Category: Village of Ridgewood

>Great Article by Mike Sedon !

Revenues from Ridgewood parking rate hike fall short
Friday, February 19, 2010
BY MICHAEL SEDON
The Ridgewood News
STAFF WRITER

https://www.northjersey.com/news/bergen/84758732_Revenues_from_rate_hike_fall_short.html

Doubling parking meter rates in Ridgewood did not double revenues, but other factors may have played a role in how the parking utility netted $34,000 in additional income over a five-month period, compared to the same time frame in 2008.

The Ridgewood News, through an Open Public Records Act (OPRA) request, obtained parking utility revenue figures for the months from August to December 2008, when rates were 25 cents an hour to park at all meters in the village, and August to December 2009, when the Village Council changed the rates to 50 cents an hour.

The revenue totals for the 2008 period were $254,167.80, while the total for the last five months of 2009 were $288,622.28.

The biggest difference following the rate increase was the change in enforcement times. From 2008 and up to the time of the increase, parking meters were enforced Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. But after August 2009, the enforcement times changed from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Saturday. Another difference is that the village only enforced meters on Ridgewood’s streets on Saturdays, offering free parking in the municipal lots for that day.

Also, the village took over management of the Chestnut Street parking lot from a private vendor in October 2009, and that lot produced an additional $7,509 of parking revenue for the final three months of last year.

But the addition of the Chestnut Street parking lot revenue may have been offset by nearly six weeks of construction at the Prospect Street municipal lot in August and September of last year, when the village replaced curbs, sidewalks, light pole bases, decorative bricks and paved the lot’s surface. The East Ridgewood Avenue streetscape project, which lasted all summer, and work done by Ridgewood Water in the Central Business District (CBD) might also have affected parking revenues because parking in the area was periodically restricted during construction.

Village Manager Ken Gabbert explained in an e-mail that “the rate increase created greater revenue in each of the months following implementation,” but “the parking utility was not self-funding in 2009,” which was the goal of the increase.

Gabbert wrote that it cost $1,000,668 to run the parking utility last year.

“Any revenue/expense imbalance for the parking utility is immediately made up by the general fund of the village,” Gabbert wrote. “For 2009, the village payment is $168,000.”

When the council voted to raise the parking rates and change enforcement times last summer, it stipulated that it would revisit the matter after six months. Councilman Paul Aronsohn, who has long opposed the parking meter increase, said in an e-mail this week that he “strongly believed” the entire issue should be revisited.

“I still believe that parking lots should all be long-term and all be put back to their original rate of 25 cents per hour,” Aronsohn wrote. “This would provide much-needed and much-deserved relief to our commuters, and it would provide some relief to people who work or shop downtown.”

Aronsohn said he needed to better understand the “rationale and funding” for the utility.

“I’m still not satisfied that it provides a benefit to the village or that it is being used properly,” Aronsohn said.

Mayor David Pfund and Deputy Mayor Keith Killion did not return calls seeking comment for this article by press time.

E-mail: [email protected]

https://www.northjersey.com/news/bergen/84758732_Revenues_from_rate_hike_fall_short.html

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More nearly than any of his predecessors, Andrew Jackson was elected by popular vote; as President he sought to act as the direct representative of the common man.

Born in a backwoods settlement in the Carolinas in 1767, he received sporadic education. But in his late teens he read law for about two years, and he became an outstanding young lawyer in Tennessee. Fiercely jealous of his honor, he engaged in brawls, and in a duel killed a man who cast an unjustified slur on his wife Rachel.

Jackson prospered sufficiently to buy slaves and to build a mansion, the Hermitage, near Nashville. He was the first man elected from Tennessee to the House of Representatives, and he served briefly in the Senate. A major general in the War of 1812, Jackson became a national hero when he defeated the British at New Orleans.

In 1824 some state political factions rallied around Jackson; by 1828 enough had joined “Old Hickory” to win numerous state elections and control of the Federal administration in Washington.

In his first Annual Message to Congress, Jackson recommended eliminating the Electoral College. He also tried to democratize Federal officeholding. Already state machines were being built on patronage, and a New York Senator openly proclaimed “that to the victors belong the spoils. . . . “

Jackson took a milder view. Decrying officeholders who seemed to enjoy life tenure, he believed Government duties could be “so plain and simple” that offices should rotate among deserving applicants.

As national politics polarized around Jackson and his opposition, two parties grew out of the old Republican Party–the Democratic Republicans, or Democrats, adhering to Jackson; and the National Republicans, or Whigs, opposing him.

Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and other Whig leaders proclaimed themselves defenders of popular liberties against the usurpation of Jackson. Hostile cartoonists portrayed him as King Andrew I.

Behind their accusations lay the fact that Jackson, unlike previous Presidents, did not defer to Congress in policy-making but used his power of the veto and his party leadership to assume command.

The greatest party battle centered around the Second Bank of the United States, a private corporation but virtually a Government-sponsored monopoly. When Jackson appeared hostile toward it, the Bank threw its power against him.

