>With more people fleeing the state ,New Jersey is projected to lose one House seat
By the latest estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau New Jersey’s population stagnated and the state is likely to lose one congressional seat for the 2012 election. New Jersey’s estimated population is 8,707,739 only up 3.5%, not enough to keep the state’s thirteenth seat. That would increase the size of each district from 647,258 in 2002 to 725,645 in 2012 and unless someone retires, New Jersey will either see an incumbent vs. incumbent general election, or an incumbent vs. incumbent in a primary.
Congratulations to the folks in Trenton for continuing to drive working families out of the state !
Dear Friends , Wishing you and your family lots of health ,wealth and happiness for the new year .
I want to take this opportunity to personally thank you for all the referrals and new business that we have received this year. And I look forward to working with you in the future and hope we can continue to grow our businesses at an even faster pace.
Dec. 23 (Bloomberg) — The Congressional Budget Office challenged claims by health-care overhaul proponents that Medicare savings in Senate legislation would help finance expanded coverage and postpone the bankruptcy of the medical program for the elderly.
The nonpartisan agency said the $246 billion it projected the legislation would save Medicare can’t both finance new programs and help pay future expenses for elderly covered under the federal program.
Nor could those savings be used to extend the solvency of Medicare, set to run out of money in 2017, the budget office said in a letter to Senate Republicans.
“What we’ve seen is a colossal manipulation” by Democrats “of the accounting scores of CBO” and the independent actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, said Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, the Republican who requested the analysis from CBO. He called the letter “a potential game-changer.”
The estimated Medicare savings in the legislation overstate “the improvement in the government’s fiscal position,” the CBO said in the letter.
“The true increase in the ability to pay for future Medicare benefits or other programs would be a good deal smaller,” the budget office said.
>OK – so let’s get this story right. Mr. Clifford Holmes, a homeless man, found refuge in a Church and he decided to have a bit of a rest and he fell asleep in this “Christian” Church. Because he was homeless, which is totally uncommon in this town, his presence was not wanted and so somebody at the Church decided to call the police to have him removed.
He wrestled with the police and went to grab the gun of a police officer, not a very smart move on Mr. Holmes behalf, but look at the over all picture here. The guy is homeless, and he sought refuge in a Church during one of the coldest weeks that we have had this year. What was the Church thinking? Calling the police to have a homeless person removed? If Mr. Holmes was asleep, it is obvious that he was not causing any harm nor was he a danger to anybody while he slept in the warmest shelter he could find. The police officers in this town are not accustomed to dealing with homeless people, most, if not all of whom have many underlying issues, including drug and alcohol addiction or mental illness. While probably not reflective of everybody’s views, these people should command care, sympathy and tolerance by us “Christians” if they are causing us or our property no harm.
We are supposedly celebrating Christmas this week and this whole story doesn’t have that feeling of Christmas spirit in it. For those Christians amongst us that know the story of the birth of Christ and how his own parents were turned away by numerous inn keepers until they were directed to a manger, primarily used as an eating trough for animals, I now believe that Mr. Holmes has found his modern day manger, i.e. Bergen County Jail. In his manger, Mr. Holmes will be given food, clothes, and shelter, much more than was offered to him by this “Christian” Church in Ridgewood.
Let’s look at the recent past of our Christian leaders in this area and surrounding towns and counties. We had a Church leader who mowed down a pedestrian and her young child while crossing at an intersection in Ridgewood. That specific Church leader tried to blame the victims of that incident and I wouldn’t be surprised if that Church leader tried to use the influential status of the Church to get away with some very serious crimes, including the use of a vehicle that had not be properly registered in this state.
Then we had a priest charged with sexual assault of an elderly woman when he made her fondle him. That issue was dealt with by the state judicial system but the Catholic Diocese of Newark has not formally moved to have that animal defrocked.
Then we have the Mr. Holmes saga – enough said on that.
Is it any wonder why we now have our town’s holiday tree decorated with garbage? Based on the recent lack of Christian fundamentals as shown by our Christian spiritual leaders I think that garbage on the town’s holiday tree is an appropriate reflection of those leaders’ personal teachings and behaviors this year.
I wish all a happy Christmas, not just a select few.
The celebration of Festivus begins with Airing of Grievances, which takes place immediately after the Festivus dinner has been served. It consists of lashing out at others and the world about how one has been disappointed in the past year. Every household has its own traditions; in one house, the Airing of Grievances consisted of writing the grievances on the fridge in marker.
add your Grievances in the comment section of this post!
Dec. 22 (Bloomberg) — Bond ratings of New Jersey towns and cities are being reduced faster than in any other state as property values slide 11 percent and Governor Jon Corzine lowers municipal aid to cope with a $1 billion budget deficit.
Moody’s Investors Service cut ratings on $592 million in general obligation debt issued by 14 municipalities since October, about four times the rate for neighboring New York, the second-most indebted state, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. New Jersey’s per-capita personal income of $51,358 last year was exceeded only by Connecticut, according to the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis.
