Tag: New Jersey

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Go Big or Go Home Author Scotty McCreery Appearing at Bookends in Ridgewood

Scotty McCreery Appearing in Ridgewood
Will Sign Copies of His Debut Book Go Big or Go Home
April 26,2016
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ,  ACM, BMI and CMT Award winning country music singer/songwriter Scotty McCreery, who first captured America’s hearts when he won “American Idol” Season 10 five years ago at age 17, is now an author. The multi-Platinum-selling sensation will be appearing locally as part of his 14-city tour for his new book Go Big or Go Home: The Journey Toward the Dream (Zondervan, May 3). McCreery’s book is his travelogue, sharing stories of growing up in small town America with a big dream and the perseverance that led him to his country music success today. More details on the tour can be found at:
When:     Tuesday, May 3rd at 7:00 pm ET
Where:    Bookends Bookstore
                211 East Ridgewood Ave.
                Ridgewood, NJ 07450
Phone:    201-445-0726
Web:        www.book-ends.com
Event Details
Book purchase from Bookends Bookstore is required for line entry. Books may be purchased day of or pre-ordered from Bookends here or by phone at: 201-445-0726.
The signing is limited to books only; no CDs or memorabilia please. Attendees may take photos while standing in line.
Check out the Facebook event link here.
About Go Big Or Go Home
Go Big or Go Home narrates McCreery’s journey from a kid imitating Elvis on the school bus to 30 million across America tuning in to see him win season ten of “American Idol” to building a successful country music career. McCreery shares a glimpse of where he came from and the impact his faith, family and friends have had on a humble guy who keeps asking “why me?” This is his journey from his North Carolina roots to winning America’s most popular singing competition and moving on to launch the musical career he had always dreamed about.
About Scotty McCreery
Scotty McCreery burst onto the national music scene in 2011 at age 17, quickly establishing himself as one of country music’s hottest new stars. Now 22 years old, the talented singer/songwriter has sold more than 2.5 million albums and received both Platinum and Gold album certifications, debuted three consecutive albums at No. 1 on a Billboard chart, achieved one Gold and three Platinum-certified singles and two Top Ten hits, toured with Brad Paisley, The Band Perry and Rascal Flatts, headlined his own tours, and earned multiple industry and fan accolades. He was named “Best American Idol” by the readers of The Los Angeles Times in February 2016. Earlier this month he was named “Country Music’s Hottest Bachelor” by the readers of NASH Country Weekly Magazine. That publication also named him “Country Music’s Sexiest Man” in November 2015.  For more information, visit www.ScottyMcCreery.com

Book Details

Go Big or Go Home: The Journey Toward the Dream
By Scotty McCreery with Travis Thrasher
#GoBigOrGoHome
Zondervan
ON SALE: May 3, 2016 
$24.99 hardcover
ISBN: 9780310345220
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Ridgewood High School ranks 25th in the state of New Jersey

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April 21,2016

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, Ridgewood High School ranks #25 in the state, according to the U.S. News and World Report. The rankings were published on April 19. Click here to go to the RHS write-up.

Ridgewood High School is ranked 25th within New Jersey. Students have the opportunity to take Advanced Placement® coursework and exams. The AP® participation rate at Ridgewood High School is 64 percent. The student body makeup is 49 percent male and 51 percent female, and the total minority enrollment is 29 percent. Ridgewood High School is the only high school in the Ridgewood Public Schools.

U.S. News & World Report enlisted the help of social science research firm RTI International to compile its rankings. They measured schools using four key metrics:

Math and reading proficiency for all students
Testing proficiency for disadvantaged students
Graduation rates
College readiness via Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate test data.

Ridgewood boasts a 13:1 student-to-teacher ratio and has 64 percent of its students participate in AP Exams.

Neighbors Tenafly placed 13th and Glen Rock 14th.

 

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Taxpayer Guide to Education Ranks Teachers Pay in Ridgewood and the Rest of New Jersey

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April 20,2016

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, According to the Taxpayer Guide to Education the median teacher salary in Ridgewood was $78,318 this year down from $81,403 down 3,80%. Placing Ridgewood Schools somewhere in the middle of the pack.

Taxpayer Guide to Education says New Jersey school districts range from a high of more than $95,000 to a low of about $41,000 .
The guide ranked Northern Valley Regional, a neighboring regional high school district in Bergen County, has the highest median teacher salary, $95,418 while East Newark Borough, a small district that doesn’t have a high school, has the lowest, $40,922.

