIOPPI
STATE HO– USE BUREAU |
THE RECORD
Bergen County Assemblywoman Holly Schepisi is at home recovering from a brain aneurysm diagnosed over the weekend.
Schepisi, 43, said she had headaches and wasn’t feeling right for the last couple weeks. Her husband also had surgery during that time. Schepisi said she “kind of ignored my own symptoms.” On Saturday she went to the emergency room at Hackensack University Medical Center, where she was diagnosed with the aneurysm, which did not burst, she said. Schepisi underwent a series of tests and was released Tuesday night.
“I’m doing OK,” she said Wednesday. “Now I just need to consult with my doctors and get some rest.”
the Village of Ridgewood : If you See a Pothole Report the Pothole
Welcome to the Ridgewood Service Request System (RSR)
This website will allow the registered user to report specific categorized items to the correct departments. Once the item is reported, the submitted information will be copied to the user that has created request. Throughout the entire process, the user will receive status update emails pertaining to the request until it is resolved.
Currently the request that can be submitted will be pertaining to the following categories (additional categories will be added in the future):
-Potholes
The request:
Each request must have a:
Title (example: “Big Pothole”, “Multiple Potholes”, “Deep Pothole”, ect…).
Category – Currently Pothole is the only choice.
Address – (Location of pothole) Address can be entered with just street number and name of street (example: 131 N Maple Ave). The user can also enter the entire address (example: 131 N Maple Ave, Ridgewood, NJ, 07450). After the address is entered, use the “Find Address on Map” button below to pinpoint the area on the map. The map is interactive, and the user can define the exact location of the request by zooming in and dragging the red marker to the exact location.
Upload an Image – While this is not mandatory, it will help in providing information that can be useful in determining needed materials or extent of damages that require attention. Do not put yourself in harm’s way in order to take a photo.
Description – The more information the better. An estimate on the size of the pothole (examples: “12 inches irregular, about 6″ deep”; “Multiple large potholes in a cluster covering a 10 foot section of the road on the northbound lane”) and any other pertinent information would be helpful.
The website can be accessed on most devices and has been tested on: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Android (internet app), iPhone (safari app), and iPad (safari app). If you experience any issues with RSR, please email: [email protected]. Please provide as much information pertaining to the issue, time and date of when the issue occurred in order to assist us in troubleshooting the problem.
IMPORTANT NOTICE ABOUT RSR
RSR IS NOT AN EMERGENCY REPORTING SYSTEM. If your issue or concern involves an immediate risk to life or personal safety, CALL 9-1-1 IMMEDIATELY. RSR requests are reviewed during the Village’s regular business hours, Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. All requests will be reviewed and addressed in accordance with Village polices and within the limits of available resources.
WOW : Ridgewood BOE gives preliminary OK to $101M budget
MARCH 11, 2015, 6:47 PM LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11, 2015, 6:48 PM
BY CHRIS HARRIS
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
RIDGEWOOD — The Board of Education has preliminarily approved a $101 million budget for next school year that would raise taxes for the average village homeowner by nearly $200.
The proposed spending plan, which Ridgewood’s school board will submit to the county for review, includes a 2 percent local school tax levy increase.
Those who owned a home with the village’s average assessed value of $690,662 will pay $194.65 more in school taxes next year.
N.J. has no policy on officials’ use of personal emails nearly a year after call for a ban
MARCH 11, 2015, 11:32 PM LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11, 2015, 11:45 PM
BY MELISSA HAYES
STATE HO– USE BUREAU |
THE RECORD
Nearly a year before revelations that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used her personal email account for official business, the Christie administration was chastised because members of its own staff communicated through private emails. And that criticism came not from Governor Christie’s political foes, but from lawyers hired by his team to investigate the burgeoning George Washington Bridge lane-closing scandal.
The lawyers called for the administration to impose an immediate ban on the practice. After all, the most notorious email to emerge from the GWB scandal — the “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee” message that a deputy chief of staff sent to a Port Authority official — was written on her private email account.