With the U.S. jobless rate hovering around 10 percent and tax revenue dwindling, the downgrades in New Jersey, the most- densely populated state, may be the start of a national trend, according to Richard Ciccarone, chief research officer at McDonnell Investment Management in Oak Brook, Illinois. Nine of 10 finance officers polled by the National League of Cities in September said it would be difficult to meet their fiscal needs in 2010, the worst outlook in 24 years.
“In many of the large states, this is going to become the norm: California, New York, New Jersey and Illinois,” said Ciccarone, whose firm oversees $6.8 billion in municipal bonds, including New Jersey debt. “The stress levels have got to be very high right now for municipal fiscal officials.”
Strained Budgets
New Jersey’s downgrades reflect local budgets straining under a cap on property-tax increases and lowered state funding, according to Moody’s. The New York-based firm cited these factors, along with a drawdown of surplus cash, in cutting its rating Dec. 4 on $113 million in debt issued by Woodbridge Township, the state’s sixth-largest municipality. The grade was lowered one level to A1, the fifth-highest, from Aa3.
Moody’s also lowered its rating on $71.3 million in debt issued by Irvington, a suburb of Newark where a fifth of schoolchildren between five and 17 live in poverty and the unemployment rate is 1.4 percentage points above the state’s 9.7 percent rate.
The firm on Dec. 17 cut the debt rating to Ba1, one level below investment grade, from Baa3, and said it may lower it further, citing concerns over how the town will close a $12 million budget gap and make up for a $50 million, or 1.7 percent, decrease in its tax base over the past two years.
“This is a reality that cities are facing across the country,” said Irvington Mayor Wayne Smith, 52, a Democrat who serves as president of the state’s urban mayors association. He said the city plans to cut the deficit in half by furloughing about half of its 600 employees once a month until the end of the fiscal year and selling a shuttered hospital.
Highest Taxes
New Jersey’s average $7,045 property tax in 2008 was the nation’s highest and 25 percent above the 2004 average of $5,617, according to the state Department of Community Affairs.
The median sale price of an existing home dropped to $322,700 in the third quarter from $364,500 in the same period in 2008, according to data from the New Jersey Association of Realtors. The number of tax appeals by homeowners increased more than 50 percent this year to 17,704, from 11,677 in 2008, according to state data.
“New Jersey’s local governments are certainly under pressure right now,” said Elizabeth Bergman, the lead Moody’s analyst covering New Jersey’s municipalities. “They continue to have rising expenditures and falling revenue opportunities.”
>Rep. Scott Garrett : Who Received Special Deals in the Senate Bill?
Washington, Dec 22 –
Yes we need a little Christmas, right this very minute, candles in the window, payoffs in the Senate…
Just when you thought secret deals with the industry, closed-door meetings and Chicago-style backroom politics couldn’t get any worse… they did. According to Reid, “A number of states are treated differently than other states. That’s what legislation’s all about: compromise.” Really? Rather than thoughtful policy, H.R. 3590 is the result of Democrat desperation and includes countless political handouts. In an effort to meet an artificial holiday deadline, the bill itself has come to look like a Christmas tree with goodies for all Democrat holdouts.
While over 10 states receive special deals, Senators from neglected states should be appalled, as their home state constituents will wind up paying for those “sweetheart deals” in other states, resulting in higher costs for their already-strapped Medicaid programs.
Below are highlights of the new special deals or earmarks bartered away to win Senate votes:
The bill contains unfunded mandates to states through the expansion of Medicaid but this time with new special treatment for the states of Nebraska, Vermont, and Massachusetts. These states will receive Federal Matching Assistance Percentages (FMAP) bonuses such that:
Nebraska will receive 100% FMAP for newly eligibles indefinitely, making it the only state where the federal government will pay for all new enrollees. CBO estimated the cost to the federal government (additional funds to Nebraska) would be $100 million, which may look small compared to the other deals negotiated, yet over the long-term will cost far more, since funding continues indefinitely.
Vermont will receive a 2.2% FMAP increase for 6 years for their entire program, thus receiving an additional $600 million over ten years.
Massachusetts will receive a 0.5% FMAP increase for three years for the entire program, thus receiving an additional $500 million over ten years.
Despite $120 billion in Medicare Advantage cuts, the Manager’s Amendment found a way for Florida residents, as well as some individuals in Pennsylvania and New York, and potentially Oregon, to be grandfathered out of receiving the cuts.
Dorgan and Conrad’s “protections for frontier states” provision would, starting in 2011, establish a 1.0 hospital wage index and geographic practice expense floors for hospitals and physicians located in states where at least 50% of the counties in the state are “frontier”. Not surprisingly, states that qualify and benefit from this increase in Medicare payments to hospitals and doctors are Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming.
Of the many problems with these “sweetheart” deals, is the door it leaves wide open for more federal involvement and financing of state-based entitlement programs. Sen. Harkin said it best when he stated “In 2017, as you know, when we have to start phasing back from 100%, and going down to 98%, they are going to say, ’Wait, there is one state that stays at 100?’ And every governor in the country is going to say, ‘Why doesn’t our state stay there?’…When you look at it, I thought well, god, good, it is going to be the impetus for all the states to stay at 100%. So he [Nelson] might have done all of us a favor.”
