SEPTEMBER 21, 2015, 1:11 PM LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2015, 7:10 AM
BY JOAN VERDON
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
Workers at 11 A&P-owned stores in North Jersey, and thousands more at 84 other stores, breathed a collective sigh of relief Monday after learning that those stores had been sold to the Acme and Stop & Shop chains for $370 million.
The deals, approved Monday by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain in White Plains, N.Y., preserve the jobs of 10,750 union employees, including 4,000 workers represented by United Food & Commercial Workers Local 464a in Little Falls.
Acme and Stop & Shop have been negotiating with the unions representing the workers and are close to reaching an agreement, a union official said. A cornerstone of the deals with Acme and Stop & Shop is that current union jobs will be preserved, the official said.
A&P is selling its stores to pay off creditors in its bankruptcy case. But the company, Drain and the unions have argued that job preservation should be considered, along with sale price.
North Jersey Duo looks to Crowdfunding for their third short film together
September 04,2015
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, Writer/Director Joseph Robert Redl and Executive Producer Nicholas Juzdan have started crowdfunding for their third short film together. They have produced short films like Daniel In The Lion’s Den (2014) and X’s On Trees (2015).
Both are local North Jersey residents Nicholas Juzdan of Woodland Park and Joseph Robert Redl of Ridgewood have teamed up again, producing their third short film, entitled “Kingwood.” The duo’s first short film, “Xs on Trees,” was screened earlier this year to rave revues.
Synopsis:
When Nick and Jeff’s father pass away, the vices they inherited fuel a story of greed, betrayal, and what it truly means to be on your own.
The film takes place on location at Joseph Robert Redl’s childhood farm house. Joseph likes to incorporate something personal from his life in all his work; and so the farm house was something he wanted to share.
This script is a draw in from the first line to the last and we can’t wait to bring it to the screen.
AUGUST 25, 2015 LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY, AUGUST 25, 2015, 4:09 PM
BY KATHLEEN LYNN
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
Home prices continue to edge up in the New York metropolitan area, rising 2.8 percent in June compared with a year earlier, the S&P/Case-Shiller index said Tuesday.
Nationally, prices were more buoyant, rising 4.5 percent over the year.
Despite the recent gains, home values in the region, which includes North Jersey, are still no higher than they were 11 years ago, in September 2004. They are still almost 17 percent below their mid-2006 peaks in the region. Nationally, home prices have returned to the levels of winter 2005 nationwide, and remain 12 percent to 14 percent below their peaks.
“Nationally, home prices continue to rise at a 4-5 percent annual rate, two to three times the rate of inflation,” said David M. Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices. He said that the Federal Reserve’s signals that it will raise interest rates this year could lead to higher mortgage rates, which will make buying a home more difficult.
“A quarter-point increase in the Fed funds rate won’t derail housing,” Blitzer said. “However, if the Fed were to quickly follow that initial move with one or two more rate increases, housing and home prices might suffer.”
U.S. Representative Scott Garrett
Ernest Scott Garrett is the U.S. Representative for New Jersey’s 5th congressional district, serving since 2003. He is a member of the Republican Party. The district includes much of the northern-most and western-most portions of the state.
Born: July 9, 1959 (age 56), Englewood, NJ
Office: Representative (R-NJ 5th District) since 2003
Spouse: Mary Garrett
Residence: Wantage Township, NJ
Children: Brittany Garrett, Jennifer Garrett
Education: Rutgers School of Law–Camden (1984), Montclair State University (1981)
WBTP Meeting 7 pm, Tuesday, August 25 at the Larkin House 380 Godwin Ave in Wyckoff NJ all are welcome
AUGUST 7, 2015, 7:51 PM LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, AUGUST 7, 2015, 11:48 PM
BY HANNAN ADELY
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
The freewheeling summer celebrated in countless songs and poems isn’t so carefree for many students who come home from school in June with hefty homework assignments that span grades and subjects.
Summer homework isn’t a new thing, but it is a big topic year after year, especially when it spills into family vacation and weekend activities. In one high school, students are even petitioning for homework equity, saying it should be given to all students or none at all.
