>https://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/01/post_56.htm

Posted by afriedma January 18, 2009 13:09PM

Just six months after advocates for the poor heralded a new law to create more affordable housing in New Jersey, parts of it may be set aside because of the slumping economy.

Gov. Jon Corzine has called for a one-year moratorium on a fee charged to developers of commercial real estate. He said the moratorium on the fee, used to fund housing for low- and moderate-income people, would spur economic development.

It was expected the 2.5 percent fee, created last year, would generate $160 million per year. But in six months, it’s raised only about $5 million, according to state Sen. Raymond Lesniak, D-Elizabeth.

“It doesn’t work, it hasn’t worked and it’s not working,” Lesniak said. “Two-point-five percent, 10 percent, 20 percent of nothing is nothing.”

Lesniak is crafting a bill that would waive the fee, and a state requirement for each municipality to use money generated by the fee to create affordable housing, for one year. The concept has the support of key legislative leaders in addition to the governor.

For more than two decades, the state had let towns pay other towns to fulfill their affordable housing obligation. Last year, the Legislature ended that practice in a shift that affordable housing advocates saw as a major advance.

Instead, money for subsidized housing was to come largely from the 2.5 percent fee charged to developers of commercial property. Previously, towns had been allowed to set their own fees for developers. Some declined to do so; others charged more than 2.5 percent.

But there’s been a big problem: Since the fee was standardized, real estate development has fallen sharply.

Affordable housing advocates don’t like the idea of suspending the development fee. They say it’s confounding that the state would slow action on providing housing for low- and moderate-income people in a time when there is a growing need for housing.

“We are opposed to a moratorium and don’t understand why this is the first thing to be cut,” said Kevin Walsh, associate director of the Cherry Hill-based Fair Share Housing Center. “Holding steady is one thing, but cutting the resources available to help folks with shelter is bad.”

Affordable housing has been a contentious issue in the state since the state Supreme Court found in a 1975 ruling in Southern Burlington County NAACP v. Mount Laurel that towns could not use their zoning to exclude the poor. Since then, the court has gone further, finding that towns have an obligation to provide for homes for lower-income people.

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Newsday.com

newsday.com/news/local/wire/newjersey/ny-bc-nj–xgr-legislativepr0118jan18,0,1413200.story

By ANGELA DELLI SANTI

Associated Press Writer

January 18, 2009

TRENTON, N.J.

Gov. Jon Corzine’s nod to open space in his State of the State address could give new life to stalled efforts to direct long-term funding to the purchase of farmland, green acres and historic sites.

At least two bills already in the Legislature address permanent funding for open space, which environmentalists have long advocated and Corzine said he supports, though he has not said where he thinks the money should come from. Several proposals have come and gone since Corzine was elected in 2005, including a plan to dedicate a portion of the sales tax to open space preservation. A new legislative proposal is being drafted.

“It is my preferred approach that we put in place a long-term funding solution,” Corzine said in the State of the State message Tuesday. “That said, we need, at a minimum, an interim bonding question for November’s ballot to extend the financing the votes approved in 2007.”

Voters approved an emergency $200 million bond referendum in 2007, the same year they rejected borrowing for stem cell research and dedicating a portion of the sales tax to property tax relief. The open space money has all been spent. (No statewide open space funding question has failed in New Jersey in a dozen or so requests to voters dating back decades.)

Environmentalists said they are frustrated the question of long-term funding keeps cropping up without being resolved.

“A one-year stopgap doesn’t get the job done, and I’m not even sure it would pass (in this economy),” said David Pringle of the New Jersey Environmental Federation. “We shouldn’t be living referendum to referendum.”

Jeff Tittel of the New Jersey Sierra Club said $200 million a year is needed, and that there are many ways to get it: through a modest water-user fee, from the sales tax or gas tax, by taxing those who develop farmland, through a multiyear bond referendum, or by taxing billboards, SUVs or recreation equipment.

The proposal to dedicate a portion of existing sales tax revenue to open space purchases had support from a majority of lawmakers in both political parties, Tittel said, but became a casualty of the caustic budget battle of 2006 that shut down state government. A similar proposal became a political casualty the next year, when Corzine tried to tie permanent funding for open space to a failed plan to pay down state debt by raising tolls.

“This is the first time since 1961 that we are out of money for open space,” Tittel said. The governor should never have allowed us to get into that situation in the first place.”

Senate Republican Leader Tom Kean Jr. of Westfield agreed, accusing Corzine, a Democrat seeking re-election in November, of “playing politics with land preservation goals as opposed to finding a real solution that has worked very well for two decades.”

