” Let’s face it, empty nesters won’t be moving to Ridgewood, but they’ll be moving out. The village would need to accommodate more kids either way. It’s therefore reasonable that property taxes would keep creeping up. The best residents can do is closely monitor and influence village spending… and welcome newcomers by sharing best practices that made this place a desirable upper middle class destination in the first place. A passive aggressive approach doesn’t help anyone. And btw, many of NYC newcomers are conservatives, escaping liberal paradise of urban sprawl! You’ll be surprised – you may make some good friends with newcomers! “
” I think you can have background checks and supervision galore but how can you possibly know everything about a person? He’s a 27 year old guy using Tinder like so many others. It’s kind of scary in the sense that there’s NO way to know what people are doing or are really like. It’s too bad to have a stain on the RPD because in general it seems like we have a mostly good department. “
Ridgewood NJ, the Ridgewood Y Synchro Stars win big at the East Zone Invitational at Wheaton College this month. The team grabbed 10 First Place wins and several Second and Third Place wins. Check out all their hardware!
” I am certain there would be many fewer accidents if pedestrians would not assume that they can walk into any crosswalk without looking as they assume they always have the right of way–even when they are crossing on a red light. I can’t even count the times that the pedestrian is listening to his earphones and doesn’t even look one way before crossing. A car can be right in the midst of a turn or crossing to the other side of the street and the pedestrian–NOT limited to kids–just walks on. It definitely should be the pedestrian’s fault if he/she just walks out. I was there on the corner when a bicyclist kept going against the red light after several cars had already gone through the intersection. Luckily the motorist only hit her back tire but she could have been seriously injured. The responding Officer asked the girl “What in the world were you thinking? You had a red light.” The gIrl’s response “They always stop for me. I’m in the crosswalk.” This attitude just has to STOP! “
Ridgewood NJ, Voters! Please come on Monday, March 18 to GWMS or Tuesday, March 19 to BFMS, to learn about the proposed 2019-20 $111,000,000 Ridgewood school budget.
Presentations will be at 7 p.m. The public vote on the budget is Tuesday, April 16. Questions on the budget can be sent to [email protected].
Ridgewood NJ, Plein Air painting is about leaving the four walls of your studio behind and experiencing painting and drawing in the landscape. The practice goes back for centuries but was truly made into an art form by the French Impressionists. Their desire to paint light and its changing, ephemeral qualities, coupled with the creation of transportable paint tubes and the box easel—the precursor to the plein air easels of today—allowed artists the freedom to paint “en plein air,” which is the French expression for “in the open air”.
Are you kidding me. This is getting to be ridiculous now. There’s a lot of opportunities if one joins. Other countries you’re forced. Maybe that’s what this country needs for our high school graduates to go into the military for a good year to straighten them out teach them reality, and some common sense make them strong and tough not sissies.
Ridgewood NJ, According Super Cellars, with 2,000 years of wine growing history Bordeaux offers great value today. Bordeaux is one of the largest wine growing regions in the world and that size offers a great diversity of wines.
The Ridgewood blog is a huge fan of moderate priced Bordeaux’s.For years we have purchased them with surprising results . Great for the cold weather or with a most red meat dishes .
It Doesn’t Matter Whether Republicans or Democrats Win: the National Debt Keeps Rising
Stephen Moore / @StephenMoore / December 13, 2014
Sorry, but this one you can’t blame on either party. Yes, President Obama has made the problem much, much worse, but the scary truth is that the national debt keeps rising inexorably no matter who or which party is in office. That’s the new law of American politics.
When I first arrived in Washington in the early 1980s, the debt was roughly $2 trillion. This week, 30 years and five presidents later, the debt for the first time exceeded $18 trillion. We have been in the red in all but four of the last 40 years.
That’s $18,000,000,000,000. We all know that $18 million is a lot of money. This is $18 million times another million. The number is so gigantic we won’t or can’t try to fathom it.
Why worry? We owe it to ourselves, we’re told. The mighty American economy is big enough to absorb it. This country was built on debt. There is no better time to borrow than when interest rates are at a 40-year low.
There’s some truth in all these claims. Sure, we have a near–$18 trillion economy, but the problem is that the debt is outgrowing the economy. In just the last seven years — the last year of George W. Bush’s presidency and the first six of Obama’s — the debt has increased by roughly $7.4 trillion. That’s ten times the entire debt incurred in our first 200 years as a nation.
My view is that government debt isn’t inherently evil. The wisdom of borrowing depends on what you use the money for. We borrowed trillions (in today’s dollars) to win World War II. Surely that was worth it. We borrowed another $1.8 trillion during the Reagan years to finance winning the Cold War and rebuilding the private economy with growth-hormone tax cuts. That has clearly benefited future generations — so they should bear some of the cost.
But what we have bought with most of our debt of the last two decades has been a bigger, more expansive welfare state. Almost half of all American households, according to the Census Bureau, get a government check or some direct benefit from government today. More than one-third of households get some kind of unearned welfare.
Obama called his spend-and-borrow policies a “stimulus.” Really? What do we have to show for Obama’s debt? Solyndra. Forty-six million people on food stamps. The Obamacare debacle. Etc. Etc. This is one of only two times in American history (the post–Vietnam War era is the other) that we have opened up the flood gates on borrowing even as we have severely slashed the military budget.
