The answer is quick and decisive ,1999.That, David Reasoner said, is the only summer that he can remember in his 11 years in New Jersey that was worse than this one. Back then, Reasoner was a young assistant professional at Ridgewood Country Club watching as the entire team — from course superintendent to the head pro — tried to keep the manicured greens from falling off a cliff.
Now, the head professional himself, Reasoner has been thrust into a horrifyingly similar situation with this summer’s extreme weather conditions. Only this summer, the stakes are much higher.
One week from today, the PGA Tour’s 125 top golfers will descend upon Ridgewood for The Barclays.
“The golf course is in great shape,” Reasoner said this week. “But it’s been a tough summer. If you look at some of the other golf courses in the area, we’re lucky we’re still green. It’s been a tough summer to grow grass.”
How tough has it been? Last month checked in as the second-warmest July on record in New Jersey history, according to the Office of the New Jersey State Climatologist. The average temperature for the month — 78.8 degrees — fell just short of the 1955 record of 79 degrees.
The problem faced at Ridgewood wasn’t unlike the problems faced statewide, it’s just that the 100-year old Paramus club is the only course in the area that will get the spotlight treatment this summer from the PGA Tour.
“With the exception of 2001, it’s probably the most challenging year I’ve had here in my 16 years,” said Ridgewood’s course superintendent Todd Raisch. “We knew going in (to the summer) that we were going to baby the golf course a little bit — but not the whole season.”
>N.J. bill places cap, restrictions on retirement payouts for current public employees
TRENTON — Retirement payouts for current public employees would be capped or frozen under a measure described as compromise to help local governments deal with six-figure payments for employees’ unused sick time. (The Star-Ledger Statehouse Bureau Staff)
The battle raging over the Ground Zero mosque is bringing new attention to another, less publicized controversy involving a house of worship in Lower Manhattan.
St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, which once sat right across the street from the World Trade Center, was crushed under the weight of the collapse of Tower Two on September 11, 2001. St. Nicholas was the only church to be lost in the attacks, and nine years later, while City of New York officials are busy removing every impediment to the building of the Cordoba mosque two blocks from the site, St. Nicholas’ future remains unclear.
The last bit of hopeful news for St. Nicholas came two years ago, in July 2008, when church officials and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced a deal which would have allowed the church to be rebuilt about two blocks from its original location.
The Port Authority agreed to give the church a parcel of land at Liberty and Greenwich Streets, and contribute $20 million toward construction of a new sanctuary. The Port Authority also agreed to build an explosion-proof platform and foundation for the new church building, which would sit on top of a screening area for cars and trucks entering the underground garages at the new World Trade Center.
Trouble emerged after St. Nicholas announced its plans to build a traditional Greek Orthodox church building, 24,000 square feet in size, topped with a grand dome. Port Authority officials told the church to cut back the size of the building and the height of the proposed dome, limiting it to rising no higher than the World Trade Center memorial. The deal fell apart for goodin March 2009, when the Port Authority abruptly ended the talks after refusing to allow church officials to review plans for the garage and screening area underneath. Sixteen months later, the two sides have still not met to resume negotiations.
St. Nicholas Church’s difficulty in getting approvals to rebuild stands in stark contrast to the treatment that the developers of the proposed Cordoba mosque have received. New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, state Atty. Gen. Andrew Cuomo, and a raft of city officials have all come out publicly in favor of building the mosque, and the city’s Landmarks and Preservation Commission recently voted unanimously to deny protection to the building currently occupying the site where the mosque is to be built.
The mosque is proposed to rise 13 stories, far above the height of the World Trade Center memorial, with no height restrictions imposed.
Inspired by former representative Vito Fossella (R-NY), Human Events and RedState.com are sponsoring an online petition calling on New York officials to take action to stop the mosque from being built.
The contrast has not been lost on at least one candidate for Congress. George Demos is a Republican running in New York’s 1st Congressional District. Demos has made the Cordoba mosque an issue in his campaign, even though his district is on Eastern Long Island, and is highlighting the plight of St. Nicholas Church.
In an exclusive interview with Human Events, Demos had harsh words for the Port Authority, which he accuses of blocking the church from being rebuilt. “The Port Authority is a creation of Congress and should be answerable to two states [New York and New Jersey], but in reality is answerable to no one,” Demos said. “The Port Authority is insular and simply doesn’t care about public opinion. They are simply not making this a priority. Chris Ward is the Port Authority director and he is not allowing this to go forward.”