Yet just shy of 12 months after the lawyers’ recommendation, which was contained in the so-called Mastro report on the lane closings, the state has yet to change its written policies on the use of such email accounts. In fact, the current policy on “electronic mail/messages” is silent when it comes to public workers doing state business on private email.
MARCH 11, 2015, 11:59 AM LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11, 2015, 12:10 PM
BY CHRIS HARRIS
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
RIDGEWOOD – A councilwoman with three sons in line for village police jobs claims several officials broke the law last month by meeting behind closed doors to discuss changes to Ridgewood’s residency requirement.
“This belonged in open session,” Councilwoman Susan Knudsen insisted at a recent council meeting, noting no specific village employee’s position was discussed during the closed-door meeting, but rather a policy relating to Ridgewood’s hiring practices.
“We did not follow the law,” Knudsen said. “That’s not an allegation, it’s a fact.”
But Village Attorney Matthew Rogers maintains officials acted appropriately, saying “the topic under discussion” by the council that evening “fit into the exceptions” outlined in the Open Public Meetings Act.
The village’s labor attorney also concluded the council did not violate the law.
“Generally, at the time the decision was made, it is my understanding there was reason to believe such discussions could impact upon the terms and conditions of employment of specific prospective employees or employee groups,” said Beth Hinsdale-Piller.
Reader says the Mayor and his two side kicks (the 3 amigos)are creating real damage to the Village
The real damage being done to the village is that at public VC meetings, non-amigo council members are being blatantly and unnecessarily marginalized, and not simply by virtue of the fact that they are in the minority, and the measures they end up opposing are being passed over their objections. Nobody relishes the sense that their arguments were not persuasive, or that their concerns were not shared by their colleagues.
No, the new and much more damaging development is the trend of non-amigo dissenters being so blatantly and systematically personally misused and marginalized. More and more often, we find, that when an important issue or potential policy or statutory change is beginning to be considered by the Village Council, non-Amigo VC members are being intentionally kept out of the loop during substantive face-to-face meetings, telephone calls and email exchanges during which important village business is being discussed. Many of these events involve one or two Amigos, thereby representing a violation of the spirit, if not also the letter, of the Sunshine Law but some represent clear violations because they involve all three Amigos.
For example, former Councilwoman Walsh was CONSTANTLY being kept completely in the dark by all three Amigos during the run up to contemplated policy or statutory changes (as was Councilman Riche, BTW). In fact, this is the very issue she was complaining about, on the record at a public VC meeting, when the current Mayor, apparently feeling the heat and wishing to lash out and intimidate his recalcitrant colleague, accused her, without any basis in the facts or the law, of using the influence of her position on the VC to try to fix her own parking ticket. This is classic uncivil mud slinging.
Another example of this corrosive and damaging behavior is when the two Amigos were enthusiastically participating in their official capacity in the first ‘civility forum’, thinking they were in the clear, and the third Amigo unexpectedly showed up and used the public microphone to officiously advance the Amigo agenda, thereby pushing the meeting, already arguably covered by the Public Meetings Act (Sunshine Law), very clearly into that category. This shows contempt for the law. More distinctly uncivil behavior.
A third example, very recent, is when a typical up-to-no-good Amigo seemingly intentionally and deviously misled Councilwoman Knudsen into believing she needed to recuse herself from a VC work session relating to proposed changes to a law relating to village hiring practices because of her relationship to two pending local job applicants when the law required no such thing. Only after the meeting took place and Ms. Knudsen read the transcript did she determine the very wrong turn done to her by her VC colleague. Where does this behavior fall on the civility scale?
of course, the practice of figuratively knee-capping non-Amigos is not necessarily restricted to attacks on current VC colleages. This is a reality to which current Councilman Sedon can attest, having been forced to choose between his job as a reporter at a Staten Island newspaper and his continued candidacy for a seat on the Village council after an as-yet-unnamed individual apparently maliciously reached out to the editor and suggested that an unavoidable conflict of interest existed (hmm…seems like a pattern…). Can anyone think of something more uncivil than this, short of unjustified physical violence?
