Ridgewood mayor to lobby Attorney General’s staff for new probe into parking meter cash
FEBRUARY 25, 2015, 10:20 PM LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2015, 10:31 PM
BY CHRIS HARRIS
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
RIDGEWOOD — Village officials plan to meet next week with representatives from the Attorney General’s Office to discuss a possible investigation into an additional $377,000 in stolen parking meter coins, the mayor said.
Mayor Paul Aronsohn announced Wednesday night that he would go to Trenton for a meeting Tuesday on the findings of a forensic audit. Other village employees will join the session via telephone.
The audit was initiated soon after former Ridgewood employee Thomas Rica pleaded guilty to four counts of third-degree theft after confessing to pocketing $460,000 in coins from Village Hall’s coin room over three years.
The findings, released earlier this month, indicated that Rica’s thieving began earlier than he admitted, and that an additional $377,526 in parking meter revenue was unaccounted for.
New York Voices with Jazzmasters Big Band
Benjamin Franklin Middle School
Ridgewood, NJ
Ridgewood NJ, Returning to Ridgewood, NJ for the first time since 1997, The Grammy Award winning vocal jazz quartet consisting of Darmon Meader, Peter Eldridge, Kim Nazarian, and Lauren Kinhan will be joined by an all star line up of professional music educators to perform for one night only.
Having recently celebrated their 25th anniversary, New York Voices is the Grammy Award-winning vocal ensemble renowned for their excellence in jazz and the art of group singing. They are known for their close-knit voicings, inspired arrangements and unparalleled vocal blend. Their chameleon-like musicianship allows them to move seamlessly from setting to setting, be it orchestral/big band to the intimate trio lineup. With deep interests rooted in jazz, Brazilian, R & B, classical, and pop, their music mixes traditional sensibilities with more than a dash of the unexpected.
The Voices will perform 2 sets of music including selections from their popular recorded repertoire plus A Cappella features performed only in a live setting.
The Jazzmasters Big Band was formed in 2013 by Ridgewood High School Band Director Jeffrey Haas to provide a way for his students to hear live big band jazz performed by excellent musicians. Jazzmasters is an ensemble of celebrated performers – Grammy nominees, public school teachers, college professors, private instructors and Broadway musicians – who all share a passion for playing and teaching music in the big band tradition. The group has since branched out from the educational clinic setting to well attended and highly acclaimed public performances.
The Jazzmasters Big Band is:
Saxophones: Julius Tolentino, Paul Larsen, David Demsey, James Garde and Jeff Haas
Trumpets: David Rogers, Ben Hankle, Jeffrey Lesser and John Luckenbill
Trombones: Matt Bilyk, Pete McGuinness, Matt Tracey and Henry Heyzer
Rhythm: Willy Dalton(guitar), Jeffrey Kunkel(piano), Brian Glassman(bass), Steve Johns(drums) and Gary Fink(percussion)
Astronaut Ron Garan Tonight at Bookends in Ridgewood 7PM
Wednesday, February 25th @ 7:00pm
Astronaut who was on the International Space Station, Ron Garan, will sign his new book: The Orbital Perspective:
Lessons in Seeing the Big Picture from a Journey of 71 Million Miles*All books MUST be purchased at Bookends Bookstore*
Appearing authors will only autograph books purchased at Bookends and must have valid Bookends Receipt.
Availability & pricing for all autographed books subject to change.
First In Line Certificate use is the the discretion of Bookends. Blackout dates may apply.
Bookends cannot guarantee that the books that are Autographed will always be First Printings.
Autographed books purchased at Bookends are non-returnable.
While we try to ensure that all customers coming to Bookends’ signings will meet authors and get their books signed, we cannot guarantee that all attendees will meet the author or that all books will be signed. We cannot control inclement weather, author travel schedules or authors who leave prematurely.
Bookends, 211 E. Ridgewood Avenue, Ridgewood, NJ 07450 201-445-0726
Wyckoff critical of Ridgewood Water’s billing adjustments as metering modernized
FEBRUARY 25, 2015 LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2015, 1:21 AM
BY MARINA VILLENEUVE
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
WYCKOFF — Township officials are criticizing Ridgewood Water management after receiving calls upon calls from residents suddenly facing thousands of dollars in back fees because the utility hasn’t been able to accurately gauge water use for years.
In a process that has accelerated over the past four years, Ridgewood Water, which serves more than 20,000 customers in Glen Rock, Midland Park, Ridgewood and Wyckoff, has been modernizing its meter system. And that has resulted in updating its books and finding out that some customers haven’t paid enough and others have paid too much.
