Ridgewood NJ, Reminder: The property between curb and sidewalk is owned by the Village, not by individual property owners. As such, this rule applies:
From VOR Ordinance #3540: Temporary, non-illuminated, political signs advancing the candidacy for elective office of any candidate or group of candidates or a cause subject to political judgment. Subsection B. General Sign Regulations. (l) General Prohibitions. Add: (j) All temporary signs, including political signs, shall not be permitted to be placed on any publicly owned property, including, but not limited to, municipally owned property, library property, parks, right of ways, trees, telephone poles, lighting stations, street or traffic signs, tree wells or planters, water utility property, and/or any other such publicly owned property within the Village.
Ridgewood NJ, Nearly 40 percent of Americans who plan home projects that require digging this year don’t plan on calling before they dig, according to a recent national survey conducted by Common Ground Alliance. Public Service Electric and Gas Co. (PSE&G), New Jersey’s largest utility, reminds customers, contractors and excavators to call 811 to request a mark-out before digging to avoid hitting underground pipelines, conduits, wires and cables. The service is free, and absolutely critical to avoiding injuries and disruptions to vital utility services.
“Each year, PSE&G responds to about 220 incidents because someone didn’t call before digging,” said Joe Forline, PSE&G vice president of gas operations. ”Summer and spring are the peak seasons for accidental damages to gas lines by contractors, construction workers or residents, so please put safety first and call us.”
PSE&G has more than 8,200 circuit miles of underground electric lines, and 35,000 miles of buried natural gas distribution lines. In addition to the electric and gas lines, there are other buried utility lines, including communications cables, and water and sewer lines.
When you call 811 or 1-800-272-1000, you are automatically connected to the One Call center, which collects information about your digging project. The center then provides the information to the utility companies, who send representatives to mark the locations of underground lines in the immediate vicinity of the planned work location with flags, paint or both. After lines have been marked and you receive confirmation, you are free to carefully dig around the marked areas. In New Jersey, the marks are valid for 45 business days. The call must be made whether you are hiring a professional or planning to do the job yourself, using shovels or other hand tools.
Important information to consider:
Call 811 at least three full business days before each job to have underground pipes, wires and equipment located. Utility workers will respond and place markers where utility lines are buried, free of charge.
If you hired a contractor, confirm that a call to 811 has been made. Do not allow work to begin if the lines are not marked.
Property owners must maintain and respect the marks. Always hand dig within two feet of marked lines.
Various colors are used when marking lines. To learn what each color represents and for more information, go to www.call811.com.
If you accidentally damage gas piping or smell gas when excavating, call 911 immediately from a safe area. Also notify PSE&G by calling 1-800-880-7734. Call before you dig is more than a good idea — it’s the law.
Ridgewood NJ, With the turn of the new year, the competitive Taekwondo season has started anew. What has not changed is the impressive showing by the young athletes at Taekwondo All In, a school that teaches the Korean martial art. In two state championships – Maryland and New Jersey – the Taekwondo All In students earned 30 gold, 15 silver, 17 bronze, 62 in total. Moreover, all competing students earned spots to compete at the National Championship to occur in Salt Lake City Utah on July. The following 15 athletes won medals at the Maryland State Championship on February 24, 2018
3 Gold – Emily Kam,
2 Gold – Kaylin Lee, Tyler Minn
1 Gold and 1silver – Lianne Shin, Abraham Lee, Ricardo Merino
1 Gold and 1 Bronze – Jenna Slota, Lucas Woods, Timothy Lee
1 Gold – Liam Woods, Kate Minn
1 Silver and 1 Bronze – Riddhima Chandel
2 Bronze – Ryan Kam
1 Bronze – Audrey Kim, Jack Raines
At the New Jersey State Championship on March 25, the following seventeen gained medals:
2 Gold and 1 Bronze – Kaylin Lee, Emily Kam
2 Gold – Donghyun Kim
1 Gold and 2 Silver – Kate Minn
1 Gold and 1 Silver – Isaac Yi, Elliott Yi, Lianne Shin, Riddhima Chandel,
1 Gold and 1 Bronze – Lucas Woods, Sunghyun Kim, Taddeo Wang
1 Gold – Liam Woods
1 Silver and 1 Bonze – Tyler Minn, Ryan Kam, Jenna Slota
1 Silver – David Ahn, Elias Chi
1 Bronze – Maximilian Jimenez, Jack Raines
The owner and head instructor of Taekwondo All In Youngmin Kim commented, “This a great start to a new year. Our athletes have trained diligently all winter and it shows in how they performed at the competitions. I am very proud of all my students.”