Here is the biggest worry about an $18 trillion debt: What happens if/when interest rates start to drift back upward? Answer: This is the economic equivalent of the nuclear option.
Each 1-percentage-point rise in interest rates causes the U.S. deficit to rise by more than $1 trillion over ten years. So a 300-basis-point rise in rates — nothing more than a return to normalcy — would mean about $5 trillion in federal deficits.
If that happens, the debt-servicing costs grow astronomically and interest payments would become the biggest expense item in the budget. We start to pay more and more taxes just to finance past borrowing. This is what happened in Detroit; look at how that turned out.
Maybe this debt bubble won’t burst. Let’s pray that it doesn’t. If it does, the 2008–09 real-estate crash could look like a picnic by comparison.
The politicians think they are pulling a fast one here, but the vast majority of Americans feel in their gut that the economy is headed in the wrong direction, in no small part because of this debt time bomb. It explains why Barack Obama’s policies were so thoroughly routed during November’s midterm elections. A great nation doesn’t ring up unpaid bills month after month, year after year, decade after decade. The basic common sense of Americans tells us that you don’t borrow your way to prosperity.
Oh, and we’re still borrowing half a trillion a year, so the debt will likely hit $20 trillion sometime before 2018. Have a nice day.
FAC: “The status quo in Ridgewood is unsustainable from a financial perspective,”
WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 19, 2014, 10:36 AM
BY DARIUS AMOS
STAFF WRITER
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
Now that Ridgewood and Glen Rock have scrapped plans for a shared municipal vehicle repair facility, a team of economic gurus is advising the village to step back and conduct larger studies and explore more alternatives.
In its annual report to the Ridgewood Council, the Financial Advisory Committee acknowledged that the village’s existing fleet services building on Chestnut Street is in “decrepit condition,” and options other than constructing a new facility might be available.
Over the past year, an ad-hoc committee comprised of Ridgewood and Glen Rock officials had investigated moving the public works operations of both towns to a new shared facility. Last month, however, the site of the proposed project, which is located adjacent to the village’s water treatment plant in Glen Rock, was deemed too small to meet the needs of the two municipalities.
At a council meeting last month, Roberta Sonenfeld, FAC vice chair, recognized the ad-hoc committee’s desire to move quickly on the fleet services project, but she advised that even more research is required.
Cerf’s Out, Activists and Parents Look to Sink Common Core
NJTP
New Jersey Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf, who was a major proponent of Common Core curriculum is stepping down at the end of the month, according to a published report in the Bergen Record.
Carolee Adams, Eagle Forum President NJ, attributes the about-face to a concerted effort across the state to educate legislators, parents and NJ taxpayers on the perils of implementing the untested curriculum that violates traditional American values and privacy of students and their families with invasive data mining techniques.
Carolee and Tea Party activists across the state worked hard to turn back the progressive tide inherent in Common Core curriculum.
Thanks to those efforts, radical education activists lost their beach-head in NJ schools. No small accomplishment.
Chris Cerf to Step Down as New Jersey Commissioner of Education
Chris Cerf will be leaving office at the end of this month after three years as Gov. Chris Christie’s education commissioner, leaving behind big changes — and some tumult.
Appointed in late 2010, Cerf yesterday said he will join the educational software company led by his old boss, former New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein.
Cerf, who was deputy chancellor in New York under Klein, will serve as CEO of Amplify Insight, a division of Amplify Inc. The company is owned by News Corp., the media giant led by Rupert Murdoch.
He submitted his resignation earlier this month, effective March 1. No announcement has been made as to Cerf’s successor.
The department is expected to announce the resignation today, but Cerf yesterday confirmed the decision and said it came out of both his uncertainty about staying on for a second term and a job offer that was difficult to pass up. (Mooney/NJSpotlight)
RHS DECA had about 80 students qualify for the next round of competition
One hundred ninety RHS students went to Ramapo College in January and competed in the NJ DECA Regional Competition, consisting of team and individual scenario role-playing and testing, which was conducted prior to the event.
DECA prepares emerging leaders and entrepreneurs in marketing, finance, hospitality and management in high schools and colleges around the globe.
RHS DECA had about 80 students qualify for the next round of competition. In order to advance students need to place in the top 18 of all students competing in their event, and a student who placed top three on a test or role-play received an extra award for recognition of their accomplishments. In addition, three teams placed in the top 25 in the North Atlantic Region and have been invited to present their stock market portfolio at the International Conference held in Atlanta, Georgia in early May.
High cost of Common Core has states rethinking the national education standards
By Perry Chiaramonte
Published February 05, 2014
FoxNews.com
States are learning the cost of Common Core is uncommonly high.
The federally-backed standards initiative, first proposed by the nation’s governors and an educators’ association, seeks to impose a national standard for achievement among K-12 students. So far, 45 states plus the District of Columbia have signed on, with some implementing curriculum designed for the Common Core Standards Initiative during the current school year and the rest set to take part in the next school year. But several states are reconsidering their participation, and one big reason is the cost.
States will spend up to an estimated $10 billion up front, then as much as $800 million per year for the first seven years that the controversial program is up and running. Much of the cost is on new, Common Core-aligned textbooks and curriculum, but the added expenses also include teacher training, technology upgrades, testing and assessment. The figures are taking states by surprise
