Great news on Valley. Performing Arts Center is a great idea. It is going to be so appealing for Jay-z, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Justin Bieber to ditch MSG for the beauty and diversity of our village. Whoever came up with this idea should be kicked out of Bergen County altogether. The only way this Arts Center would be useful is if Rurik performed his monologues on the stage. I would pay 50 cents for that.
photo by ArtChick
September 30,2016
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
NEWARK, NJ — NJ TRANSIT has announced service plans for the morning of September 30th, 2016 following a commuter train accident at Hoboken Terminal. All rail service into and out of Hoboken Terminal remains suspended. Hudson-Bergen Light Rail will resume full service into and out of Hoboken station tomorrow morning.
Rail
The following service will be in effect:
Customers may experience overcrowding and possible delays caused by congestion.
Metro-North Service for Pascack Valley Line and Port Jervis Line Customers
For schedule information go to: https://web.mta.info/mnr/html/NJTRANSIT_accident.htm
The Valley Hospital had filed suit against the Ridgewood Planning Board for rejecting its proposal to nearly double in size, arguing the board illegally sided with neighborhood opponents rather than permitting an upgrade for “an inherently beneficial regional hospital.”
The lawsuit was filed in state Superior Court in Hackensack . It was an attempt by Valley to end a protracted and costly stalemate with the village and force its expansion plans have been defeated two times .
the Staff of the Ridgewood Blog
Ridgewood NJ, Last night’s Village Council Work Session was great. All of our elected officials are working well together, even when they disagree. No one teams up on anyone else and there is no disrespect on the dais or from the dais to the audience. There is plenty of laughter and camaraderie while work is being accomplished. This is truly good government at work.
Here are some highlights, in no particular order:
1. Tony Damiano got up and thanked Mayor Knudsen for resolving the schedule problems with the PSEG work on Broad St. Yes, he thanked her. Guess he took so much heat on the Blog and on Facebook for claiming full responsibility for this that he decided he looked really small. Well, he did take some credit, but at least he made a stab at thanking the Mayor.
2. And speaking of looking really small, oh my gosh Mr. Rurik Halaby has completely lost his mind. He is the lone soldier left from those few who ever supported the three amigos and Roberta, and he is fighting mightily. His comments are not worth repeating, but he sure looked like a total idiot. And he sounded like a crazy man, spewing invective about rumors he has heard and such. He actually verged on threatening the council including singling out Ramon. Yep, would love to see a showdown between Ramon and Rurik.
3. Jeff Voigt in his library report announced that “the library” wants 5 Million Dollars for an interior renovation to make the auditorium into a performing arts center and some other sprucing up. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, $5 million. And they will be looking for money. Maybe Mr. Halaby can write the check?
4. It was explained that we will be entering into a shared services agreement with Washington Township in which we will service up to 30 of their vehicles at our Village Garage. Yes, that garage which Mr. Pucciarelli wanted to eliminate will now be making plenty of money for us. Hear that Albert? Yet another of your idiotic suggestions and schemes is going down the drain. Do you have any comments? Oh, that’s right, no comments from the former Deputy Mayor as he is named in a lawsuit and is scrambling to keep his reputation intact.
5. Parking was a huge topic of discussion. Mike Sedon provided an informative history of parking pricing dating back for the past 10 or 15 years, which was interesting. Jeff Voigt had prepared and distributed copies of parking suggestions that he had gathered from many sources. It was very well put together and very transparent because everyone could hold it in their hands and read it. The discussion was cordial, lively, and very productive. A few highlights include paving and re-lining the Hudson lot and thereby adding up to 40 spaces. This would include closing some of the several curb cut entrances into the lot from Hudson. Imagine that, 40 spaces in the blink of an eye. They are also going to have tiered pricing so that those who are willing to walk from Cottage can pay significantly less. Bernie Walsh and Jeff walked in and out of 17 stores to assess where the employees park. She said it was very friendly and informative and she is hoping all the council members can join in this project. New signage will be going up shortly to direct people to the various lots. The Zabriskie Lot is under consideration.
6. Looks like they will be going back to now allow parking on one side of Pomander Walk. This makes good sense. Why did the Pomander Walk residents ever get such an exclusive deal in the first place?
7. Heather Mailander highlighted two Village employees who have gone above and beyond. This was a nice report and one which she intends to do regularly. She is not singing her own praises, nope, she is singing the praises of others. This is the sign of a great manager, one who does not toot her own horn incessantly.