Taekwondo All In, located at 33 Chestnut Street in Ridgewood, is a school that dedicates to teaching the Korean Martial Art, an Olympic sport. The benefit of learning the sport ranges from better physical conditioning to mental strength and discipline. For additional information, the school can be reached at (201) 857-0445.
Local Taxes are not exempt anymore, this makes taxes expensive for everyone, Higher Taxes do not make a community more inviting, balance need to be restored, We have high taxes and if Schools outperform, that’s the only win-win situation, dipping RHS ratings and Higher taxes will lead to less interest in Village of Ridgewood .
The SAT definitely has been dumbed down on the verbal side over the years (e.g., 1. hard vocabulary words have been eliminated, 2. analogy questions have been eliminated, 3. more context is now being given in the text of the text itself to allow the test-takers to figure out on the fly what hard or unfamiliar words mean, etc.). As a result, many students can score much higher on the verbal SAT than in years past without having worked hard over the years (or even in the months prior to the SAT test administration) to attain and maintain an excellent vocabulary. So those students with top vocabularies are finding this is not as much an advantage to them as it was for SAT test-takers two or three decades ago (i.e., less proficient students are readily getting the same or close to the same scores as they are getting). It doesn’t appear, however, that this is the case on the math SAT sections. The math SAT is still very challenging. Perhaps many of the Ridgewood High School students benefiting the most from SAT tutoring are making up for not working as hard as they should have in math from grade 6 or 7 onward, or for having had teachers or lower level classes during those grades that didn’t challenge them or that didn’t prepare them adequately to score very well on the math sections of the SAT.
Years ago at Back to School night we were greeted by a teacher who was only concerned that the parents hand over money for a workbook the students needed. When someone questioned what she was teaching, her answer floored me. “I don’t have to worry about my teaching and I could not teach at all and it would be legal. I have tenure and I’m really not interested in bonus money so I’m just going to sit and do nothing until I retire.” And she did. Daily assignments to that workbook to be done in class was just about all she accomplished. This, incidentally, was the required second year of a language class in which they learned nearly nothing. The most horrible thing about this story from years ago is that some teachers in the system still feel that way and nothing has been done about it.
Our rankings might improve if we fired a bunch of these entitled thugs and replaced them with educators interested in working with our kids. But we can’t because the teachers’ union protects incompetence with tenure. All they’re doing is trying to get more wages & benefits for their members. They have no interest in preparing our children for the workplace of tomorrow. Let’s try and get some younger teachers willing to raise their “give a crap” level than the current bunch of lazy thugs we’ve got.
Ridgewood NJ, Tonight during the Budget presentation, Dr. Fishbien spoke about the stellar SAT scores among Ridgewood High School students. When asked how many families pay for private SAT tutoring, he replied that about 40% of parents responded to a survey, and of those about 40% self-reported that they paid for private SAT prep for their children. I think that number is likely quite a lot higher. It seemed like everyone I knew (in the late 1990’s) was paying for Kaplan or Huntington or some private individual to help improve SAT scores. Depending on how high the numbers actually are, this could mean that the stellar SAT scores are more a reflection of wealth (or the decision to allocate funds toward this effort) than it is a reflection of the Ridgewood High School preparation of students for this standardized exam. Just wondering whether my thoughts on this are off base.
At this time, many of our teachers and other public workers are paid more than many of the residents who pay them. The long term teachers are in the high middle class and lower upper class, and are above the pay grade of many of the residents that pay them. When you add in the benefits and pension, the majority are well above the average Ridgewood residents. We all know that a certain percentage of our residents are “rolling in it” and receive some of the highest pay in the nation. We also know that the teachers, when striking, seem to be demanding to be in the pay range of these really highly paid individuals. We also know that the benefits and pensions that our teachers receive put them at such a high total income level that many of our residents only dream of obtaining. Many of our residents are also business owners or in business for themselves. These people have to pay even more for their employees insurance and the employees pay between 20-25% of that while having high co-pays and deductibles. A $10.00 co-pay is a joke in the real world. To top it off, Ridgewood’s quality is declining by a huge amount while the teachers who are apparently not teaching get higher annual raises. Many residents have not seen a raise or bonus in years. We really can’t cry for the “poor teachers”.