Parents are conflicted, with some pushing back or grudgingly accepting it, while others say the work keeps kids sharp and competitive and makes the school year easier. Yet all parents seem to long for the summers of their youth when they read what they wanted — if they wanted — and didn’t have the stress of schoolwork hanging over their heads.
“What gets lost is the opportunity for a kid to pick up a book and say, ‘I’ve been dying to read this,’” said Randi Asher, a Glen Rock parent and a homework critic. “To have that entire summer to throw yourself into nature and to experience learning in a way that is different from an assignment. It’s not that they don’t have that opportunity. There is the whole summer, but this detracts from that.”
AUGUST 5, 2015, 11:25 PM LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 5, 2015, 11:34 PM
BY KARA YORIO AND STEFANIE DAZIO
STAFF WRITERS |
THE RECORD
Classified ad websites, such as Craigslist, can be an easy and convenient way to buy and sell goods. Once a purchase is agreed upon, however, the parties typically have to meet to finish the transaction. That is where the deals can get tricky or even dangerous.
When Park Ridge resident Jodie Delehanty put an ad on Craigslist recently to sell her car, she received a response right away.
“The guy was very interested,” Delehanty said. “I thought it was weird that it was so quick, but it ended up being legit.”
Just in case, though, Delehanty and her husband completed the transaction in an online shopping “safe zone” in the parking lot of the Hillsdale Police Department.
The Hillsdale SafeTrade Station — in the department’s lobby and back parking lot — is one of many safe zones being created by police departments and communities around the country so people can complete transactions with strangers after buying or selling something online. People do not need to be a resident of the town.
Mahwah — It’s a rainy Saturday afternoon in June and a dozen people — wearing matching shirts — have gathered at Society Hill, a local condominium complex. (Nobile/The Bergen Record)
JULY 6, 2015, 8:55 PM LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY, JULY 7, 2015, 7:55 AM
BY HANNAN ADELY
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
North Jersey schools have made strides to improve graduation rates and narrow the performance gap among student groups of different races and income levels, state and national reports have shown.
Now concerns are being raised about how proposed changes to federal education law could impact progress in states like New Jersey. Officials and educators largely agree that the federal No Child Left Behind Act needs to be reformed, but they disagree on what a new law should look like.
Federal officials said Monday that proposed bills to overhaul the law lack the accountability needed to make sure struggling students get the help and investments they need, especially in the lowest-performing 5 percent of schools. The officials released a report showing that wide gaps still exist across states, despite improvements in graduation rates and achievement gaps.
“We have to make sure every state develops a structure to identify and help the lowest-performing schools,” Cecilia Munoz, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, said in a phone call with reporters.
JUNE 19, 2015, 11:43 PM LAST UPDATED: SATURDAY, JUNE 20, 2015, 12:18 PM
BY STEPHANIE AKIN
STAFF WRITER |
THE RECORD
In the past 10 days, two teenagers were killed in traffic accidents — a 16-year-old died while trying to cross Route 46 in Lodi and a 13-year-old Cresskill boy was killed riding his bike to school. Two bodies were found along the cliffs of the Palisades, including that of an 18-year-old — also from Cresskill — who was dumped there after she died of a heroin overdose last summer. And a bridge inspector was swept to his death by high waters in Passaic, washing up in Rutherford three days later.
It’s the type of trend that has no pattern or discernable cause. But the seemingly relentless stream of bad news has dominated media coverage across North Jersey, banging a drumbeat of danger in the suburbs that has only been amplified by national stories like Wednesday night’s mass slayings at an African-American church in Charleston, S.C.
“It’s a lot for a little community,” said Cresskill Police Chief Edward Wrixon. “It’s been very trying on me and the officers and the townspeople. The one good thing I see in it is how we all work together, and I think we are doing a damn good job.”
Law enforcement officials and experts on criminology and psychology said that it is unlikely that more people are dying in North Jersey this summer than in any other year. Instead, they said, the extraordinary details of many of these incidents — the young victims and the seemingly random strikes of fate — create a sense of heightened sensitivity to similar events, leading to the impression of an uptick.