Changes for Sen. Ben Nelson (Nebraska):
Nelson secured more than just 100% federal funding for Nebraska’s Medicaid expansion, the list of “sweeteners” (also called the “Cornhusker kickback” by Senate Republicans) includes:
An exemption from the insurance tax for Nebraska non-profit insurers, with language written in a way that only applies to Mutual of Omaha Insurance Company and Blue Cross Blue Shield Plans (BCBS) of Nebraska (and Michigan). According to news reports, Nelson’s office states that BCBS “would pay between $15 million and $20 million less in fees under the Senate bill than it would have without a change.”
An exemption from taxes for Medicare supplemental (“Medigap”) insurance providers. Specifically, Mutual of Omaha, will not have to pay taxes on Medigap insurance, while reports also indicate that this tax break will be extended to other companies.
Some changes requested by Nelson would benefit people across the country, such as the inflation adjustment to the $2,500 cap on tax-exempt contributions to Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs) and exemptions for nearly 55 physician-owned hospitals that have a provider agreement to participate in Medicare by August 1, 2010 (pushed back from February 1, 2010).
Changes for Sen. Levin (Michigan):
According to reports, Like Nelson, Levin sought an exemption from the $6 billion annual fee for non-profits, as non-profit insurers make up 76% of industry profits, but drew opposition from liberals. Ultimately, Levin got an exemption from the insurance tax for Michigan non-profit insurers, with language written in a way that applies to Blue Cross Blue Shield Plans (BCBS) of Michigan (and Nebraska).
Furthermore, the amendment changes the extension of section 508 hospital provisions so that hospitals in Michigan (as well as Connecticut) have the option to benefit under them if it means higher payments.
Changes for Sen. Landrieu (Louisiana): Landrieu was one of the first Senators to secure a sweetheart deal, aptly nicknamed the “Louisiana Purchase”; she traded her support for bringing the bill to the floor for a $300 million increase in Medicaid funding for Louisiana. The underlying bill was cryptically written to increase federal Medicaid subsidies for “certain states recovering from a major disaster” during the past 7 years that have been declared a “major disaster area” — and is meant to replenish the decrease in federal money resulting from an “abnormally inflated” per capita income in Louisiana following Hurricane Katrina. This was due to an influx of insurance dollars, federal grants and increased labor wages.
Changes for Sen. Sanders (Vermont): In addition the Vermont FMAP increase, the amendment includes a provision pushed by Sanders to provide an additional $10 billion in funding for community health centers and the National Health Services Corps which he argues would provide primary care to 25 million more people.
Changes for Sen. Bill Nelson (Florida): As noted above, Nelson was able to secure a deal to keep Medicare Advantage plans enrollees in Florida grandfathered in. Notably, when McCain tried to offer an amendment to allow all enrollees to be grandfathered in, 57 Democrats voted against it.
Changes for Hawaii: The Manager’s Amendment singles out Hawaii as the only state to receive a Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) extension.
Changes for Sen. Lieberman (Connecticut): It amends the extension of section 508 hospital provisions so that hospitals in Connecticut (as well as Michigan) have the option to benefit under them if it means higher payments.
Changes for Sen. Dodd (Connecticut): It was a mystery until just revealed that Chris Dodd’s state will benefit from a cryptically awarded $100 million for a “Health Care Facility” at a public research university that contains a state’s sole public academic medical and dental school—criteria designed to apply to the University of Connecticut.
Changes for Sen. Baucus (Montana): Baucus secured a pilot program in the amendment to “provide innovative approaches to furnishing comprehensive, coordinated, and cost-effective care” to certain qualified individuals. A qualified individual “is an environmental exposure affected individual…who resides in or around the geographic area subject to an emergency declaration made as of June 17, 2009.” And who might these select few individuals be? Well, according to EPA, “On June 17, 2009, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson issued a Public Health Emergency (PHE) finding at the Libby Asbestos Superfund site in northwest Montana.” This provision would help residents of Libby by allowing them to sign up for Medicare benefits.
Democratic Rep. Parker Griffith announced Tuesday that he’s switching parties – saying he can no longer align himself “with a party that continues to pursue legislation that is bad for our country, hurts our economy and drives us further and further into debt.”
“Unfortunately there are those in the Democratic Leadership that continue to push an agenda focused on massive new spending, tax increases, bailouts and a health care bill that is bad for our healthcare system,” Griffith said in a statement. “I have always considered myself to be an independent voice and I have tried to be that voice in Congress – but after watching this agenda firsthand I now believe that the differences in the two parties could not be more clear and that for me to be true to my core beliefs and values I must align myself with the Republican party and speak out clearly on these issues.
• Health costs. From the outset, the White House’s core claim was that reform would reduce health costs for individuals and businesses, and they’re sticking to that story. “Anyone who says otherwise simply hasn’t read the bills,” Mr. Obama said over the weekend. This is so utterly disingenuous that we doubt the President really believes it.
