Cellphone antenna proposal draws objections in Ridgewood
DECEMBER 16, 2014 LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2014, 1:21 AM
BY CHRIS HARRIS
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
RIDGEWOOD — The proposed installation of a 3-foot-tall cellphone antenna atop the cross that looms high above West Side Presbyterian Church has drawn a number of objections from neighbors.
The Zoning Board of Adjustment is expected to resume testimony on the use and height variance application from Verizon when the board meets Jan. 11.
More than 10 residents with homes near the South Monroe Street church argued in November the antenna would diminish the neighborhood’s character. Representatives for Verizon said the antenna would address existing service gaps in Ridgewood.
Installed, the antenna would bring the church’s total building height to 68.5 feet. At present, law restricts building heights in Ridgewood to 30 feet or less.
Planning Board Amended Meeting To Discuss Master Plan Tonight
Schedule – December 16th at BFMS
Master Plan recommended changes in zone district classifications and boundaries within the Central Business District and surrounding area
PLANNING BOARD
AMENDMENT TO MEETING SCHEDULE
Special Public Meeting: Tuesday, December 16, 2014
Change of Location
In accordance with the provisions of the “Open Public Meetings Act,” please be advised that the Planning Board has scheduled a special public meeting and work session for TUESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2014, in the Benjamin Franklin Middle School Auditorium, 335 North Van Dien Avenue, Ridgewood, NJ – 7:30 P.M
The Board may take official action during this Special Public Meeting at which time the Board will continue the public hearing concerning a proposed amendment to the Land Use Plan Element of the Master Plan which would recommend changes in zone district classifications and boundaries within the Central Business District and surrounding area, creating the AH-2, B-3-R, and C-R Zone Districts and amending the existing C Zone District.
All meetings of the Ridgewood Planning Board (i.e., official public meetings, work session meetings, pre-meeting assemblies and special meetings) are public meetings which are always open to members of the general public.
Wyckoff, Midland Park added to Bergen 911 dispatch system
DECEMBER 15, 2014, 9:43 PM LAST UPDATED: MONDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2014, 9:44 PM
BY JOHN C. ENSSLIN
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
The Bergen County Freeholders agreed Monday to add Wyckoff and Midland Park to the county’s 911 emergency dispatch system, bringing the total number of towns served by the system to 23.
The board unanimously approved both contracts but only after several freeholders complained that the resolution had been presented with some urgency and at the last minute.
Capt. Mark Lepinski, communications director with the County Police, said any delay could result in the two towns not having dispatch service effective Jan. 1.
Lepinski urged the freeholders not to delay their vote, noting that the county has to hire new dispatchers and the towns need to purchase equipment for the county to provide the service by Jan. 1.
photo by Boyd Loving, could EMS get by in an emergency ?
Reader suggests blog writers try to stir up another faux controversies in the Village.
“Another faux controversy?” (I love your french, or is that RUSSIAN?) Are you suggesting that all Village of Ridgewood controversies are false?
This project was a ridiculous undertaking to begin with, and it was a TRUE controversy, bringing residents from all over the place to speak up and speak out. It cost a fortune and the outcome is a disaster and it never needed to be done in the first place.
Come on, we want to hear what all the FAUX CONTROVERSIES are, please, do enlighten us as to what problems that upset the residents of Ridgewood should be dismissed as FAUX. This is so arrogant, so typical of three particular elected officials, just write off the taxpayers and their legitimate concerns as being beneath consideration.
Anonymous:
“Some have called the accident…”
Meaning: this blog writer has started saying this in order to stir up another faux controversy in the Village.
In Final Spending Bill, Salty Food and Belching Cows Are Winners
By ROBERT PEARDEC. 14, 2014
WASHINGTON — Health insurance companies preserved their tax breaks. Farmers and ranchers were spared having to report on pollution from manure. Tourist destinations like Las Vegas benefited from a travel promotion program.
Also buried in the giant spending bill that cleared the Senate on Saturday and is headed to President Obama for his signature were provisions that prohibit the federal government from requiring less salt in school lunches and allow schools to obtain exemptions from whole-grain requirements for pasta and tortillas.
The watered-down standards for school meals were a setback for the first lady, Michelle Obama, who had vowed to fight “until the bitter end” for tougher nutrition standards. But they were a victory for food companies and some local school officials, who had sought changes in regulations that are taking effect over several years.