The utility’s old metering was through wiring hooked into telephone landlines. Modern metering will rely on radio frequency monitoring, which lets employees take readings by driving through a neighborhood.
A Democrat on the Federal Communications Commission wants to see changes that could narrow the scope of new net neutrality rules set for a vote on Thursday.
Mignon Clyburn, one of three Democrats on the FCC, has asked Chairman Tom Wheeler to roll back some of his provisions before the full commission votes on them, FCC officials said.
The request — which Wheeler has yet to respond to — puts the chairman in the awkward position of having to either roll back his proposals, or defend the tough rules and convince Clyburn to back down.
It’s an ironic spot for Wheeler, who for months was considered to be favoring weaker rules than those pushed for by his fellow Democrats, before he reversed himself and backed tougher restrictions on Internet service providers.
Clyburn’s objections complicate the highly anticipated vote and add an extra bit of drama to the already high tensions on the five-member commission.
Wheeler will need the votes of both Clyburn and Democratic Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel to pass the rules, since the two Republicans on the commission are expected to vote against anything he proposes.
Clyburn’s changes would leave in place the central and most controversial component of Wheeler’s rules — the notion that broadband Internet service should be reclassified so that it can be treated as a telecommunications service under Title II of the Communications Act, similar to utilities like phone lines.
What Patricia Arquette Got Wrong About the Founders and Women
David Azerrad / February 23, 2015
In a harried Oscar acceptance speech which culminated in a hackneyed call for wage equality, actress Patricia Arquette blamed the Founders for the so-called gender pay gap.
“It’s inexcusable that we go around the world and we talk about equal rights for women in other countries when we don’t have equal rights for women in America,” Arquette, who won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, said. “And we don’t because when they wrote the Constitution, they didn’t intend it for women.”
Like many Americans, actress Patricia Arquette doesn’t understand the Constitution (she also doesn’t understand basic economics as The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway pointed out).
If the Framers didn’t intend the Constitution for women, they sure did a fine job of concealing their intention. Nowhere in the original Constitution are citizens classified according to sex. As Tiffany Jones Miller explains in the “Heritage Guide to The Constitution” essay on the 19th Amendment:
Contrary to popular belief, the United States Constitution of 1787 is a gender-neutral document. Throughout the original text, the Framers refer to “persons”—as opposed to “male persons”—and use the pronoun “he” only in the generic sense. The word “male” did not even appear in the Constitution until the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868.
While we’re at it, it’s worth pointing out that the Declaration of Independence also doesn’t take into account sex in proclaiming that we are all created equal and endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights. The Declaration speaks of “all men” and not “all human beings” because the former is a more rhetorically powerful way to describe mankind.
Neither one of our founding documents classifies people according to sex—or according to race or religion for that matter. Therefore, contrary to what many civics textbooks incorrectly teach, the original Constitution did not restrict the right to vote to white, property-owning males aged 21 or older.
Women were voting in New Jersey at the time of the Founding! For the first time in recorded history, women voted alongside men in elections
The Constitution defers to the states on voting eligibility in federal elections. As is plainly written in Article I, Section 2: “the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.”
As a result, voting eligibility varied by state. Certain states denied blacks the right to vote—but a majority did not. And—here comes the whopper—women were voting in New Jersey at the time of the Founding! For the first time in recorded history, women voted alongside men in elections. And it happened right here in America—the first country in the world dedicated to the proposition that all men and women are created equal.
The 19th Amendment, therefore, did not give women the right to vote. It guaranteed women the right to vote. By the time it was ratified in 1920, more than three-fourths of the states already allowed women to vote in some or all elections. Ultimately, the seeds of women’s suffrage were sown in the Declaration of Independence’s dedication to equality.
Whatever the state of remuneration in the workplace may be today, Patricia Arquette and others should leave the Founders out of it.
Commodore John Barry, Hero of the American Revolution
Programs at the Ridgewood Public Library
Irish in the American Revolution Discussion
Irish in the American Revolution, Monday, March 2, 7pm.
Todd Braisted shares his research about the Irish who fought with the Patriots, the British, the Hessians and the French during the American Revolution.
Ridgewood Library Offers Knit One Read Too
Tue, March 03, 2015
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: Ridgewood Public Library, 125 N Maple Ave., Ridgewood, NJ 07450
NEW* Knit One Read Too, instructional session, Tuesday, March 3, 7pm.
Learn or help others to knit, crochet, embroider, stitch as we preview best of new books. Group size limited, registration required. Please visit Reference desk, www.ridgewoodlibrary.org or contact Victoria at 201-612-5600, ext. 133.