Ridgewood NJ, Stop the Bleed Day, a National Initiative program, held at Ridgewood Emergency Services drew an full house of interested citizens
to learn how they can be the first line of defense in helping to saving a life.
The Stop the Bleed program is a national awareness campaign and a call to action. Stop the Bleed is intended to cultivate grassroots efforts that
Ridgewood Emergency Services will actively participate in. No matter how rapid the arrival of professional emergency responders, bystanders will be
the first on the scene. Stop the Bleed trains and empowers the bystander to stop active, life threatening bleeding. Similar to how the public learns and
performs CPR, the public must learn proper bleeding control techniques, including how to use their hands, dressings and tourniquets. Victims can
quickly die from uncontrolled bleeding within 5 to 10 minutes from onset.
Ridgewood NJ, The Board of Education has approved the preliminary 2018-2019 school budget. Public presentations will be given at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, April 3 at George Washington Middle School Auditorium and on Monday, April 16 at Benjamin Franklin Middle School Auditorium.
This budget is out of control and the unions are to blame. Time for new teachers to be put into 401Ks – the pension system is broken beyond repair. Time to do away with tenure. Time for union employees to pay the same for insurance coverage as those of us that pay their salaries. The time for change is now as the status quo is not sustainable.
Why do they get platinum health insurance when most private sector plans are bronze level coverage? If you want it, pay much higher premiums. Why should Villagers be subsidizing better health care coverage for Village and BOE employees than our own family coverage? Makes no sense.
Reader says ,“We must attend the budget meetings at schools and speak up. Last night I watched budget meeting on TV and a gentleman protested that it was insanity to spend close to 800 thousand dollars alone on new windows for Ridgewood School Board of Ed . He said he and other residents were having a hard time making ends meet because of new tax laws on property taxes. Loncte and Fishbein were completely unsympathetic and rigid about spending all that money. Loncte said they had to spend that money in order to keep house sales high , because people chose Ridgewood for there good schools. Thanks to James we known that Ridgewood ranks less than other less expensive towns in Bergen County.”
Mr. Damiano’s article is more than a little self serving. Stores sometimes fail because people just don’t want to buy what the store is selling – not because they had to drive around the block to find a parking spot. Local businesses cannot expect taxpayers and local government to support their entrepreneurial ventures. It actually works the other way around – businesses should be contributing to the local tax base by selling things that people want to buy. Nobody said this was going to be easy Tony.
I’m sure if you ask any commercial real estate broker, they will tell you that if a particular store is not a ‘destination’ (anchor), the others rely upon ‘foot traffic’ generated by those ‘anchors’ for their success. For those of you newbies here, we lost many ‘anchors’ years ago, despite their size. McHughs, Sealfons, Winchells, Drapkins, Bobby Knapps, Purdues, and lets not forget Al and Harrys’. Whether due to pressure from malls, rising rents, or changing shopping habits, these were all stores that attracted my family members to come into town. None of them remain, so our shopping takes us to a mall, and I can’t recall the last time I went into town to purchase anything other than an occasional meal. Its a sad commentary on how a CBD has evolved into its present state. Years ago there were gas stations on every corner of Franklin Ave. The only one remaining is getty. We had mobil, Sinclair, arco, Phillips 66, Texaco, amaco, exxon, , and a few more that I forgot. (11 total). On Ridgewood ave there was a liquor store on almost every corner. Now we have banks, that I’m guessing will vacate upon lease renewals leaving more space. (its a lot easier to use a drive-in bank) It’s anyones guess what the future holds, but these small shops ‘treading water’ to remain in business are looking for taxpayers to subsidize their failing business models. Its no different than re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Fix/change/adapt or fail. A garage won’t bring shoppers to town if you don’t have a product they desire. Take a walk in town on recycling days. At least half the homes have cardboard amazon boxes waiting for pickup. Another HUGE factor.