Chris Christie crushed on Twitter over Cowboys rooting
By Jonathan Lehman
December 15, 2014 | 11:15am
Chris Christie knows all about outrageous three-lane traffic snarls, so the New Jersey governor should be well prepared for the backlash he’s facing for backing the Cowboys over the Giants or Eagles — the two favorite teams of his constituents and the Cowboys’ sworn rivals.
Christie, the pivotal figure in the Bridgegate scandal and a long-rumored Republican presidential candidate for 2016, opened himself up to venom with a nationally televised appearance Sunday night in Cowboys owner Jerry Jones’ suite at Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie defended his longtime love for the Dallas Cowboys on Monday after his cheering for the team sparked a social media firestorm.
Christie was spotted high-fiving Cowboys owner Jerry Jones in a luxury box Sunday night at the Cowboys-Philadelphia Eagles game.
The interactions prompted a wave of hate on Twitter from angry Eagles fans, who apparently were unaware the governor has long been a Cowboys fan despite his New Jersey roots.
Christie responded to the meltdown Monday morning with an unscheduled appearance on WPG Talk Radio 1450.
He told listeners he’s never made a secret of his Cowboys fandom and said he would never change his team loyalties to score political points.
“I love passionate sports fans. I really do. I’m a passionate sports fan. And so I can’t say that I was the least bit surprised by the reaction of some Eagles fans,” he said
Hillary Clinton’s New Jersey backers mobilize fundraising efforts
December 14, 2014 Last updated: Sunday, December 14, 2014, 1:36 PM
By CHARLES STILE
As the New Jersey political establishment awaits word from Republican Governor Christie on a possible run for president in 2016, Garden State Democrats have launched an early and aggressive effort to raise as much as $5 million to $10 million for what they hope will become a Hillary Clinton campaign.
The informal group, which held two recent “preorganizing meetings” in late October and last month at the Robert Treat Hotel in Newark, is strictly a volunteer effort and conducted without the involvement or blessing of Clinton or her top associates.
But the Democrats are operating under the assumption that Clinton will announce her campaign early next year, and they want to greet the new candidate with a stack of fundraising commitments, possibly on the very day she announces.
Reader Says No to the Gas Tax Increase : NJ actually has, according to the Feds, the eighth highest annual revenues to devote to roads and bridges of any state.
Funny how some on this blog want to raise gasoline taxes. The Federal Highway Administration tracks all revenues collected by states for use on transportation. The two main sources are the gas tax and tolls. NJ gasoline taxes are low, but the state’s toll collections rank second in the nation behind only the much larger New York. The result is that NJ actually has, according to the Feds, the eighth highest annual revenues to devote to roads and bridges of any state. And yet the NJ Transportation Fund is bust? Why you ask? According to a 2013 study by the Reason Foundation, NJ spends 8.4 TIMES the national average for every mile of road it maintains or builds… it’s not because of the low gas tax, it’s because of inflated union wage rates to build & maintain roads at 8X the national average. No wonder Senator Sanzari, I mean Sarlo, wants to raise gas taxes. Vote him out, recall him, whatever, the guy is a pure thug
Steve Adubato , Robert Menendez and Cory Booker Interview a gold-plated love-in
What a gold-plated love-in. The statement made by Senator Menendez was in response to a direct question by Newark’s own, Steve Adubato, worded in exactly the same way as Menendez’s answer is reported as being. Menendez could simply have said “yes” and received the same reaction.
My reaction to this syrupy vignette is that Steve Adubato has to be the most frozen-in-time, fact-resistant, paleo-liberal, pitiable case of a journalist living and working in the Metro NY region who is actually still a well-meaning, non-scheming, and good-hearted person. With the way Adubato framed and worded the question, he teed the issue up for Menendez no less favorably than you might expect him to do if he were the Senator’s own chief of staff! Watch the video at the 25:00 mark and you’ll see Menendez’s eyes go wide at the prospect of hitting Adubato’s question into the next area code.
Oh, Steve, Steve, Steve…what are we to do with you? Where did we go wrong? How could you be so ideologically shackled as to fail to finally realize what is happening all around you? You are a man of full age, yet you have utterly failed to sharpen your approach. One cannot groove a fastball with the likes of Menendez like you just did and even hope to retain, much less burnish one’s professional reputation!