Reading Marathon Closing Celebration
Mon, March 02, 2015
Time: 4:00 PM – 5:00 AM
Location: Ridgewood Public Library, 125 N. Maple Ave., Ridgewood, NJ 07450
Reading Marathon Closing Celebration: Bash the Trash, Monday, March 2, 4-5pm.
“Serious” musicians find a melody in their trash. Register now.
*Note: this is a rescheduled performance from a snow day.
Unbroken: The Great Zamperini Disscussion at the Ridgewood Library
Unbroken: The Great Zamperini
Wednesday, March 11, 6:30pm. Documentary screening and discussion about Louis Zamperini’s WWII crash and POW experience.
Speaker: Rick Feingold. Free, all welcome. Light refreshments.
California, New York, and New Jersey always rank near the bottom of these lists as intrusive, red tape-bound hellholes.
J.D. Tuccille|Feb. 23, 2015 11:45 am
Florida is the freest (or least unfree, depending on how you look at it) state in the United States? So says North Carolina’s John Locke Foundation in its First in Freedom Index, which drew data from a range of sources and found that the state where alligators help keep the yowling, roaming kitty population under control is also notable for officials who generally stay out of your way. Arizona and Indiana round out the top three, while California, New Jersey, and New York serve, unsurprisingly, as black holes of bureaucratic suckage.
Those of us familiar with the neverending jaw-drops provided by Florida police shenanigans, or simply with the presence of Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Arizona’s Maricopa County, might be raising an eyebrow around now. But remember that cops in California, New Jersey, and New York are much more professional about their pervasive abuses. They can get through the business of strangling petty “criminals” and trumping up charges against political enemies without parading outrageous personalities in the process. Besides, the John Locke Foundation bypasses civil liberties issues to focus on fiscal policy, educational choice, regulatory incursions, and health care freedom. As a measure of relative restraint and leeway in those areas, it’s a handy addition to various existing freedom rankings without displacing the role of other indexes.
The First in Freedom Index actually draws from a lot of the sources that have been cited here before, including the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of North America as well as Mercatus Center’s Freedom in the 50 States, the Tax Foundation’s State Business Tax Climate Index, and measures put together by the Center for Education Reform, among others. To this, the North Carolina group adds its own weight and emphasis. The ultimate score is an average across the categories it examines. Florida, for example, is in first place overall, but at 5 in terms of fiscal policy, 1 in educational freedom, 45 in regulatory freedom, and 30 in healthcare freedom.
Fire hydrant snow removal bill heads to Christie
February 23, 2015
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Reader ” I pay tax’s for a paid fire dept and the should remove the snow around the hydrants, and in the spring and summer you all can repaint them too.”
Ridgewood NJ, So you think someone else is responsible for clearing the snow from your fire hydrant , guess again. The New Jersey Assembly has just passed a bill pushing for better snow removal around fire hydrants.
The measure would allow cities and towns to enforce stricter rules for people who have fire hydrants on their property calls for locator poles to be placed on every hydrant and requires the hydrants to be cleared of snow within 24 hours.
Reader , “The best way to stir up debate on this blog is to ask people to do something. It is guaranteed to get the “I pay taxes” crowd riled up. Community spirit? Nope! Entitlement? Yup! These people are how Ridgewood is viewed by others. Lazy, entitled snobs. Is that how you want Ridgewood to be seen? Clear the fire hydrants. Clear your sidewalks.”
Reader, “People are you kidding? i will bet you will be the first to bitch when your house burns down because the fd couldnt get to the fire hydrant because of your lazzy ass will not uncover a hydrant ”
GENEVA (AP) — The United States and Iran are working on a two-phase deal that clamps down on Tehran’s nuclear program for at least a decade before providing it leeway over the remainder of the agreement to slowly ramp up activities that could be used to make weapons.
Officials from some of the six-power talks with Iran said details still needed to be agreed on, with U.S. and Iranian negotiators meeting Monday for the third straight day ahead of an end-of-March deadline for a framework agreement. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry joined the negotiations after arriving Sunday.
If you have a frozen pipe or any condition of a burst pipe, the first thing you have to do is shut off the main water line supply to the house at the main valve in order to stop the leaking water and the home damage.
First, I will advise you to call a NJ Plumber immediately as time is critical and it depends where the leaking is, you might also need to open your kitchen faucet or bathroom faucet so the water in the pipes will empty to a lower place and go to the sink, and if you have a basement with a laundry area or any sink you should release the water out from the lowest water valve that is available.