Clay and Webster, who had acted as attorneys for the Bank, led the fight for its recharter in Congress. “The bank,” Jackson told Martin Van Buren, “is trying to kill me, but I will kill it!” Jackson, in vetoing the recharter bill, charged the Bank with undue economic privilege.

His views won approval from the American electorate; in 1832 he polled more than 56 percent of the popular vote and almost five times as many electoral votes as Clay.

Jackson met head-on the challenge of John C. Calhoun, leader of forces trying to rid themselves of a high protective tariff.

When South Carolina undertook to nullify the tariff, Jackson ordered armed forces to Charleston and privately threatened to hang Calhoun. Violence seemed imminent until Clay negotiated a compromise: tariffs were lowered and South Carolina dropped nullification.

In January of 1832, while the President was dining with friends at the White House, someone whispered to him that the Senate had rejected the nomination of Martin Van Buren as Minister to England. Jackson jumped to his feet and exclaimed, “By the Eternal! I’ll smash them!” So he did. His favorite, Van Buren, became Vice President, and succeeded to the Presidency when “Old Hickory” retired to the Hermitage, where he died in June 1845.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/andrewjackson

>Thursday, February 18, 2010

The founding document of the United States, the Declaration of Independence, states that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Today, however, just 21% of voters nationwide believe that the federal government enjoys the consent of the governed.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 61% disagree and say the government does not have the necessary consent. Eighteen percent (18%) of voters are not sure.
However, 63% of the Political Class think the government has the consent of the governed, but only six percent (6%) of those with Mainstream views agree.

Seventy-one percent (71%) of all voters now view the federal government as a special interest group, and 70% believe that the government and big business typically work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors.

That helps explain why 75% of voters are angry at the policies of the federal government, and 63% say it would be better for the country if most members of Congress are defeated this November. Just 27% believe their own representative in Congress is the best person for the job.

Among voters under 40, 25% believe government has the consent of the governed. That compares to 19% of those ages 50 to 64 and 16% of the nation’s senior citizens.

https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/february_2010/only_21_say_u_s_government_has_consent_of_the_governed

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So why would we allow this? Punish the 85% that have earned insurance benefits to reward those that do not…wouldn’t it be the ‘smart’ thing to help that 15% without insurance ( Which I believe we already do through State Benefits for the poor and disabled) before we attempt to ‘dictate’ to all what coverage they will be ‘allowed’. We have the best health care in the entire world- don’t fix what isn’t broken…what we currently have can be improved upon but by no means should it be dismantled. This plan to reform our entire health care system is not helpful; it is harmful. America is smarter than this- don’t let the government insult our intelligence any longer. We are all fully capable of choosing for ourselves what is best for our families! They work for us~ we don’t work for them!

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Human-Nature
Our relationship with the natural world.
by Peter H. Kahn, Jr., Ph.D.

Created Oct 23 2009 – 12:05am

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/human-nature/200910/the-tepid-pool-choices-we-make-in-connecting-nature

In a New Jersey town, a controversy about a pool has pitted neighbor against neighbor. Here’s the issue, as reported in the New York Times (9/7/2009). There’s a natural swimming hole, called Graydon Pool. It’s 2.6 acres. For over 90 years, children in that town have grown up swimming in this pool. It has a sandy bottom. Cool spring currents flow into it. But many residents would like to plow under this natural pool and replace it with a blue, concrete pool with “thoroughly disinfected” chlorinated water. They call this a “real pool” – a “bona fide pool.”

My colleague, Dr. Pat Hasbach (a clinical psychologist in Eugene, Oregon) and I recently presented a paper at the North American Association for Environmental Education. In our presentation, we asked: What would be missed by future generations if the “bona fide pool” people win out? For one thing, kids and adults won’t feel the sand between their toes. They won’t sense the fluctuations of water temperature in places where the cool streams feed into the pool. They won’t experience the periodicity of usage due to the seasonal fluctuations, the presence of bugs that might land on the water and birds that might be on the shore, leading to a deeper connection to a natural ecosystem. They’ll lose a sense of healthy fear that emerges in unstructured bodies of water.

Children will lose these experiences and not even be aware they’ve lost them. This is the issue I’ve written about in other posts as the problem of Environmental General Amnesia [click here; and also here]. The problem is that as we lose the richness and depth of pervasiveness of interaction with nature, we shift the baseline of what is recognized as healthy nature experience.
To counter the problem of Environmental Generational Amnesia, there’s a lot of work being done in connecting children to local, domestic nature. In his important book, Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv develops this idea. My co-edited volume, Children and Nature, speaks to this issue, as well.

But what I’ve written about in an earlier post [click here] is that to flourish children need to interact not only with domestic nature, but wild nature.