Come over to the dark side, Steve!!! You will learn that we are actually not the heart of darkness, but true children of the light. We struggle with our frailties, as all in the human condition must do. But we are clear in our sight, and in our thinking. If we are guilty of anything, it is merely trying to collectively blow out, one by one, the limitless supply of matches this arson of a so-called-president (and increasingly, the GOP-e) seems to have on hand. It can get tiring, and certainly seems and feels repetitive, but someone must do it if we are to come out the other end of this house of horrors in one piece.
Politically and intellectually speaking, the past seven years or so have been a hand-to-mouth existence for true constitutional conservatives who prize the civil society and traditional morality, as well as the federal and republican model of democratic government extended continent-wide, as conceived by the frail but brilliant James Madison in the face of so many historical examples of failed democracies over the millennia. We are now so regularly the object of abject, thought-free obloqy that it almost has no ill effect on us. The notion that we can live rent-free in the minds of an Obama, a Menendez ….an Aronsohn….keeps us moving forward.
Steve, you can do this. Do the deed. Make the switch. Make that light bulb to shine like the Sun. Peel yourself away from these charletans and breathe the clean air for once in your young life!!
Photo credit: Boyd A. Loving Honda Pilot becomes first known casualty of Garber Square improvement project
December 14,2014
Boyd A. Loving
Ridgewood NJ Honda Pilot becomes first known casualty of Garber Square improvement project Incident occurred on Sunday afternoon, 12/14/2014. Some have called the accident the first casualty of “traffic easing” No injuries to either driver or child passenger, thank goodness.
The Senate CIA Report and Democratic Treachery
December 10, 2014 by Arnold Ahlert 65 Comments
Arnold Ahlert is a former NY Post op-ed columnist currently contributing to JewishWorldReview.com, HumanEvents.com and CanadaFreePress.com. He may be reached at [email protected].
n Tuesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee released the 500-page executive summary of the report on the CIA’s enhanced interrogation of terrorist detainees. Democrats, the media and Republican Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) are using it as an opportunity to hammer the CIA and the Bush administration, while American embassies, military units and other U.S. interests are preparing for possible reprisals. But adding further threats to Americans already in harm’s way matters not. Beleaguered congressional Democrats are desperate for a political boon and have turned to an old standby: sabotaging national security and sacrificing American lives.
Since their betrayal of the Iraq war, Democrats, particularly in the Senate, have panned the techniques used by the CIA to garner critical information in the days following 9/11 as “torture,” and have claimed that they yielded no useful intel. Though the use of these techniques was long known to Democrats — with virtual indifference toward them at the outset — many Democrats have since claimed they were unaware of what was occurring, which explains their lack of opposition to their government supposedly engaging in “torture.”
Does Anyone Really Care if we Tortured Terrorists to Save Lives?
Posted on December 9, 2014. Tags: Al Qaeda, Colin Powell, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, torture
When I first read the headlines I thought, how awful! Then I realized the it said Terrorists not Tourists.
My bad.
Having visited the London Dungeon a few years ago, I would have really loved to have seen some of the implements of torture used on people like Bin Laden or Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Bamboo under the fingernails is too good for these murderers.
Now if the war with Al Qaeda were with a country that had signed the Geneva Convention and mutual safety of prisoners was an issue, I would say lock them up, feed them and treat them with respect.
But when wars are fought against terrorists, then they are not really wars. How we treat our prisoners does not reflect on how our prisoners are treated. Sometimes the fear of torture is enough to make a prisoner talk. That is now off the table now that the Democrats have released a document claiming we mistreated prisoners under George W. Bush. (And it is funny that the only one the document didn’t blame was Colin Powell. Imagine that.)
If you are squeamish you may want to turn your eyes away as you read this.
We deprived them of sleep and tightly controlled their food intake.
And the lefties go wild!!!!
Seriously, guys. Beat the crap out of them for any information you can get and then shoot them in the head.
And while you are torturing these people, it wouldn’t hurt to hang a picture or two on the wall of beheaded Americans and Christian children at the hands of these inhuman creatures.
Al Qaeda and ISIS are laughing so hard they are wetting their pants. Sad thing is, some of those on the left would consider that torture as well.