The best and most rigorous cost analysis was recently released by the insurer WellPoint, which mined its actuarial data in various regional markets to model the Senate bill. WellPoint found that a healthy 25-year-old in Milwaukee buying coverage on the individual market will see his costs rise by 178%. A small business based in Richmond with eight employees in average health will see a 23% increase. Insurance costs for a 40-year-old family with two kids living in Indianapolis will pay 106% more. And on and on.
These increases are solely the result of ObamaCare—above and far beyond the status quo—because its strict restrictions on underwriting and risk-pooling would distort insurance markets. All but a handful of states have rejected regulations like “community rating” because they encourage younger and healthier buyers to wait until they need expensive care, increasing costs for everyone. Benefits and pricing will now be determined by politics.
As for the White House’s line about cutting costs by eliminating supposed “waste,” even Victor Fuchs, an eminent economist generally supportive of ObamaCare, warned last week that these political theories are overly simplistic. “The oft-heard promise ‘we will find out what works and what does not’ scarcely does justice to the complexity of medical practice,” the Stanford professor wrote.
• Steep declines in choice and quality. This is all of a piece with the hubris of an Administration that thinks it can substitute government planning for market forces in determining where the $33 trillion the U.S. will spend on medicine over the next decade should go.
This centralized system means above all fewer choices; what works for the political class must work for everyone. With formerly private insurers converted into public utilities, for instance, they’ll inevitably be banned from selling products like health savings accounts that encourage more cost-conscious decisions.
Unnoticed by the press corps, the Congressional Budget Office argued recently that the Senate bill would so “substantially reduce flexibility in terms of the types, prices, and number of private sellers of health insurance” that companies like WellPoint might need to “be considered part of the federal budget.”
With so large a chunk of the economy and medical practice itself in Washington’s hands, quality will decline. Ultimately, “our capacity to innovate and develop new therapies would suffer most of all,” as Harvard Medical School Dean Jeffrey Flier recently wrote in our pages. Take the $2 billion annual tax—rising to $3 billion in 2018—that will be leveled against medical device makers, among the most innovative U.S. industries. Democrats believe that more advanced health technologies like MRI machines and drug-coated stents are driving costs too high, though patients and their physicians might disagree.
“The Senate isn’t hearing those of us who are closest to the patient and work in the system every day,” Brent Eastman, the chairman of the American College of Surgeons, said in a statement for his organization and 18 other speciality societies opposing ObamaCare. For no other reason than ideological animus, doctor-owned hospitals will face harsh new limits on their growth and who they’re allowed to treat. Physician Hospitals of America says that ObamaCare will “destroy over 200 of America’s best and safest hospitals.”
• Blowing up the federal fisc. Even though Medicare’s unfunded liabilities are already about 2.6 times larger than the entire U.S. economy in 2008, Democrats are crowing that ObamaCare will cost “only” $871 billion over the next decade while fantastically reducing the deficit by $132 billion, according to CBO.
Yet some 98% of the total cost comes after 2014—remind us why there must absolutely be a vote this week—and most of the taxes start in 2010. That includes the payroll tax increase for individuals earning more than $200,000 that rose to 0.9 from 0.5 percentage points in Mr. Reid’s final machinations. Job creation, here we come.
Other deceptions include a new entitlement for long-term care that starts collecting premiums tomorrow but doesn’t start paying benefits until late in the decade. But the worst is not accounting for a formula that automatically slashes Medicare payments to doctors by 21.5% next year and deeper after that. Everyone knows the payment cuts won’t happen but they remain in the bill to make the cost look lower. The American Medical Association’s priority was eliminating this “sustainable growth rate” but all they got in return for their year of ObamaCare cheerleading was a two-month patch snuck into the defense bill that passed over the weekend.
The truth is that no one really knows how much ObamaCare will cost because its assumptions on paper are so unrealistic. To hide the cost increases created by other parts of the bill and transfer them onto the federal balance sheet, the Senate sets up government-run “exchanges” that will subsidize insurance for those earning up to 400% of the poverty level, or $96,000 for a family of four in 2016. Supposedly they would only be offered to those whose employers don’t provide insurance or work for small businesses.
As Eugene Steuerle of the left-leaning Urban Institute points out, this system would treat two workers with the same total compensation—whatever the mix of cash wages and benefits—very differently. Under the Senate bill, someone who earned $42,000 would get $5,749 from the current tax exclusion for employer-sponsored coverage but $12,750 in the exchange. A worker making $60,000 would get $8,310 in the exchanges but only $3,758 in the current system.
For this reason Mr. Steuerle concludes that the Senate bill is not just a new health system but also “a new welfare and tax system” that will warp the labor market. Given the incentives of these two-tier subsidies, employers with large numbers of lower-wage workers like Wal-Mart may well convert them into “contractors” or do more outsourcing. As more and more people flood into “free” health care, taxpayer costs will explode.
• Political intimidation. The experts who have pointed out such complications have been ignored or dismissed as “ideologues” by the White House. Those parts of the health-care industry that couldn’t be bribed outright, like Big Pharma, were coerced into acceding to this agenda. The White House was able to, er, persuade the likes of the AMA and the hospital lobbies because the federal government will control 55% of total U.S. health spending under ObamaCare, according to the Administration’s own Medicare actuaries.