Kean said he continues to support a Senate resolution he and Democratic leader Steve Sweeney co-sponsored dedicating $175 million in existing tax revenue to open space through 2038, if voters approve the idea.

Assemblyman John McKeon, D-South Orange, said he is drafting a bill that would provide $350 million a year to the open space preservation fund by imposing a water use fee that would cost the average household $2 per month. The proposal also would require voter approval.

McKeon, long a champion of open space funding, said failing to replenish the fund would cause economic peril.

For example, if the Highlands watershed region were to be developed rather than preserved, he said the costs of treating and delivering clean, safe tap water to the state would become so astronomical no one could afford to live in the Garden State any longer.

“The bottom line _ it’s unpalatable to do nothing,” he said.

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>friday, January 16, 2009
Doing my research…myself
Just wanted to share with you my reading and study on math. Lest anybody think I get all my info from the Ed Center, the truth is I actually get very little over there. Sure, I’m receiving updates from the Math Planning Team, but those aren’t too detailed. Mr. Vallerini and Mrs. Lenhard are the Board Members on the Curriculum Committee, so they are more involved with them. I’m sure I could get all kinds of materials at the Ed Center, but my style is to do my own research. Below is a list of what I’ve been reading the past year or so (approximately 90% of this was sourced be me directly…the advantage of self-employment is plenty of time to surf the web…some of them are on my shelf waiting to be read ASAP).

Please suggest any reading you think I should be doing!

in no particular order (list updated 1/17/09)…

Books
The Equation for Excellence: How to Make Your Child Successful at Math (Vohra)
Math Doesn’t Suck: How to Survive Middle School Math without Breaking a Nail (McKellar)
Math for humans: Teaching Math through 8 Intelligences (Wahl)
Math Wars: A Guide for Parents & Teachers (Latterell)
Standards-Based School Mathematics Curricula: What are they? What Do Students Learn? (Studies in Mathematical Learning), (Senk & Thompson)
What’s Math Got to Do with It? (Boaler)
What Successful Math Teachers Do. (Posamentier)

Articles & Reports
“A Formula to End the Divide,” Posamentier, Bergen Record, 6/19/07
“Abandoning traditional math approach doesn’t add up.” Posamentier, Bergen Record, 6/11/08
“How Does it Add Up?” Views on Math Education.” Posamentier. Education Update, Inc.
“Where Has All the Knowledge Gone?”, Boaler, Education Week, 10/8/08
“Reaching for Common Ground in K-12 Mathematics Education,” Ball, et al., Notices of the AMS, 10/05
“Study Suggests Math Teachers Scrap Balls and Slices,” Chang. NY Times 4/25/08
“Report Urges Changes in Teaching Math,” Lewin. NY Times 3/14/08
“Clarifying Misconceptions about Investigations in Number, Data and Space,” Prince William County Schools Mathematics Focus Group
“Are We Failing Our Geniuses?,” Cloud. Time. 8/16/07
“10 Myths (Maybe) About Learning Math,” Mathews. Washington Post. 5/31/05
“Learning from Singapore Math,” Leinwand & Ginsburg. Educational Leadership, 11/07
“On Professional Judgment and the National Mathematics Advisory Panel Report: Curricular Content,” Thompson. Educational Researcher, 12/08

Final Report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel

Curriculum Focal Points for Prekindergarten through Grade 8 Mathematics, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 2006

Websites
What Works Clearinghouse, U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences
Mathematically Correct
Mathematically Sane
Math Panel Watch
National Assessment of Educational Progress Mathematics Study 2003
Math Forum at Drexel University
Posted by Laurie Goodman at 1:11 AM
Labels: math
6 comments:

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>Dear Ms. Goodman,

I am dismayed and surprised by your 13 January 2009 post on the Ridgewood Blog in which you accused a parent of ‘undermining the administration’ by offering Sandra Stotsky, a distinguished math standards expert, to consult with RPS’ Math Planning Team (MPT). You couldn’t have chosen a more negative characterization of the parent’s actions. Instead this parent should be complimented for attempting to provide balance to the MPT, whose external advisors are far to one side of the ideological divide.

The external advisors Daro, Rosenstein, and Schultz represent a point of view shared by far fewer than 1% of mathematicians. They are the ‘understanding first’ and ‘multiple solutions’ crowd that leave little time for our children to become fluent in standard algorithms for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. These algorithms are efficient and they provide the foundations of algebra.

The only advisor with a point of view respected by mathematicians is Posamentier, but his chances of providing balance are slim. He has only 30 minutes with the MPT, while Daro was given an entire day, and Schultz is both a member of the team and an external advisor. If the external advisors represented both sides of the ideological divide, and all were given equal time, then I would agree that we don’t need Stotsky.