Sometimes the lowest valve will be the one next to the main water valve so all the water that comes from the piping system will go out onto the ground.
Water becomes ice around 32 degrees Farenheit (0 degrees Celsius), the only thing you need to make sure of is that your water pipe lines are:
Located within an area in which there is heating service and minimum access to open air so warm air can go through any layers of sheet-rock, walls, ceilings, especially around exterior walls where pipes are more likely to get frozen and burst because the temperature is much lower in this area or in an unfinished basement.
Some of the water lines need to be insulated to prevent direct access of cold air and low temperatures on the pipe’s surface, especially pipes that are located underground or next to exterior walls that are exposed to a lower temperature.
In some rare areas you might need to leave some windows, like in the garage and open doors in the basement, furnace room or HVAC system or boiler in order to have the warm air and the heat flow to the rest of the area as in some areas baseboard heaters or vents are not installed because they are unfinished or not a living area.
If you suspect that your pipes are in a low temperature area and might get frozen and burst you must prepare yourself for the worst in order to prevent substantial damage, not only to plumbing but also to your home’s belongings at it might get, floors wet, walls wet from leaking, carpeting or floor damage and electrical damage that will cost you thousands of dollars to fix. The way to do that is to figure out the risk areas, and if you had a burst pipe in the past then you will know.
From our experience a low temperature are will hit again and again at the same spot, so if you had a frozen pipe in the kitchen, or a frozen main line in the basement or an underground pipe that froze and burst those are the areas you need to fix and make sure those pipes are protected from the cold so they do not freeze and burst again.
As part of burst pipe prevention and protecting frozen water lines there are devices that can be used as small heaters for pipes that are at risk of being in a low temperature area.
Those devices range from $20 to no more than $200 so they can surround and be attached to the pipe and that’s an excellent local plumbing repair tool that will prevent a burst or frozen pipe. The other option is to go with heating systems that will maintain a minimum temperature within your living area, basement, etc..
Burst Pipe or Frozen Pipe repair Can Be Avoided
Maintaining your heat temperature to at least 50 degrees in order to be on the safe side, make sure there are openings in the rooms where there are no heating baseboards or hot air and take care of the water lines that are under risk of getting frozen before they get burst.
Al-Shabaab calls for attacks on Oxford Street and Westfield centres in new terror threat
Somalia-based terror group releases video threatening some of the world’s busiest shopping areas
By Tom Whitehead, and Peter Foster
6:38PM GMT 22 Feb 2015
Islamist terrorists have called for attacks on London’s Oxford Street and the Westfield shopping centres in the latest jihadist threat to the UK.
A video released by the Somalia-based fanatics al-Shabaab called on its followers to “hasten to heaven” by attacking some of the country’s busiest shopping areas.
It also threatened venues in America and Canada as well as “Jewish-owned” centres.
Counter-terrorism police in the UK were assessing the video while the head of US homeland security warned shoppers to be “particularly careful”.
The video, which lasts more than an hour and was released over the weekend, centred on the fall out from al-Shabaab’s attack on the Westgate shopping centre in Kenya in 2013 that left 62 people dead and more than 100 injured.
Fox’s Neil Cavuto Admits Yes Mr President its All Fox News Fault
Fox’s Neil Cavuto breaks out the sarcasm: Yes, it was somehow Fox that caused the IRS to crack down on conservative groups, Fox that told people you could keep your doctor under Obamacare. Calling ISIS the “JV team”? The measles outbreak? Blame Fox.(Brent Bozell)
Saturday Night (Pointed) Humor: Cavuto Admits That It’s All Fox News’s Fault
By Tom Blumer | February 21, 2015 | 11:59 PM EST
Thursday on his Your World show, host Neil Cavuto went after the Obama administration’s near obsession with the coverage it gets on Fox News.
While Team Obama can count on the Big Three triumvirate of ABC, CBS and NBC to toe the line, promoting its points while generally avoiding damning information, Fox has generally remained fair and balanced, an approach which has clearly gotten under their ultra-thin skins.
The occasion for Cavuto’s rant, which veered into some impressive sarcastic humor, was Eric Holder’s claim that Fox wouldn’t have anything to talk about if it wasn’t noting the failure of the administration to call Islamic terrorism what it is, i.e., Islamic terrorism:
Transcript (bolds are mine):
NEIL CAVUTO: All right, folks. I have a confession to make.
I did it again. Eric Holder caught me.
ERIC HOLDER (taped): We spend more time, more time, talking about “What do you call it?” instead of “What do you do about it?” I mean really, y’know, y’know, if Fox didn’t talk about this, they’d have nothing else to talk about.