Others got hush money, namely Nebraska’s Ben Nelson. Even liberal Governors have been howling for months about ObamaCare’s unfunded spending mandates: Other budget priorities like education will be crowded out when about 21% of the U.S. population is on Medicaid, the joint state-federal program intended for the poor. Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman calculates that ObamaCare will result in $2.5 billion in new costs for his state that “will be passed on to citizens through direct or indirect taxes and fees,” as he put it in a letter to his state’s junior Senator.
So in addition to abortion restrictions, Mr. Nelson won the concession that Congress will pay for 100% of Nebraska Medicaid expansions into perpetuity. His capitulation ought to cost him his political career, but more to the point, what about the other states that don’t have a Senator who’s the 60th vote for ObamaCare?
*** “After a nearly century-long struggle we are on the cusp of making health-care reform a reality in the United States of America,” Mr. Obama said on Saturday. He’s forced to claim the mandate of “history” because he can’t claim the mandate of voters. Some 51% of the public is now opposed, according to National Journal’s composite of all health polling. The more people know about ObamaCare, the more unpopular it becomes.
The tragedy is that Mr. Obama inherited a consensus that the health-care status quo needs serious reform, and a popular President might have crafted a durable compromise that blended the best ideas from both parties. A more honest and more thoughtful approach might have even done some good. But as Mr. Obama suggested, the Democratic old guard sees this plan as the culmination of 20th-century liberalism.
So instead we have this vast expansion of federal control. Never in our memory has so unpopular a bill been on the verge of passing Congress, never has social and economic legislation of this magnitude been forced through on a purely partisan vote, and never has a party exhibited more sheer political willfulness that is reckless even for Washington or had more warning about the consequences of its actions.
These 60 Democrats are creating a future of epic increases in spending, taxes and command-and-control regulation, in which bureaucracy trumps innovation and transfer payments are more important than private investment and individual decisions. In short, the Obama Democrats have chosen change nobody believes in—outside of themselves—and when it passes America will be paying for it for decades to come.
>North Jersey towns use cell towers to boost budgets
Overgrown evergreens. Flagless flagpoles. Cell towers are decidedly ugly.
But they are an attractive source of revenue for several North Jersey towns.
Waldwick will collect $220,000 this year from two towers on public property. And the borough is finalizing three new leases, which will add another $91,000 in cell tower revenue for 2010.
Hawthorne raked in $196,000 by the end of last month and has just added two tenants — sending even more cash into the budget next year.
“We’re very happy to have it,” said Eric Maurer, Hawthorne’s borough administrator. “It’s the only revenue that’s going up.” As the economy sputters along, municipalities are falling victim to purse tightening by residents and businesses. Construction fees in many towns are down as building and remodeling slow. Budget surpluses are thinner and the interest rates banks are paying on them are weaker. Hotel taxes are reduced as travel is less frequent. And state aid is being continually cut.
“I think the times demand it,” said Michael Cerra, senior legislative analyst for the New Jersey State League of Municipalities. “Every nickel that can be raised by alternative revenue sources is a nickel the towns don’t have to go to the taxpayers for.” The league, he said, has been addressing the issue of cell towers for years through its magazine, conference and half-day seminars.
“This isn’t new,” he said. “Cell towers have been around for 10-plus years. But it stands to reason that in times like these, any option is going to be looked at two or three times.”
As towns turn to wireless companies to plug holes in their budgets, the wireless carriers are just as eager to do business.
“The handsets being sold today are more akin to a mini-computer,” said Brian Josef, director of regulatory affairs for CTIA, known as the International Association for the Wireless Telecommunications Industry. “They have enabled incredible data capabilities.”
These devices — which include iPhones and BlackBerrys — are causing a “flood of demand and consumption,” he said. “The industry is trying to rush to keep up with subscriber usage. As more and more subscribers are using more of the radio frequency spectrum, they need the infrastructure to handle that.”
The Pew Research Center found that one-third of Americans have used a cellphone or smart phone to access the Internet. On a typical day, 19 percent of Americans use the Internet on a mobile device. Two years ago, 11 percent did.
A representative from T-Mobile — which just signed a contract with Waldwick to pay $29,985 next year for space on a tower at the DPW garage — said in a statement that a lot of work goes into deciding where and if a new wireless facility is required.
“T-Mobile analyzes many criteria, including network performance data, customer feedback and real-time drive test data,” Jane Builder, Northeast senior manager of external affairs, said. “Once we’ve determined a new facility is needed, a T-Mobile team evaluates potential sites throughout the area to identify the option from a scientific, zoning, leasing, construction and permitting perspective.”
Builder added that the company partners with local governments whenever possible.
“Communities are able to generate additional revenue, while ensuring a more reliable emergency network to handle the growing number of E911 calls,” she said.
Not every town sold
Still, not all towns are chasing cell company contracts.
Allendale, for instance, has one tower at Crestwood Lake. It brings in $50,000 from five or six carriers leasing space on it. “Fifty thousand dollars on a $12 million budget certainly is not going to save the day,” Mayor Vince Barra said. “But, basically, we have what we can accommodate.”