The pay data, released as part of the state’s annual Taxpayer’s Guide to Education Spending. The guide lists the median salary in each school district and each charter school.

The guide classifies the median salary is the salary in the middle of the payroll, meaning that half of the teachers in a district make more than that figure and the other half make less. Unlike superintendent pay, New Jersey has no restrictions on teachers’ salaries.

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Population rebounds around train stations in New Jersey

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By CHRISTOPHER MAAG

PATERSON, N.J. (AP) — When Kevin Eleby started commuting by train to New York City in 2001, the station in downtown Paterson was nearly empty. Every morning he climbed the stairs to the platform to wait alongside three other riders.

Nearly a decade passed. A few new people started showing up. Then a few more. A few weeks ago, when his train rushed into the station at 7:39 a.m., Eleby was surrounded by a crowd of 45 people.

“This place was deserted. Now you come up here and it’s full. Look at all these people!” said Eleby, 48, a Paterson resident who works in information technology for Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan. “It’s a big change,” he told The Record (https://bit.ly/1V8CxLm).

It’s a change that’s taking place across New Jersey and in some of the nation’s largest metropolitan regions. During the housing boom of the early 2000s, New Jersey’s population grew by 2.8 percent, but car-dependent suburbs saw their populations grow by 4.1 percent, according to a study by Tim Evans, research director at New Jersey Future, which advocates for transit-oriented development.

Meanwhile, neighborhoods within a half-mile of a transit station barely grew at all.

Then came the 2008 recession — and a major shift in population and commuting patterns.

Statewide, population growth slowed, dropping to 1.5 percent from 2008 through 2014, the latest year for which data is available. Car-oriented suburbs grew at roughly the same rate.

But during the same period, transit-oriented neighborhoods saw their population surge. Since the recession, they have accounted for 38.3 percent of the population growth in New Jersey, Evans found.

“It’s really dramatic, actually, how little these transit places were growing before 2008 and now they’re growing really quickly,” Evans said. “And the outlying counties that were the locus of sprawl are now losing population.

In Bergen and Passaic counties, many older suburbs grew up along train lines, and many newer ones are dependent on cars. That means the change in population patterns is not as stark here as elsewhere around the state, Evans said.

Yet the pattern holds. Most car-based municipalities in North Jersey continued to grow after 2008, but at a slower pace than before the recession, Evans said. Places like Montvale, Cresskill, Upper Saddle River in Bergen County; Wanaque in Passaic County; and Pompton Plains in Morris County all saw their growth rates stagnate.

But many transit-oriented neighborhoods grew. In Bergen County, Fair Lawn, Lyndhurst, Garfield, Ridgewood and Glen Rock all went from losing population before the recession to gaining population since 2008.

https://www.hastingstribune.com/population-rebounds-around-train-stations-in-new-jersey/article_ff935216-b5aa-523a-b990-256991a56ce6.html

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New Jersey Makes the Top Ten: 2016’s States with the Highest Tax Burdens

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Trenton

New Jersey Places Number 7 in States with the Highest Tax Burdens

April 11,2016

the staff of the Ridgewood bog

Ridgewood Nj, With a week remaining until Tax Day and many Americans finding the current tax code too confusing to determine exactly how much their home states are actually taking from their income in taxes, the personal finance website WalletHub conducted an in-depth analysis of 2016’s States with the Highest & Lowest Tax Burdens.
In order to determine which states tax their residents most aggressively, WalletHub’s analysts compared the tax burdens of the 50 states by measuring property taxes, individual income taxes, and state and gross receipts taxes — the three components of state tax burden — as percentages of the total personal income in each state.

States with the Highest Tax Burdens (%) States with the Lowest Tax Burdens (%)
1 New York (13.12%) 41 Texas (7.67%)
2 Hawaii (11.86%) 42 Wyoming (7.62%)
T-3 Maine (11.13%) 43 Alabama (7.41%)
T-3 Vermont (11.13%) 44 Florida (7.22%)
5 Connecticut (10.91%) 45 Oklahoma (6.95%)
6 Minnesota (10.46%) 46 South Dakota (6.94%)
7 New Jersey (10.38%) 47 New Hampshire (6.88%)
8 Rhode Island (10.36%) 48 Tennessee (6.56%)
9 Wisconsin (10.32%) 49 Delaware (5.91%)
10 Illinois (10.19%) 50 Alaska (5.18%)

Comparing the States

  • Red states have a lower total tax burden, with an average rank of 32.00, compared with Blue states, which have an average rank of 19.38. (The lower the rank, the higher the burden)
  • New Jersey has the highest property tax as a fraction of personal income, 5.41 percent, which is four times higher than in Oklahoma, the state with the lowest, 1.42 percent.
  • New York and Oregon have the highest individual income taxes as a fraction of personal income, 4.76 percent and 4.04 percent respectively, whereas Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington and Wyoming do not levy such a tax.
  • Hawaii has the highest total sales and gross receipts tax as a fraction of personal income, 6.95 percent, which is six times higher than in Oregon, the state with the lowest, 1.15 percent.