Most outrageous is your characterization of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel (NMAP) as ‘political,’ and your insinuation that it’s being treated as dogmatic religious text. In my view the NMAP report is far more balanced than the MPT: It acknowledges the importance of reform math, but cautions that traditional mathematical rigor should not be compromised. But the education establishment you have chosen to defend is deeply threatened by the NMAP report. It’s a simplistic cheap shot to dismiss it as political.

I hoped when you were elected that you would be a voice for concerned parents. Instead it seems that you’ve become that administration’s biggest cheer leader.

John G. Sheehan, Ph.D.

>Village Council members are scheduled to introduce a $2.9 million bond ordinance for purchase of the Schedler property during tonight’s regularly scheduled Public Meeting. The $2.9 million would cover property purchase only; improvements necessary to convert the parcel to athletic playing fields would be extra.

The Village has already received a $1 million grant from the Bergen County Open Space fund for purchase of the property; other grants may be forthcoming (the operative word is “may”). If no additional grant money is awarded above and beyond the Bergen County Open Space award, Ridgewood’s taxpayers will be obligated to cough up as much as $1.9 million.

The Schedler tract is located at the intersection of West Saddle River Road and Route 17. Current assessed value of the entire parcel is $2,597,500.

Village Manager Jim Ten Hoeve previously indicated his desire to purchase an adjacent parcel owned by the Shotmeyer Oil Corporation along with the Schedler purchase. That parcel, located on Route 17 northbound, is currently assessed at $67,500.

>It is being rumored that a sensitive personnel issue Village Council members believed had been resolved several months ago, resurfaced with a vengeance in the height of cleanup efforts following this past weekend’s snow storm.

Several Village employees were witnesses to the latest series of incidents. They are all now wondering whether Ridgewood’s Mayor & Council are sincerely interested in putting an end to a history of behavior that clearly would not be accepted by any reputable private sector employer.

Well Mayor & Council; do you have what it takes to make the toughest of decisions, or are you going to disappoint Village employees and your constituents (yet again)?

>Dear Friends,
Last week, I introduced the “Individual AMT Repeal Act of 2009” bill, which ends the stealth tax on American families. In previous years Congress has “patched” the AMT, but this method leaves many taxpayers uncertain about whether they will fall into the AMT trap each year.

According to the Urban Institute/Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, if Congress fails to act, in 2010, the AMT will ensnare 33.4 million taxpayers, or roughly 35 percent of all individual filers who pay income tax. This is an 854% increase in the number of taxpayers affected by the AMT since 2006. My proposal to repeal the AMT will rescue taxpayers falling victim to a tax created in the 1960s to target the wealthy who were using loopholes to avoid paying any taxes. I think most Americans will agree that they are paying their fair share in taxes, thus making an arcane ‘gotcha tax’ duplicative and irrelevant for millions of Americans.

Rather than reform the tax code to insure that the wealthiest taxpayers paid into the system, Congress created a parallel tax structure and never indexed it for inflation, adding hundreds of pages of complexity to an already convoluted process. Since 2001, Congress has recognized the devastating effect this tax has on American families, and has moved to ‘patch’ the AMT. I propose we eliminate this tax completely to provide permanent relief for taxpayers.

The 5th District of New Jersey is a prime case study of how the AMT affects Americans. According to the most recent tax statistics on the number of taxpayers burdened by the AMT, our district ranks 7th out of 435 congressional districts.

Throughout my tenure in Congress, I have consistently fought for tax relief. I am continuing this fight in the 111th Congress. This tax relief legislation will put more money back into the hands of American workers to further create jobs and promote economic growth, which we can all agree is essential in the current economic climate.

Sincerely,

Scott Garrett

Member of Congress

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New Ridgewood Police Chief John LiPuma has ordered the deployment of this electronic billboard to stem the rising tide of pedestrian vs. motor vehicle accidents in Ridgewood’s Central Business District.

The sign is located near the intersection of East Ridgewood Avenue and North Maple Avenue.

Way to go Chief!

>Hi Everyone,

The Community FoodBank just informed me that they’re now attributing $7,000 in donations to our Blogging Out Hunger efforts! They also reported 1,010 click throughs to their Web site from the blogs!

This is especially helpful since the demand for food is still increasing! Please keep the message out there. I will send you all the new banner hopefully this weekend.

I have not sent a blogroll out yet because JerseyBites is being redesigned and I’m waiting for that to happen (end of Jan.) and I’m also in search of a widget that I can use to build a blogroll. If you know of a good tool, please pass that along.

Thanks again for everything. I think a goal of $10,000 next year is very attainable. Maybe we’ll have to shoot for $15,000.
Have a great Weekend.

Deb Smith
JerseyBites.com
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