That tower is now maxed out – meaning that the placement of antennae, spread several feet apart, leave only lower spots available on the tower, which would not prove useful to enhance a carrier’s service.
As for putting up another tower to gain more revenue, Barra said that’s unlikely. “I don’t want to go to the point of having cell towers all over town,” he said. “I don’t think people in town would want that. You don’t want to put it in somebody’s neighborhood.”
There’s no shortage of controversy, with not-in-my-backyard battles being fought across the area.
Ridgewood, which shares a tower with Glen Rock at a wastewater treatment facility off Prospect Street, tried this summer to put up another tower off Lakeview Drive, just east of Goffle Road.
But underwhelming bids from wireless carriers and an outcry from the public derailed the project. “We looked at the bids and the neighbors and decided it just isn’t worth it,” said Chris Rutishauser, village engineer and director of public works.
Quick cash
For the towns lucky enough to have the space and topography for cell towers, it’s easy money.
Mahwah’s 26 square miles of hills and valleys creates a lot of dead zones. For more than 10 years, the township has been getting cash from wireless carriers trying to improve their service. This year, the township earned $200,000 — equivalent to one half of a tax point — by renting space on a water tower and on a monopole at the municipal building.
The water tank alone brought in $160,000 from about a half-dozen carriers that have attached antennae to the structure, located off Campgaw Road.
“I’ve got a water tank that’s been out there for more than 25 years — and it’s still functioning as a water tank,” said Brian Campion, township administrator. “If a company wants to attach a cell antenna to it, it’s found money for the township.”
Wanaque also makes use of its water tower — gaining $130,000 from an antenna on the structure, three antennae on a monopole behind it and two antennae on a flagpole at Borough Hall. The take is equivalent to 2.5 tax points, Borough Administrator Tom Carroll said.
“The flagpole next to the municipal building complements the war memorial beside it,” he said. “It takes up very little property and it’s a significant source of revenue.”
The demand for flawless cell service is so great — and the money so good — that more towns are trying to get in on the payday.
Ramsey is scouting a place for a cell tower to address dead zones on Wyckoff Avenue and Main Street. “We’ve had several carriers approach us,” said Nick Saros, borough administrator. “Our building and grounds committee is reviewing it.
“It’s significant revenue,” he added.
Clifton has been going back and forth with carriers trying to find a suitable site. One company wanted to put equipment on the roof of Firehouse 6, at Broad Street and Van Houten Avenue. The city said no and offered up a building on the old Schultheis Farms property. “We keep an open mind to it,” City Manager Al Greco said.
“As long as you can get by the hysteria and the fear — because there is a lot of misinformation and distorted information about the negative effects they can have on people,” the cell towers can be good for a town, Greco said.
>Region’s home values have further to fall: analyst Saturday, December 19, 2009 BY KATHLEEN LYNN The Record STAFF WRITER
https://www.northjersey.com/news/79705747.html#
Despite recent hints that home values may have bottomed out, a Deutsche Bank Securities analyst Friday forecast another drop in the region’s prices — possibly as much as 29 percent.
Deutsche Bank analyst Karen Weaver said the drop is likely because housing in the New York metropolitan area, including Bergen, Passaic and Hudson counties, is still too expensive for many buyers.
“Affordability is the driving force behind the outlook here,” the report said.
Prices “would need to decline another 29 percent just to restore prices to the point in New York’s history when housing was at its most affordable,” the report said. That was in 1998, after a decadelong slump in housing. Weaver used the most affordable point as a benchmark because typically in housing recessions, prices drop to maximum affordability levels.
If, on the other hand, prices simply return to average levels of affordability over the past two decades, prices in this region would fall another 8 percent, Weaver said.
Nationwide, she expects prices to decline another 10 percent to 12 percent.
Weaver’s analysis is aimed at those who invest in pools of mortgages. She cautioned that her forecast is not precise enough to allow home buyers to accurately predict price changes in individual towns or housing markets. That’s largely because the forecast covers a large area, consisting of Putnam, Westchester and Rockland counties, as well as the five boroughs of New York and North Jersey’s Bergen, Passaic and Hudson counties.
The Deutsche Bank report expects greater price drops than many other analysts have predicted.
“There are no ‘forecastable’ factors to support rising home prices,” Weaver wrote. “Would-be homebuyers’ wings are still clipped by high unemployment and tight credit.” In addition, the report said, many homeowners can’t move up because they owe more on their mortgages than their property is worth.
Many other economists predict flat or slightly declining prices in 2010.
Another report released Friday, from IHS Global Insight, said the New York metropolitan area is actually undervalued by about 7 percent. IHS Global Insight considers, among other factors, mortgage rates and the premiums or discounts that buyers have typically expected in an area. The New York metro area tends to be one of the nation’s priciest housing markets.
“Two years of relentless house price depreciation ended in the third quarter of 2009,” IHS Global said. “It is not, however, at all clear that the market is on a recovery path. Economic conditions remain dire, with unemployment likely to remain above 10 percent for some time.”