For the full report and to see where your state ranks, please visit:
https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-highest-lowest-tax-burden/20494/

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New Jersey has to rethink its budget because one guy moved

14405_trenton_new_jersey_s_state_house_capitol_in_trenton

Linette Lopez

If you move away from your home state, some friends might throw you a party. Maybe you’ll get a happy-hour discount at your local bar.

If you’re really a big deal, you might get to throw out the first pitch at your local minor-league baseball team’s next game.

Other than that, everything will be pretty much the same after you’re gone.

That is, of course, unless you’re billionaire David Tepper.

If you are him, then when you move away you have the potential to send your whole state ( in this case New Jersey) into red-alert mode.

Tepper, the founder of the hedge fund Appaloosa Management, moved to Florida last fall. This, according to Bloomberg, has leaders of his former state very concerned.

https://www.businessinsider.com/tepper-move-hurts-new-jersey-2016-4

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Nanny State of the Week: Jail time for texting while walking in New Jersey

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By Eric Boehm / March 28, 2016

A New Jersey lawmaker has an idea that hits a grand slam of nannyism.

It’s the rare occasion when we can celebrate an idea that is overly paternalistic, completely unnecessary, entirely unenforceable and laughably ridiculous, all at the same time.

Shutterstock image

DON’T TEXT AND WALK: Be aware of your surroundings, because texting while walking could land you in jail if one New Jersey lawmaker gets her way.

State Assemblywoman Pamela Lampitt, D-Camden, has proposed a bill to ban texting while walking.

Yes, while walking.

After being mocked by several news outlets in New Jersey, Lampitt apparently pulled the bill from consideration and the state has erased all traces of it from the state legislature’s website.

A one-line description of the bill still appears online, however. It says Lampitt’s legislation would have established a motor vehicle offense of “unlawful use of hand-held wireless telephone by pedestrians.”

Can you imagine receiving a traffic ticket for walking, on a sidewalk, with a cell phone in hand? That’s pretty much what the bill would have done. According to NJ.com, which first covered the proposal, the penalty for texting while walking would have been $50 and offenders could have been required to attend classes on highway safety.

Get caught more than once and you could end up in jail.

“Distracted pedestrians, like distracted drivers, present a potential danger to themselves and drivers on the road,” Lampitt said in a statement, according to NJ.com.

Lampitt was apparently not messing around with this idea. According to Philly.com, her proposal called for repeat offenders to be sent to jail for 15 days – where, one would assume, they would not be texting, interfering with traffic or walking very far.

Image via Ballotpedia

LAMPITT: State Assemblywoman Pamela Lampitt’s bill is a rare occasion to celebrate a Nanny State grand slam. It’s an idea that is overly paternalistic, completely unnecessary, entirely unenforceable and laughably ridiculous, all at the same time.

ALSO IN NEW JERSEY: State ban on churches selling gravestones takes effect

Being distracted by texting is indeed a measurable problem, and one that seems to be increasing as more people spend more time with their noses buried in their cell phone screens. The Governors Highway Safety Association estimates that there were 2 million injuries to texter-walkers during 2010, a three-fold increase since 2004.

But is throwing people in jail the right response?

Lampitt’s proposal will likely not become law in New Jersey – at least not this year – but she’s actually behind the times in some parts of the state.

In Fort Lee, New Jersey, a town already famous for politically manufactured traffic problems, it’s already illegal to text while walking around. Getting caught cellphone-in-hand will leave you with an $85 fine and ticket for jaywalking.

Thomas Ripoli, chief of the Fort Lee Police Department, told ABC News that the borough instituted the new fines in 2012 after having three fatal accidents involving pedestrians in the span of one year.

Other states might soon be following in New Jersey’s finger and footprints.

Texting while driving bans have been implemented in 46 states plus the District of Columbia. Fourteen states (including New Jersey) plus D.C. have bans on any and all cell-phone use by drivers.