Having deprived Congress of regular order for nearly the entire tenure of the current administration, Harry Reid and his cohorts have milked every partisan advantage from this circumstance that they could possibly dream up. The same goes for his shamelessly executed plan to eliminate the Senate filibuster rule, so helpful in ushering committed statists and hardcore political progressives into important appointive federal government posts by depriving the political opposition of their only effective means of applying political leverage during the Senate confirmation process.
Senator Reid now stands ready to take full political advantage of his political opponent’s stated desire to restore Regular Order in the federal budgetary process, and to bring back the filibuster rule. Come January, leaders in the new majority party in the Senate will (or at least should) be torn between two different goals or aspirations, each with its own unique merits:
On the one hand, they will wish to repair the institutional damage done to the Senate and restore its potency as a strong and independent actor in our republican form of government under the U.S. Constitution. This means moving Congress out from underneath the dark cloud of executive branch dominance that has overspread all of Washington D.C. in recent year, as well as re-establishing the unique power of a single senator to stand in the way of ill-advised legislative measures, to the chagrin and consternation of reason-blind ideologues who rely on group-think and public shaming techniques to achieve their public policy goals.
On the other hand, they will wish to make of Congress an even greater and more insurmountable obstacle to the current administration’s stated goal of fundamentally transforming this country. Along the way, they will also be eager to cooperate freely with the House of Representatives to pass a series of clean bills for the president to sign or veto (most likely the latter) that will serve to draw into the starkest possible relief two competing and contrasting visions for how this country should move forward. To be the beneficiary of such an historic mid-term electoral landslide without then seizing and exploiting every available partisan advantage would be to appear naive and unwilling to engage in the largest and most momentous political struggle this country has seen since the Adams versus Jefferson ‘Clash of the Titans’ circa 1797-1800 (culminating, of course, with Jefferson’s historic inauguration, preceded that day by the remarkable scene of a humiliated but still office-holding John Adams emerging from the cavernous new executive mansion in the pre-dawn mist, hailing a ride in a passing public carriage like any other ordinary citizen, and high-tailing it back to New England to enjoy the rest of his life as America’s first one-term president).
So to say that Mitch McConnell could (or at least should) be experiencing mixed feelings about acting in good faith to restore the filibuster rule as it applies to Senate debates, or to plot a return to Regular Order in support of the Constitutionally-required process of preparing and passing an annual budget for federal governmental outlays, is the understatement of this rapidly ending but remarkable year.
This is a thoughtful letter but I have to disagree. Multi-unit housing is preferable to deteriorating empty lots, and environmentally makes better use of land and resources.
Today there are fewer drivers, smaller families and a huge baby boomer population who will find this an attractive lifestyle option. Presumably any expanded services needed to accommodate this growth will be absorbed by the additional tax base.
I’ve lived in a Ridgewood single family house 20+ years, kids done with college; would welcome some options to stay in town without the responsibility of home ownership/maintenance.
Excellent letter — most folks living here don’t want another 400 or 500 apartments downtown — or the other buildings that will follow these initial proposals.
To the person who commented “I’ve lived in a Ridgewood single family house 20+ years, kids done with college;” — you are in luck — i saw rental signs on the apartments in town today. Call a realtor and they will help you find a rental. Or, you can move ten minutes down the road to Hackensack where you will find abundant rentals.
New era of cheap oil ‘will destroy green revolution’
The collapsing oil price that is reshaping the global economy could derail the green energy revolution by making renewable power sources prohibitively bad value, experts have warned.
Oil tumbled below $60 a barrel for the first time in more than five years yesterday – a fall of 44 per cent since June. It is forecast to fall further.
A new “era of cheap oil” would be good news for consumers and motorists – but analysts say the consequences for politics, industry and the climate could be even more radical.
The ripple effects could help the Conservatives to remain in power at next year’s general election by making voters feel richer as bills fall – while hurting Scotland’s oil-reliant economy and setting back its campaign for independence.
The falling prices could damage the North Sea and fledgling fracking industries and make it harder for the UK to hit its legally binding targets to cut carbon emissions. But the biggest threat posed by falling oil and gas prices – in the UK and globally – is to the renewable energy industry dominated by wind-, solar- and hydro-power, experts say.