E-mail: lynn@northjersey.com
Despite recent hints that home values may have bottomed out, a Deutsche Bank Securities analyst Friday forecast another drop in the region’s prices — possibly as much as 29 percent.
Deutsche Bank analyst Karen Weaver said the drop is likely because housing in the New York metropolitan area, including Bergen, Passaic and Hudson counties, is still too expensive for many buyers.
“Affordability is the driving force behind the outlook here,” the report said.
Prices “would need to decline another 29 percent just to restore prices to the point in New York’s history when housing was at its most affordable,” the report said. That was in 1998, after a decadelong slump in housing. Weaver used the most affordable point as a benchmark because typically in housing recessions, prices drop to maximum affordability levels.
If, on the other hand, prices simply return to average levels of affordability over the past two decades, prices in this region would fall another 8 percent, Weaver said.
Nationwide, she expects prices to decline another 10 percent to 12 percent.
Weaver’s analysis is aimed at those who invest in pools of mortgages. She cautioned that her forecast is not precise enough to allow home buyers to accurately predict price changes in individual towns or housing markets. That’s largely because the forecast covers a large area, consisting of Putnam, Westchester and Rockland counties, as well as the five boroughs of New York and North Jersey’s Bergen, Passaic and Hudson counties.
The Deutsche Bank report expects greater price drops than many other analysts have predicted.
“There are no ‘forecastable’ factors to support rising home prices,” Weaver wrote. “Would-be homebuyers’ wings are still clipped by high unemployment and tight credit.” In addition, the report said, many homeowners can’t move up because they owe more on their mortgages than their property is worth.
Many other economists predict flat or slightly declining prices in 2010.
Another report released Friday, from IHS Global Insight, said the New York metropolitan area is actually undervalued by about 7 percent. IHS Global Insight considers, among other factors, mortgage rates and the premiums or discounts that buyers have typically expected in an area. The New York metro area tends to be one of the nation’s priciest housing markets.
“Two years of relentless house price depreciation ended in the third quarter of 2009,” IHS Global said. “It is not, however, at all clear that the market is on a recovery path. Economic conditions remain dire, with unemployment likely to remain above 10 percent for some time.”
With unemployment significantly higher than 2008 and near zero job growth could property values continue to decline?
Many people are trying to figure out where the housing market is going. and how home values are going to be affected. In a lot of the different assessments that have been made, comparisons have been to previous periods in an effort to determine trends.
I wanted to take a different approach. After looking at a few things, in my opinion, house prices need to come down about 33%, if not more. This number may vary from market to market.
For my analysis I turned to data provided by the US Census Bureau. I wanted to see how house prices related to household income.The reason for this is quite simple. The amount of house you can afford is closely tied to the amount you make. It is one of the most important factors lenders consider when qualifing borrowers for a loan. If you make X dollars a year, lenders have different formulas to determine they will lend you up to Y dollars for a home. This is a slight simplification as there are other factors involved such as your credit rating which impacts your interest rate which will affect how much you can borrow. But the underlying factor in your ability to repay is your income.
For the recommended price in (Bergen County) I used 3.46 times the median income. The reason I used this value is because from 1990-1999 this was the average home price to income ratio. In 2000 is when the ratio started to rise dramatically. At it’s peak in 2007 it was over 5.5. The 2008 value is about 90% of the 2007 value. Notice though, that the drop in home prices isn’t as sharp as the ratio drop. That indicates to me that prices haven’t adjusted inline with the ratio, but as you can see from 2000 up, prices did increase inline with the ratio. As lenders tighten up and the ratio comes back down to the 3-4 range, we should see an appropriate drop in house prices.
Patrick J. Michaels is senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and author of Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know.
Added to cato.org on December 2, 2009
This article appeared in the DC Examiner on December 2, 2009.
The more we learn about the purloined e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit the more it resembles Watergate. As was the case in 1974, there will be no one particular spectacular revelation, but rather an unremitting and unrelenting daily drip-drip that ultimately brings down the house.
The latest gem comes from none other than Rajendra Pauchari, the climatologically untrained head of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Without the IPCC there would be no cap-and-tax legislation awaiting debate in the Senate. There would be no meeting in Copenhagen, where, next month, world leaders will attempt to globalize cap-and-tax. There would also be no pledge from President Obama to emissions reductions that have never been passed by the Senate.
The last IPCC compendium on climate science, published in 2007, left out plenty of peer-reviewed science that it found inconveniently disagreeable.
The e-mails have given Pauchari the onerous task of defending the IPCC from its own “scientific” leadership, now accused (or, perhaps, incriminating itself) of seriously manipulating the scientific literature that goes into the august IPCC scientific reports.
In one of the e-mails, Penn State’s Michael Mann, long a power player in the production of these reports, said this about some scientific articles he did not like: “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
This is pretty serious stuff, because it, and many similar e-mails, paint a picture of IPCC boffins committing science’s capital crime: Trying to game the peer-reviewed literature, which is akin to editing what goes in the Bible.
In this case, Mann is actually speculating about keeping contrary information out of the IPCC reports by blacklisting certain professional journals.