If we’re brainstorming on a grand level, maybe there’s a new movement to start. Maybe we could call it – The Rewilding of the Child Movement. Or maybe that’s part of a larger movement: The Rewilding of the Human Species Movement! And likely enough, to rewild the species we need to rewild ourselves. How do we rewild ourselves? I’ve been wondering about that. I’ve been trying to feel a little of what that space might be like. With that in mind, here’s a brief personal reflection, which I used to conclude the conference presentation to environmental educators:

There’s a mountain pool that you find hiking up the wild river. The water emerges into it from porous volcanic rock. The water flows from the cold country. It’s too cold to plunge in. But you’re in. You’re in because your lover is nearby and you need to prove your manly-hood. But just as fast you’re out. Your mind can’t believe that mere water can be that cold. It would have been twenty strokes across. You give up that thought. You need to get warm fast. How? It’s easy. You move naked to your beloved and put your arms around each other. Other people say that that pool is too cold. You can’t swim in it. They say let’s make a better one. They do. It’s filled with chlorinated water that’s not too hot and not too cold. Every day of the year it’s that same temperature. It’s called the tepid pool. The pool-man comes once a week. He squeegees the sides and adds blue dye and oils the pump. The pool-man says you gotta love the tepid pool.

Where would you like to swim? Your choice.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/human-nature/200910/the-tepid-pool-choices-we-make-in-connecting-nature

>October 22, 2009

Democrats Lose Big Test Vote on Health Legislation
By ROBERT PEAR and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/health/policy/22health.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

WASHINGTON — Democrats lost a big test vote on health care legislation on Wednesday as the Senate blocked action on a bill to increase Medicare payments to doctors at a cost of $247 billion over 10 years.

The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, needed 60 votes to proceed. He won only 47. And he could not blame Republicans. A dozen Democrats and one independent crossed party lines and voted with Republicans on the 53 to 47 roll call.

The Medicare bill has become a proxy for larger issues in the debate over legislation to overhaul the health care system.

Mr. Reid said the bill, by averting big cuts in physician fees, guaranteed that doctors would continue accepting Medicare patients. But since none of the costs were offset or paid for, Republicans said it was fiscally irresponsible, and some Democrats said they shared that concern.

By addressing doctors’ fees in a separate bill, Senate Democrats could hold down the cost of the broader health legislation, keeping it within the limits set by President Obama. House Democrats are considering a similar tactic. Republicans said it was a transparent ploy to hide the cost of a health care overhaul.

Democrats had hoped that by passing the Medicare bill they could appease doctors and secure their support for the broader legislation.

Senate Democratic leaders said the bill to protect doctors’ fees had strong support from the White House, the American Medical Association and AARP.

Among the Democrats who voted against the party leadership were Senators Evan Bayh of Indiana, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Bill Nelson of Florida and Ron Wyden of Oregon.

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/health/policy/22health.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

>The cost for the turf alone will be well below the total cost that the BOE has put in the proposal. Based on current prices, similar projects in the area and the cost of the turf for of Maple Park the cost of the turf alone should be in the $2.2 to $2.5 million dollar range. The BOE has include other items in the cost of the project including new bleachers, a press box, new fences, electrical upgrades, removal of the track at RHS, and construction of a new track at BF. There is no turf scheduled for BF.

The problem with the sound bite world we live in now is that the entire proposal gets boiled down “$50 million for Turf!” or “$6 million for Turf!” and neither one is true. With off sets from the State the total cost to taxpayers of the entire proposal is closer to $38 million (still A LOT of money) and the cost to the taxpayers of the athletic facility piece is closer to $3.2 million. ($5.4 minus the $2.2 from the state) That $5.4 million number includes a lot of things that may or may not get done depending on what the State says in regards to construction in the flood plain but I would expect the turf part of the project gets approved as Maple is very similar and the State approved that.

PJ… as you often do… please re-post the 6:58pm comments, if you deem them to be important enough. Breaking down the cost of this is important. I support the project, but only after I too checked the facts. We should all be smart enough to do so.

If someone can shoot holes in the above post… rational holes, based on facts and competitive market data.. IE, the cost of exisitng turf facilities in the area, lets hear all about it. New bleachers, new regulation sized track moved to BF… not much talk about that. Dont support it, fine.. but dont lump this all unto new Fieldturf facilities

>The Valley Hospital’s Center for Women, Children and Family Education is offering a What is Cord Blood Banking? This one-session class will discuss the topic of cord blood banking, which is the collection and storage of the stem cells found in your newborn’s umbilical cord. Today, cord blood stem cells have been used successfully in the treatment of over 70 life-threatening diseases. When you bank your baby’s cord blood, you are making a choice that could potentially provide a life saving treatment for your child or a family member.

This 1 hour class will be held on Wednesday, November 11 from 6 – 7 p.m. The fee for this class is $10. For more information, to schedule an appointment, or to obtain a complete course catalog and schedule for Valley’s Parent Education Programs, please call The Valley Hospital’s Center for Women, Children and Family Education at 201-291-6151.

Valley is proud to be your not-for-profit hospital serving the healthcare needs of more than 400,000 people in our region.

As a not-for-profit hospital, Valley is committed to giving back to the community. Valley serves the community by providing thousands of hours of healthcare education and screenings, support groups and classes to assist those in need, and care to all those who come through our doors, regardless of their ability to pay.

The Valley Hospital is proud of its history of quality patient care and community service, and looks forward to serving you and your family in the future.