For its part, the Port Authority says it had no choice but to break off negotiations with the church to avoid delaying the World Trade Center project any longer. The authority said that the church retains the right to rebuild on its own at its original location. “We made an extraordinarily generous offer to resolve this issue and spent eight months trying to finalize that offer, and the church wanted even more on top of that,” Stephen Sigmund, a spokesman for the Port Authority said last year. “They have now given us no choice but to move on to ensure the site is not delayed. The church continues to have the right to rebuild at their original site, and we will pay fair market value for the underground space beneath that building.”
Demos said it is the church that has been unjustly delayed. “One place of worship was destroyed in the attacks. That should be the first thing on that board’s agenda. That should be the first priority,” he said. “There were actually relics of St. Nicholas in that church that were lost in the attacks. Why is it that the same government officials who are so ferverently fighting for the mosque’s right to be built aren’t also fighting for the church to be rebuilt.”
Demos was critical of Mayor Bloomberg’s recent comments on the occasion of the Landmarks Commission vote. In a speech immediately following the vote, Bloomberg said, among other arguments, that allowing the mosque project to go forward would be a victory of sorts over the forces that attacked America on 9/11.
“Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11, and that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans,” Bloomberg said. “We would betray our values and play into our enemies’ hands if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists, and we should not stand for that.”
Demos called those remarks “premature” and echoed New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio’s call for an investigation into the funding of the mosque. “We need to investigate sources of funding for the mosque. If in fact it is being funded by terrorist regimes, then it is the terrorists who are winning by building a mosque at Ground Zero,” Demos said. “Bloomberg’s comments only beg the question of why aren’t we investigating?”
Demos calls his district, currently represented by four-term Democrat Tim Bishop, a bellwether for Republicans in the fall elections. The district is a traditionally Republican seat, which President Obama narrowly won with 51% of the vote in 2008. While Demos is focusing his campaign on the issues of jobs, government spending, and his opponent’s voting record—which he characterized as out of step with the district—he said that the plight of St. Nicholas Church is resonating with voters.
Recent polling in New York shows that a majority disagrees with the plan to build the mosque so close to Ground Zero.
Asked what prompted him to take up St. Nicholas’s cause, Demos said the apparent favorable treatment the mosque’s developers received served to illuminate the issue to him as simply a question of right versus wrong.
“This is not a partisan issue,” he said. “It’s an issue of fair-minded candidates for office stepping up and doing the right thing. The focus should be something we can all agree on—getting the church rebuilt.”
>This is not a “Freedom of Religion” issue people.
No one is stopping any Muslim from practicing their faith in NYC (or anywhere else in America).
Don’t fall into the trap of agreeing that “freedom of religion” ALLOWS the mosque to be built but it is INSENSITIVE.
That is not the case.
Freedom of Religion is not at issue here. There is no inherent “freedom of religion right” allowing Muslims to build this mosque in this particular location.
Muslims are not being restricted from practicing their faith so freedom of religion is not at issue.
Don’t fall into that trap. “Freedom of Religion” in this instance is a straw-man argument that is being put forth by those who support the mosque being built.
I wrote in several months ago expressing my concern with the intersection at Franklin and Oak. I wrote that I drive home through that light every night from my job in Ridgewood to my home in Ridgewood. I know for a fact that people have also expressed to the Village in writing their concern over this intersection. Yet, another person gets hit today.
I passed through this intersection twice today, and both times cars are still traveling through the intersection east to west and vice versa, when the light is already green for those people waiting on Oak Street. I pass through this intersection almost daily, and the situation is exactly the same. Ridgewood has a signal department, how long can it possibly take an entire department to change the timing by a few seconds?
This town let another pedestrian get hit, by lack of involvement and negligence. I would like to know how many Village officials read this entry on the blog tonight, yet don’t do anything to change it.
To all Ridgewood residents and those passing through: Watch out at the corner of Franklin and Oak, something is not right.
>More and more teachers, police, and firefighters are retiring in the wake of governor’s cost-saving plan
Retirement applications from New Jersey teachers, police officers, firefighters and state workers jumped 67 percent through the first seven months of the year, according to the state Division of Pensions and Benefits (The Jersey Journal)
>Newark joins serval U.S. towns in outsourcing jobs to curb rising personnel costs
NEWARK – Communities across the state and country, plagued by stagnant revenues and bloated personnel costs, are turning more and more to privatization as a permanent stopgap to spiraling deficits. But in Newark, where public debate is rarely muted, Mayor Cory Booker’s plan to outsource hundreds of city jobs met its first round of opposition last week and promises to be marred in a tough battle during the coming months, as unions mobilize to fight the cuts. (Giambusso, The Star-Ledger)
The Ridgewood blog is proud to announce the winner of the 2010 Best Pizza in Ridgewood Contest !
The Ridgewood blog is proud to announce the winner of the 2010 best Pizza in Ridgewood Contest ; Coming in with 42% of the vote Pizza Fusion!