There is also a bright side to a spate of gruesome news stories, they said. It helps create a conversation about mortality in an American culture that often resists talking explicitly about death.
“There’s a macabre human interest in it,” said Keith Durkin, a professor of sociology, psychology, sociology and criminal justice at Ohio Northern University. “It mirrors our anxieties. But it alleviates them and makes us confront the realities of our fears.”
JUNE 18, 2015, 10:59 PM LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, JUNE 18, 2015, 11:08 PM
BY JEFF GREEN AND MONSY ALVARADO
STAFF WRITERS |
THE RECORD
For as long as Mack Cauthen could remember, Bible study at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Englewood has always been open to not only members of the congregation, but anyone who is interested in learning and sharing their experiences.
But a day after nine people were killed during a prayer meeting at a historic black church in Charleston, S.C., Cauthen, a church deacon, and other North Jersey religious leaders were grappling with how to continue the church’s mission to welcome and attract new members while keeping their congregations safe.
“We are trying to reach as many people as possible to join us and to learn, but at the same time what do you do?” Cauthen asked. “Try and restrict people, and who is the judge?”
The Rev. Melanie Miller of the AME Zion Church in Hackensack said the shooting will compel churches to discuss what security measures can be instituted, while balancing the religious needs of the community.
“When things like this happen it not only instills fear, but at the same time we have to reach out to anyone who may feel isolated,” she said
EAST RUTHERFORD – In the last book of the New Testament of the Bible, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse ride on to the scene, a vision of divine apocalypse, a harbinger of the Last Judgment, a shudder for sinners for all time.
At Meadowlands Racetrack on Tuesday night, the Democratic chairmen of four North Jersey counties – Bergen, Essex, Hudson and Passaic – rode into East Rutherford for what was billed as a charity event, providing what could be a glimpse of doom to South Jersey power brokers as the war clouds of casino controversy loom over all of New Jersey. (Bonamo/PolitickerNJ)
HACKENSACK – The whole of New Jersey might be embroiled in casino controversy chaos, but to Bergen County Executive Jim Tedesco, the case is clear: any future North Jersey casino should be built in the Meadowlands in his own Bergen County. (Bonamo/PolitickerNJ)
If Casinos didn’t help Atlantic City what makes you think they can help North Jersey ?
No one should look to the gambling industry to revive cities, “because that’s not what casinos do.”
Baltimore is a troubled city, as you know from The Wire. Like many troubled cities, Baltimore has turned to casino gambling as its solution. On August 26, a new Caesar’s casino will open on the site of an old chemical factory, a little more than 2 miles from the famous Inner Harbor and Camden Yards baseball stadium. Yet there’s already reason to expect the casino to disappoint everyone involved: the city looking for tax revenues, the workers hoping for jobs, the investors expecting hefty returns.
Outside of Las Vegas—now home to only 20 percent of the nation’s casino industry—casino gambling has evolved into a downscale business. Affluent and educated people visit casinos less often than poorer people do for the same reasons that they smoke less and drink less and weigh less.
Unfortunately for the casino industry’s growth hopes, downscale America has less money to spend today than it did before 2007. Nor is downscale America sharing much in the post-2009 recovery. From a news report on the troubles of a recently opened Ohio casino:
Ameet Patel, general manager of the property, says the softness in casino revenue that he and other operators have seen has been driven by a key demographic: women older than 50 who used to bet $50 to $75 per visit. The weak recovery has squeezed their gambling budgets, and their trips to casinos are fewer, he says.
What’s true in Ohio applies nationwide. Casino revenues had still not recovered their 2007 peaks as of the spring of 2014, when again they went into reverse in most jurisdictions. Moody’s now projects that casino revenues will drop through the rest of 2014 and all of 2015, slicing industry earnings by as much as 7.5 percent.