Busy-body lawmakers in those states are now eyeing pedestrians. Variations on the “no texting while walking” bill have been introduced in Arkansas, Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada and New York, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. None of them have been passed into law.

Fines and jail time are completely inappropriate punishments for this type of activity, occasionally dangerous though it may be. Instead, hey, maybe just be aware of your surroundings and wait until you’re someplace safe to continue snapchatting with your friends.

And if any state is going to pass a law punishing people for texting while walking, we can only hope they make it a little bit of fun.

Instead of a traffic ticket and a fine, how about something that involves bears?

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New Jersey Must Focus on Cutting Spending All of our futures depend on it

Assemblywoman_Holly_Schepisi_theirdgewoodblog

March 30,2016
Assemblywomen Holly Schepisi

Ridgewood NJ, When looking at why the cost of living in New Jersey is so absurdly high, it is imperative to understand actual numbers for spending around the State.

Anyone following the proposed Atlantic City bankruptcy and/or takeover is probably trying to understand how Atlantic City got to this point. Most people are unaware that the population of Atlantic City consists of only 39,500 residents and 6,679 school age children. Yet, the municipal budget is $262,000,000 equaling spending of $26,531.64 per household of 4 people.

Likewise the school budget is $166,000,000 which equals an average spending of $24,887.56 per child. In other words, for a family of 4 with two school age children, the governmental and school spending in Atlantic City equals $76,306.76 per household. We must cut spending and figure out a better way. All of our futures depend on it.

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“Bergen & Passaic Are NOT BLUE, Neither Is New Jersey, We Are Ignored! Donald Trump Will Not Ignore Us!”

Robert Auth

BREAKING ENDORSEMENT! A special message from Bergen & Passaic County Assemblyman Robert Auth

“Bergen & Passaic Are NOT BLUE, Neither Is New Jersey, We Are Ignored! Donald Trump Will Not Ignore Us!”

Dear Bergen and Passaic County Voters,

I am proud to endorse Donald J. Trump for President of these United States.

Donald Trump is a neighbor who understands and cares about the quality of life in our region, but most importantly — I want us to win again! I believe Donald Trump is the only candidate who can defeat Hillary Clinton in Bergen and Passaic County in this general election.

In a recent Fredric U. Dicker column (NY Post) it was reported that Trump is winning Orange, Rockland and Westchester counties.

These New York counties are neighbors to Bergen and Passaic, and their demographics are similar to ours. I believe Donald Trump will not only win them all, but help Republican candidates across New Jersey win at the local level, to help rebalance government within our local communities.

I ask you to join me in supporting Donald J. Trump for President. Not only will he Make America Great Again, he will help make New Jersey Great Again, and most importantly, he will help make a better Bergen and Passaic County for my constituents.

Whether it is through restructuring unfair trade deals, reforming health care, bringing REAL support to our veterans and law enforcement professionals, reducing taxes, or ending illegal immigration – Donald Trump will revive our economy and revitalize our national stature like no other candidate can.

Let’s work and vote together to make Bergen and Passaic Great Again. Donald Trump 2016!

N.J. Assemblyman Robert Auth (D39 – Bergen, Passaic)

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New Jersey Lawmakers want to know why businesses are leaving N.J…ah because of YOU STUPID!

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Trenton= dumb as a box of rocks

 

we had to repeat this Trenton , Ridgewood , they are just not listening

By Matt Friedman | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

TRENTON — New Jersey’s state government would seek to better understand why companies are leaving the state under legislation approved by a Senate panel today.

The Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee voted 10-0 to approve the bill, which would require the state’s labor commissioner conduct a written survey of any major company that’s either moving out of state or laying off a large number of employees.

The legislation comes in the wake of Mercedes-Benz decision to vacate its Bergen County headquarters and take 1,000 jobs with it to the outskirts of Atlanta, citing the South’s lower cost of doing business.

https://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/02/nj_government_would_be_required_to_survey_departin.html#incart_river

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Assembly Republicans Decry Democratic Spending Prior to Session

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Prior to a Monday’s session, where several bills from an anti-poverty initiative from Assembly Speaker Vince Prieto (D-32) were on the board list, Assembly Minority Leader Jon Bramnick (R-20) laid the blame for New Jersey’s dire financial straits at the Democratic majority’s feet. Bramnick and Assembly members Anthony Bucco (R-25) and Amy Handlin (R-13) joined him in saying that majority rule from tax-payers should determine spending. JT Aregood, PolitickerNJ Read more