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PRLog (Press Release) – Aug 15, 2010 – The Ridgewood blog is proud to announce the winner of the 2010 best Pizza in Ridgewood Contest ; Coming in first place with with 42% of the vote Pizza fusion followed by A Mano the 2009 winner with 22% long time local favorite Renato’s with 8 % of the vote and Brooklyn Pizza with 6% and Puzzo’s the 2008 winner with 5% of the vote .
Congratulations to all our participants
A Mano (2009 Winner) (22%) 24 Franklin Ave, in Ridgewood ,NJ 201.493.2000
Renato’s Pizza (8%) 36 S Maple Ave,Ridgewood, NJ (201) 652-3554
Due to the hotly contested nature of the contest and technical problems with the voting reviews will be published of all the participants over the next several months by our secret judging panel. Lets see if they come to the same conclusions as the voters.
the Ridgewood blog is written for and about Ridgewood New Jersey . It is a local event and opinion blog with a pro free market point of view. We publish local points of view about local, state and national issues.Ridgewood blog the Number One local News blog in the State of New Jersey !!!
Taxpayers don’t look at taxes the way the people who spend the tax money do. Take the battle over the extension of the “Bush tax cuts.” Americans to Washington: They were tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. If Washington allows all or parts of the “Bush tax cuts” to expire at the end of the year, the result won’t be to not cut taxes, as Beltway lingo and President Obama suggest, but to raise taxes.
As pollster Scott Rasmussen reported earlier this month, 56 percent of mainstream voters favor extending the Bush tax rates for all Americans, while 60 percent of those in the political class would extend the tax cuts for everyone except families earning more than $250,000 a year.
Not so for the boys of Obamaland’s “Recovery Summer.” They’ve set up this phony construct that spending more taxpayer money while taxing the rich will save the economy.
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman laid out the situation as a choice between (a) “asking the richest 2 percent or so of Americans to go back to paying the tax rates they paid during the Clinton-era boom” and (b) “allowing the nation’s foundations to crumble.”
But I think Karl Rove got it right when he wrote in his recent book, “Courage and Consequence,” that many Democrats “would rather have high taxes and a lower standard of living than low taxes and a higher standard of living.”
>Congressman Scott Garrett:Another Taxpayer Funded Bailout!
In case you haven’t heard already, Speaker Pelosi called my colleagues and me back from the August recess on Tuesday to vote on more government spending. This one comes in the form of a bailout package to help states cover the costs for education and Medicaid to the tune of $26 billion. And here I thought the American public would finally get some reprieve from the voracious spending appetite of liberal Democrats in Washington, DC.
It should come as no surprise for you to know that I voted against this bill. Not only does it spend money that we don’t have, but it perpetuates the bailout culture that has become so popular with Democrats in Congress. Also, but the so-called spending “offsets” in the bill came in the form of a $10 billion tax increase on corporations.
Democrats would like you to believe that spending this additional $26 billion will somehow create jobs, spur economic growth and expand individual opportunity for Americans. The truth is that this latest bailout is really just a give-away to state bureaucrats at the expense of U.S. taxpayers. Another short-term federal bailout will only encourage states to rely on more taxpayer funded federal assistance rather than balancing their budgets and reducing unneeded spending.
The American small business community is starting to catch on to the parlor games of Democrats in Washington. They have seen first hand just how ineffective the Democrats’ solutions have been in turning around the economy and putting American back to work.
On Monday, Michael Fleischer, the president of a small business in the Fifth District, penned a very thoughtful Wall Street Journal op-ed titled, “Why I’m not Hiring.”
In his piece, Mr. Fleischer writes, “As much as I might want to hire new salespeople, engineers and marketing staff in an effort to grow, I would be increasing my company’s vulnerability to government decisions to raise taxes, to policies that make health insurance more expensive, and to the difficulties of this economic environment. A life in business is filled with uncertainties, but I can be quite sure that every time I hire someone my obligations to the government go up. From where I sit, the government’s message is unmistakable: Creating a new job carries a punishing price.”
All Members of Congress would be well served to read Mr. Fleischer’s piece. Rather than looking for ways to make it harder to conduct business in the U.S., Congress should be working on ways to make it easier to grow businesses and hire new workers. We shouldn’t be coming back to Washington to vote on measures that spend money we don’t have. Instead, my colleagues and me should be coming back to Washington to vote for legislation that puts Americans back to work, reduces our ballooning national debt and gets the American economy on a course towards prosperity once again.
>The Schedler development has currently been put on hold
The Schedler development has currently been put on hold . The Village purchased the property in December 2009 for somewhere near $2.7 million. The goal of the purchase remains unclear as does the future of the property.