CAVUTO: Yeah. If not for us at Fox News making such a big deal out of saying “Islamic extremism,” no one would be making a big deal out of the White House not saying “Islamic extremism.” Not this Democratic congresswoman or this former top Obama intelligence official. They say words matter too, but it’s Fox News making the big stink, so, well that’s all that matters now.
And it got me thinking. You know it happens sometimes. I know, I’ve heard this before, this whole White House mentioning this Fox News thing before.
(shows a series of derisive or negative references to Fox News by Barack Obama and Josh Earnest)
CAVUTO: Well, I am so busted. Pick a crisis, any crisis, you name it. Fox News is behind it. Worse yet, Fox News created it. And I’m here to admit the White House ain’t telling you the half of it. How clever we are, how devious we are. If only I had known that you had known.
If only I had known that Fox News said you could keep your doctor when you couldn’t keep your doctor, and it wasn’t the President saying that.
Or that it was Fox News’s plan to send your health insurance premiums skyrocketing and not the President’s plan.
Or that Fox news dismissed ISIS as “the jayvee team” and not anyone on the President’s team.
Or FOX News was the one spying on our very own James Rosen, and not the Justice Department spying on our very own James Rosen.
That Fox News was the one targeting conservative groups, and not the IRS targeting conservative groups.
Very clever. God knows what other controversies we caused. I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before it all comes out.
So let me just fess up now and spill the beans. Everything bad, Every time … Fox!
All this frigid weather? Yeah, Fox News. Don’t ask, we just did it.
This whole measles outbreak thing? Bingo! Fox News!
This tepid economic recovery? Sorry, Fox News.
The housing meltdown that preceded it? You guessed it. Fox News started it.
The Internet bubble? Fox News created it, then we burst it so could keep milking it.
The energy crisis back in the 1970s: Fox News — which is amazing, because we weren’t even around in the 70s!
But that didn’t stop us from having a role in the JFK assassination. Yeah, that was a Fox News guy in the grassy knoll.
The Titanic. Yeah, the captain, see the captain? So Rupert Murdoch wth a beard, don’t you think? And now you know why the movie was so good. We damn near wrote the script!
Pearl Harbor: Fox News knew the Japanese were coming!
The potato famine. Even Fox News’s Irish-American anchors (i.e., Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity — Ed.) did nothing, nothing to stop it from coming. They’re the culprits!
“Tsunamis: Fox News! Earthquakes: Fox News! Tornadoes: Fox News!
That meteor hit in Russia that blasted buildings a couple of years back? Well, (that was) Fox’s little Putin payback.
Oh yeah-yeah-yeah, this goes way back, to the Dinosaurs: Fox News killed them off.
And the Big Bang? Fox News started life itself up, only to toy with all living creatures since, and make a mockery of political leaders today.
Secrecy around police surveillance equipment proves a case’s undoing
By Ellen Nakashima February 22 at 3:10 PM
TALLAHASSEE — The case against Tadrae McKenzie looked like an easy win for prosecutors. He and two buddies robbed a small-time pot dealer of $130 worth of weed using BB guns. Under Florida law, that was robbery with a deadly weapon, with a sentence of at least four years in prison.
But before trial, his defense team detected investigators’ use of a secret surveillance tool, one that raises significant privacy concerns. In an unprecedented move, a state judge ordered the police to show the device —a cell-tower simulator sometimes called a StingRay — to the attorneys.
Rather than show the equipment, the state offered McKenzie a plea bargain.
Today, 20-year-old McKenzie is serving six months’ probation after pleading guilty to a second-degree misdemeanor. He got, as one civil liberties advocate said, the deal of the century. (The other two defendants also pleaded guilty and were sentenced to two years’ probation.)
SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW YORK NY
…PATCHY ICE OVERNIGHT INTO MONDAY MORNING…
TEMPERATURES HAD RISEN TO ABOVE FREEZING ACROSS THE REGION TODAY
WITH A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF MELTING.
TEMPERATURES WILL BE FALLING TO BELOW FREEZING EARLY THIS EVENING
AND REMAIN BELOW FREEZING INTO MONDAY. AS A RESULT…ANY STANDING
WATER WILL FREEZE THIS EVENING.
IF YOU WILL BE OUT TONIGHT OR DURING THE MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE BE
AWARE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF ICY PATCHES ON ROADS…AND
WALKWAYS.
OVERNIGHT LOWS ARE EXPECTED TO RANGE FROM AROUND 10 TO 15
DEGREES…AND HIGHS MONDAY WILL RANGE FROM AROUND 12 TO 25.