These developments constitute real damage because they suggest that anyone who, for whatever reason, opposes or threatens to oppose any current or future Three Amigos policy position or priority, will pay a heavy and a very personal price for their unauthorized dissent. Good potential VC candidates are presumably also intelligent and reasonably savvy and could very well be intimidated into refraining for throwing their hat into the ring in the first place. Moreover, effective, honest, well-meaning and therefore objectivey valuable current VC members are understandably caused by such behavior to re-think their continued participation in local government, meaning that they might not seek re-election when their term as Council member expires.
Menendez and Kerry spar over context of war resolution
By Max Pizarro | 03/11/15 10:00am
Against the backdrop of U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez’s (D-N.J.) squiring Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu into the U.S. Capitol to slap at President Barack Obama and a subsequent leaking of an alleged corruption indictment against Menendez, New Jersey’s senior senator and Obama’s chief diplomat this morning sparred over the President’s request for a Congressional authorization for use of force.
Appearing in his role as ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Menendez told Secretary of State John Kerry that he wants hard answers on the conditions of an Authorization for use of Military Force to combat the ISIS terrorist group.
“I look forward to getting some answers from our witnesses that will allow us to move forward in writing and passing an authorization,” said Menendez. “But, we need to know what combat operations may be undertaken by U.S. troops on the ground in Syria and Iraq. We need to know whether associated forces that come under this agreement could include forces affiliated with ISIL in Libya, Nigeria or elsewhere. We need to know whether a new Administration could revert to relying on 2001 AUMF in three years if this AUMF, if passed, were to expire and we need to know how long we expect to be there and what our exit strategy will be. What metrics will indicate success or tell us it’s time to bring troops home?”
Menendez pointedly noted his opposition in the House of Representatives to the 2001 war resolution that mired the United States in Iraq. Kerry, then a U.S. Senator, backed that war resolution 14 years ago.
NJ Transit chief: Will try to hold hikes to single digits
MARCH 11, 2015, 11:03 AM LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11, 2015, 4:38 PM
BY DAVID PORTER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEWARK — Rail and bus commuters facing potential fare hikes likely won’t see increases as high as they did in 2010 when fares rose an average of more than 20 percent, the head of the North Jersey Transportation Authority said Wednesday.
Executive Director Ronnie Hakim told board members that a looming $80 million budget gap is forcing her to look at all options, including fare increases. She said that if increases become necessary, her goal is to make them less burdensome for commuters.
The last fare hikes averaged 22 percent across the system and were accompanied by service cuts and the elimination of off-peak discounts.
What happened in 2010 “was very harsh for our customers and we’re doing everything to significantly avoid any recommendation remotely like that,” she said. “So I would like to stay in the single digits.”
In an accident of timing, Hakim’s comments came on a day when four of NJ Transit’s rail lines were suspended temporarily, with two of the suspensions occurring during the morning commute — one due to police and fire activity and another due to a trespasser fatality on the tracks.
New Jersey’s Supremes direct trial courts to manage affordable housing
Posted by Matt Rooney On March 10, 2015
By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog
Assemblyman Greg McGuckin voiced frustration on Tuesday afternoon, Save Jerseyans, after our state Supreme Court gave trial courts jurisdiction over affordable housing in the Garden State.
Click here to read the Opinion of Justice LaVecchia.
“Once again, our Supreme Court has decided that the elected branch of government will not set housing policy in our state, but instead it will be done by the courts,” said McGuckin, R-Ocean. “I urge my Assembly colleagues to immediately pass A-4124, introduced last month by Assemblyman (Dave) Rible and myself. The measure protects municipalities, which have not historically discriminated against low and moderate income residents, from the oncoming barrage of builder’s remedy lawsuits. Towns that have not committed a constitutional violation should not be forced to provide a constitutional remedy.”