MAY 18, 2015 LAST UPDATED: MONDAY, MAY 18, 2015, 1:21 AM
THE RECORD
Why we have more coyotes, and how we can coexist
The past eight years have seen an increase in the number of coyotes in the metropolitan area, so he’s made an effort to inform residents of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut about what to expect when they live near coyotes.
He will speak at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Closter Public Library about the history, biology and behavior of coyotes.
Q. Why are we seeing an increase in the number of coyotes and other wildlife in our neighborhoods and parking lots?
Some of it is overdevelopment. A lot of it is that these surviving generations of turkeys, coyotes and bears are adapting to these urban areas. So now we have to adapt to them. We also have to see if people are perpetuating it through feeding them, which is something that needs to be discouraged. I’m not supportive of bird feeders, because it’s getting animals conditioned to people in an unnatural way. Animals are very efficient and can get food on their own.
Q. How can we better respect the wildlife in our midst?
Definitely give the wildlife respect and as wide a berth as possible. In regards to coyotes and even bobcats, people have to be less complacent about their pets. You shouldn’t leave your pets out in your yards. It also means driving a little more slowly on the Palisades Interstate Parkway to make sure you don’t hit anything. You need to take precautions, like not leaving garbage out for raccoons and bears. You should plant things in your back yard that are aesthetic but are not palatable for deer, rabbits and other wildlife.
MAY 9, 2015, 11:30 PM LAST UPDATED: SATURDAY, MAY 9, 2015, 11:41 PM
BY KATHLEEN LYNN AND DAVE SHEINGOLD
STAFF WRITERS |
THE RECORD
Andrea and Joe Buccino bought their first home, a Cape Cod in Wallington, for $385,000 in 2005. A decade later, they put it on the market for $299,000 — one of many examples of how home values in North Jersey, like much of the nation, have struggled to recover since being slashed in the Great Recession.
An analysis of 2014 property sales data by The Record found that prices across most of Bergen and Passaic counties saw virtually no change last year. Overall in Bergen County, the median price of $405,000 remains 14.7 percent below the 2006 median peak of $475,000; Passaic County’s median is still off 25 percent, at $285,000. (Nationally, prices are about 16 percent below their peaks.)
And the slow recovery is most dramatic in the region’s lower-income, lower-priced housing markets.
At the top end of the market, in towns where the median value was at least $700,000 in 2006, prices are about 11 percent below their peaks. Homes in the middle range of values are about 17 percent off their peaks.
But at the lower end — in towns like Hackensack, Wallington, Garfield and Paterson — values held down by a greater concentration of foreclosures and distressed sales have barely recovered. They continue to languish 30 percent below their peaks — 26 percent if you take out Paterson and Passaic, where housing distress has been especially acute.
In actual dollars and cents, the housing troubles translate into median prices that are down in Paterson from $340,000 in 2006, to $185,000 in 2014; from $330,000, to $205,000 in Hackensack; $410,000, to $281,000 in Garfield; $380,000, to $250,000 in the city of Passaic; $423,000, to $260,000 in Wallington; and $410,000, to $300,000 in Elmwood Park.
At the high end of the market, the numbers tell a much different story. The median price in Ridgewood, for example, has climbed back to $685,000, near the 2006 peak of $710,000. In Ho-Ho-Kus, the median price in 2014 was $725,000, compared with $750,000 in 2006. While in Englewood Cliffs, the 2014 median of $1.1 million surpassed the $1.09 million median in 2006. Saddle River’s 2014 median of $1.5 million is approaching 2006’s $1.71 million. And agents in those towns describe the market as hot.
The picture is similar statewide, though there’s less gap between the low and the high ends of the market.
Comparisons with the peak of the market can be tricky. Prices in the years before the crash shot up annually, often by double digits, fueled by loose lending standards that led many households to borrow more than they could afford, leading to foreclosures and short sales, in which lenders accept less than is owed on the mortgage. The collapse, according to some experts, merely brought prices back to more realistic levels.
While the relatively stagnant prices at the lower end are good news for some buyers, homeowners who bought at or near the peak and are looking to move up, face being stuck with a big loss, or just stuck.