One series of these e-mails called out the journal Climate Research, which had the audacity to publish a paper surveying a voluminous scientific literature that didn’t support Mann’s claim that the last 50 years are the warmest in the past millennium. Along with the CRU head Phil Jones and other climate luminaries, they then cooked up the idea of boycotting any scientific journal that dared publish anything by a few notorious “skeptics,” myself included.
Their pressure worked. Editors resigned or were fired. Many colleagues began to complain to me that their good papers were either being rejected outright or subject to outrageous reviews — papers that would have been published with little revision just a few years ago.
More by Patrick J. MichaelsSo what is Pauchari’s response to all of this? Denial.
“IPCC relies entirely on peer-reviewed literature in carrying out its assessment and follows a process that renders it unlikely that any peer reviewed piece of literature, however contrary to the views of any individual author, would be left out.”
That’s just not true. The last IPCC compendium on climate science, published in 2007, left out plenty of peer-reviewed science that it found inconveniently disagreeable.
These include articles from the journals Arctic, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Earth Interactions, Geophysical Research Letters, International Journal of Climatology, Journal of Climate, Journal of Geophysical Research, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Quaternary Research.
We have hardly heard the end of Climategate, but don’t expect some climactic grand finale. In 1974, errors, boo-boos, and downright duplicities slowly piled up.
The same is happening now. Like Tricky Dick, Pauchari may soon be headed home
Watching and worrying. That’s what county and local government officials in New Jersey are doing this week as they monitor the bleak national economic condition, bracing for the worst when it comes to the impact the financial crisis will have on their 2009 budgets.
A host of officials said today they already were anticipating tough times next year, with likely decreases in revenue, and have already enacted plans to cut spending – cuts that could lead to reduced services and employee layoffs.
Officials are also paying close attention to possible cuts in state aid to towns and counties after comments this week by Gov. Jon Corzine who said he is reviewing contingency plans he asked state department heads to craft in August that would trim their costs by 5 percent.
“We have a hiring freeze in effect and we are not filling job vacancies unless they are critical positions, such as staffing our nursing home or having enough officers at the county corrections center or juvenile,” Morris County Administrator John Bonanni said. “But what is happening with the economy this week is problematic. It is of great concern.”
Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo said his county expects to lose at least $2.5 million in property taxes due to the downturn of the economy. He does not think there will be a significant impact on the current budget but has asked county departments to tighten their belts next year, starting with a 5 percent cut across the board.
“We’ve been expecting the worst, so we’re a little prepared for this, but I didn’t expect it would be this bad,” DiVincenzo said. “This year, we’ll be fine. What we do next year is going to have to be less.”
The financial woes prompted Union County to postpone a plan to refinance some of its debt, a move that could have saved the county $2 million.
“Recent situations have made that opportunity deteriorate,” said county finance director Larry Caroselli. “Thankfully, we issued (bonds) earlier this year, in February, when market conditions were a lot stronger. If we had to (issue bonds now) because of a need of cash, we’d really be biting our nails.”
Many officials across the state expect a decline in money collected from taxes, due to foreclosures, a decrease in new development and new ratables, plus what could be a large number of tax appeals.
Marvin Joss, administrator in Clinton Township, Hunterdon County, said a credit crisis inevitably leads to a drop in tax collection due to foreclosure and instability in the personal finances of residents. Tax collection can drop between 2 and 5 percent in a township like Clinton when the economy is ailing, Joss said, and that means the money that wasn’t collected has to be raised in additional taxes the next year.
That possibility has sparked interest in shared services between towns and counties, plus a host of cost-saving initiatives.
Madison has begun sharing a municipal court with neighboring Florham Park and is in talks to share senior transport services as well, said Mayor Mary-Anna Holden. In Morristown, town officials approved a plan to install solar panels at the wastewater treatment plant to save between $100,000 to $150,000 annually in energy costs.
Morristown Mayor Donald Cresitello said towns and cities are working to cut their budgets and urged Corzine not to balance the state budget by cutting aid to already cash-strapped towns and school districts.
“He needs to look inside first,” Cresitello said, suggesting cuts within the state bureaucracy.
Meanwhile, towns and counties are anxiously eyeing the impact of the economic downturn and stock market on employee pension funds, said Jack Mozloom, spokesman for the New Jersey Association of Counties.
“There is a lot of concern out there, a lot of people who could be affected,” said Mozloom. “It’s too early to know right now what the impact of what’s happening this week will have on those funds. But we’re all watching and worrying.”
>I don’t believe unemployment went down, I think our government is fudging numbers now.
The report doesn’t match up with other jobs data: Today’s report will no doubt be a head scratcher for economists as they try to understand how other labor market data could be so divergent. Earlier in the week, ADP reported private payroll losses of 169,000 for November. The Monster Employment Index, which measures online job demand, actually dipped slightly from October’s number. “This was a shocking report because the reported payroll data bear little resemblance to any other evidence concerning the labor market, including the ADP survey, which is based on hard data from a much wider sample of payrolls than is the government’s survey,” says Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist at research firm MFR.
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