New Jersey’s affordable housing guidelines expired in 1999. Litigation commenced last year when COAHfailed to issue new rules by November 2014 as mandated by the Supreme Court. Gov. Christie continues to run into court-imposed roadblocks on this issue and others, too, notably on the pension front (and most recently on the eve of his FY 2016 budget address).
Americans between the ages of 16 and 34 fared poorly on tests designed to measure their grasp of the literacy, numeracy, and computer-age problem-solving skills needed to compete in the international labor market. Even the youngest of U.S. millenials lag behind peers in other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries.
U.S. Millennials Come Up Short in Global Skills Study
Shortfalls affect all segments of American society
By Sarah D. Sparks
America’s wealthiest and best-educated young adults still lag behind their peers in other countries in the literacy, numeracy, and computer-age problem-solving skills needed to compete in the global labor market.
That, coupled with yawning racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps and even grimmer skills levels for students with less than a college degree, could lead to long-term difficulty for the country, according to a new study by the Education Testing ServiceCenter for Research on Human Capital and Education in Lawrenceville, N.J.
It’s far from the first study to suggest American students are falling behind their international peers. But the analysis of U.S. millennials—those born after 1980, ages 16 to 34 during the study—specifically highlights that the skills gap goes beyond young people who are typically seen as more “at-risk,” like immigrants and high school dropouts.
“We’ve often looked at these as disconnected, only looking at the problems of individual parts,” said Martha J. Kanter, a visiting professor of higher education at New York University and former assistant education secretary under President Barack Obama. She was not associated with the study.
Composer and musician Darryl Kubian, whose work will be performed by the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. Photo courtesy of NJSO/Dan Dutcher.
Ridgewood Composer in NJSO Spotlight
March 09, 2015 05:00 AM ET | Gregory Moomjy
Darryl Kubian is a rarity. The New Jersey native, who lives in Pompton Lakes, is both composer and working musician. His work as a composer will be highlighted in March, when the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra premieres O for a Muse of Fire, Kubian’s concert overture based on Shakespeare’s Henry V.
This is the second of Kubian’s compositions to be premiered by the NJSO. The concert will also feature Tchaikovsky’s swan song, Symphony No. 6, Pathétiqueand Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. O for a Muse of Fire is the last installment in this season’s New Jersey Roots Project, a program, now in its fifth season, that spotlights talented musical voices from New Jersey’s past and present.
Larger than life questions and ideas attract Kubian to composition. His first piece for the NJSO, 3-2-1, which the orchestra debuted in the 2007-2008 season, is a vision of the universe expanding and contracting as discussed in an article inScientific American. Both works tackle large questions, whether it is our place in the universe or the extent of a king’s power. The new work dramatizes the Battle of Agincourt, which cemented Henry V as the king of England and France. A king’s ability to send people to their death lies at the center of the work and according to Kubian, what relates the piece to the concert as a whole, “it’s a relationship about death [King] Henry has to make the decision to send people to die.”
MARCH 11, 2015 LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11, 2015, 1:21 AM
BY MELANIE ANZIDEI
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
* Up to $1 million could be raised for a start-up through small pledges
Small businesses and start-ups in New Jersey soon may have another avenue for reaching investors.
Legislation approved by the Assembly on Monday would enable emerging small businesses and start-ups to find investors through crowdfunding, a technique very much like an online fundraiser. The bill defines the process as the financing of a business venture using the Internet to raise small amounts of money from a larger number of investors.
The legislation, which passed 75-0 with one abstention, would allow businesses to invite small investors to offer capital through a pledge. Once pledges for a project reached a predetermined limit, the businesses would move forward with the funding. The funds will be released only if the target amount is reached.
To Mario Casabona, founder and chief executive officer of Tech Launch — a technology start-up accelerator in Clifton — crowdfunding offers an alternative way for start-ups to gain access to capital.
“It’s a good thing for entrepreneurs,” enabling more investors to fund a business, he said in a phone interview Tuesday. But, he added, “it doesn’t make it easier.”