The Schedler property is considered a “long-term project” and will be put on hold in the current financial situation of the Village for the foreseeable future . At this time no funds have been allocated for the properties long term development.
The party line is that the property was purchased and put aside while the Village continues to develop the Habernickel property,
The plan for Habernickel Park’s development is a combined use of sports fields and passive park areas and is a model that many would like to see at the Schedler property.
The Village like many New Jersey Municipalities has been stung by the inability to control costs and manage long term projects effectively . The Village Council has come under increasing pressure since the Village Hall fiasco and more recently the $400,000 “golden toilet” at Vets field to better handle long term investment in the community.
Only time will tell if there current dire fiscal climate wail impact the spend thrift ways of the Village.
>In U.S., Confidence in Newspapers, TV News Remains a Rarity No more than 25% say they have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in either . by Lymari Morales
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Americans continue to express near-record-low confidence in newspapers and television news — with no more than 25% of Americans saying they have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in either. These views have hardly budged since falling more than 10 percentage points from 2003-2007.
>Chris Christie “As much as I love teachers, everyone’s gotta be a part of the sacrifice”
Gov. Chris Christie speaks fiscal truth
I have to give a high-five to Gov. Chris Christie. The New Jersey Republican was on “Morning Joe” today and showed why he is not only a rising star within the GOP, but also a model of leadership for politicians who have lost touch with their spines. (Capehart, Washington Post)
“This teacher complaining, they’re getting 4 and 5 percent salary increases a year. In a 0 percent inflation world. They get free health benefits from the day they’re hired for their entire family until the day they die. They believe they are entitled to this shelter from the recession when the people who are paying for that shelter are the people who have been laid off, who’ve lost their homes, had their hours cut back. And all we ask them to do is freeze their salary for one year and pay 1.5 percent of their salary for their health benefits…. As much as I love teachers, everyone’s gotta be a part of the sacrifice”
By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY At a time when workers’ pay and benefits have stagnated, federal employees’ average compensation has grown to more than double what private sector workers earn, a USA TODAY analysis finds. Federal workers have been awarded bigger average pay and benefit increases than private employees for nine years in a row. The compensation gap between federal and private workers has doubled in the past decade.
Federal civil servants earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009 while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The data are the latest available.
The federal compensation advantage has grown from $30,415 in 2000 to $61,998 last year.
Public employee unions say the compensation gap reflects the increasingly high level of skill and education required for most federal jobs and the government contracting out lower-paid jobs to the private sector in recent years.
“The data are not useful for a direct public-private pay comparison,” says Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union.
Chris Edwards, a budget analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute, thinks otherwise. “Can’t we now all agree that federal workers are overpaid and do something about it?” he asks.
Last week, President Obama ordered a freeze on bonuses for 2,900 political appointees. For the rest of the 2-million-person federal workforce, Obama asked for a 1.4% across-the-board pay hike in 2011, the smallest in more than a decade. Federal workers also would qualify for seniority pay hikes.
Congressional Republicans want to cancel the across-the-board increase in 2011, which would save $2.2 billion.
“Americans are fed up with public employee pay scales far exceeding that in the private sector,” says Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., the second-ranking Republican in the House.
Sen. Ted Kaufman, D-Del., says a pay freeze would unfairly scapegoat federal workers without addressing real budget problems.
What the data show:
•Benefits. Federal workers received average benefits worth $41,791 in 2009. Most of this was the government’s contribution to pensions. Employees contributed an additional $10,569.
•Pay. The average federal salary has grown 33% faster than inflation since 2000. USA TODAY reported in March that the federal government pays an average of 20% more than private firms for comparable occupations. The analysis did not consider differences in experience and education.
•Total compensation. Federal compensation has grown 36.9% since 2000 after adjusting for inflation, compared with 8.8% for private workers.
>Village will not supply lunchtime crossing guards
Thursday, August 12, 2010
The Ridgewood News
Ridgewood students who walk home for lunch will have to cross main streets without a crossing guard in the upcoming school year, part of a cost-saving measure issued by village administrators.
The village notified the Ridgewood Public Schools district that it will not provide crossing guards during the lunchtime period of 11:15 a.m. to 1 p.m. The village will save about $86,000 by having crossing guards work only before and after school, said Village Manager Ken Gabbert.
In a letter addressed to Ridgewood Schools Superintendent Daniel Fishbein last week, Gabbert said the decision was based on a discussion between himself, Fishbein and Ridgewood Police Senior Officer in Charge John Ward.
“… It is clear to me that it is an infrequent event for students to walk home for lunch unaccompanied by an adult,” according to the Aug. 4 letter.
Fishbein could not immediately be reached for comment.