We all know full day K is extended day-care for moms who work (except in Ridgewood where if fills the need of moms who go to the spa or lunch or tennis). But that is OK, we’ll just pay for it and move on.
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To say that it has and significant educational value and kids who don’t attend full day K will be at a (long term) disadvantage is disingenuous at best.
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The only place where full day K might make sense would be for those children diagnosed with significant (medical) developmental disabilities
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But again, these facts don’t matter – give the moms what they want, pay for it and move on.
Why start applying logic to the Ridgewood school budget now…
file photo by Boyd Loving
September 29,2016
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, Ridgewood resident Jacqueline Hone spoke during both public comment segments. She explained why Roberta’s departure is just the tip of the iceberg and suggested her staff also needs to be investigated.
September 29,2016
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, A New Jersey Transit train crashed into the terminal in Hoboken. The incident happened at around 9am on Thursday. It’s been confirmed Pascack Valley Train #1614, departs Spring Valley 7:23 am(?) due to arrive at 8:30 am. Train came in on Track 4 .
Initial report is over 100 injuries .
Massive Emergency services response.
Hoboken is shut down to non emergency services.
Correction 1 confirmed dead by Governors Christie and Como , not passenger someone standing on the platform .
PATH service to HOB will be operating full rush hour service .
Shuttle buses from HOB to SEC running.
Cause of accident is still unclear .
It is being reported that major damage has been done to the train station including a partial roof collapse. Reports from riders say no indication that anything was wrong.
Ridgewooood NJ, Once again, much was accomplished with this new and improved council! Of course somethings never change ,Rurik Halaby came to the mic twice to insinuate that Ms. Knudsen( pronounced once correctly, second time with a hard k!) should be transparent about her raffle win and her sons becoming Ridgewood police officers. Thankfully Susan called for a point of order and Bernie Walsh made reference to Roberts Rules and that personal comments made to a council member from the floor are not allowed. It probably won’t stop future rants.
Richard Calbi from the Water Department gave a good report on the chromium 6 that has been in the news. According to Ridgewood Water Ridgewood is below the level considered dangerous even though the EPA has made no formal recommendations or issued guidelines.Currently Ridgewood Water is below the California guidelines and those issued by The World Health Organization.
Matt Rogers reported on the status of Affordable Housing, the water suit filed by Glen Rock, Midland Park and Wyckoff and the Valley Hospital appeal.
Ridgewood Water: a possible trial in November if a scheduled mediation in October is not successful.
The Stanley Healthcare solution includes Wi-Fi RFID badges that nurses, physicians and other personnel can use to identify their locations and call for assistance.
By Claire Swedberg
Sep 27, 2016—
The Valley Hospital, in Ridgewood, N.J., has been using a real-time location system (RTLS) to monitor the locations and identities of staff members who press their emergency badge. Before the hospital deployed the system, only 50 percent of personnel reported a sense of workplace safety. Once those workers began utilizing the RTLS, provided byStanley Healthcare, that figure rose to 85 percent.
The Valley Hospital rarely experiences violence in its ER, but there have been incidents in which employees have indicated feeling uncomfortable, the hospital reports. After members of a patient’s family prevented a nurse from leaving that patient’s room, that nurse asked the hospital to institute a better means of protecting personnel. The facility, which treats 74,000 patients in its emergency department each year, already offered wired emergency alarms in each room, but it decided that a wireless system would provide greater support to employees wherever they were in that department. The solution consists of Stanley Healthcare Wi-Fi-enabled call badges and software that helps security personnel identify who has placed a distress call, as well as where that person is located and what he or she looks like.
September 28,2016
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood Nj, Governor Chris Christie School Funding Fairness Formula Catches the Eye of the Ridgewood Board of Education. In the latest RPS news letter Board President Sheila Brogan devoted a significant amount of space to the Christie Fairness formula and the failure of the Abbott School districts .
Sheila Brogan’s Legislative Report September 2016
Lately, there has been much discussion in Trenton about state funding for school districts. Governor Christie has asked the courts to give the state relief from the School Funding Reform Act of 2008 (SFRA) and to allow the NJDOE Commissioner relief from statutory and contractual impediments that negatively impact on the thorough and efficient
The first link below will bring you to the Abbott Memorandum, filed for Governor Christie, asking the NJ Supreme Court for relief from the current funding formula. It is 95 pages, but worth the read.
Some of the issues discussed in the memorandum are —
#1 More funding does not equal higher student achievement in the School Development Authority (SDA) districts (formally the Abbott districts). The SDA districts have 22.8% of all NJ students and they receive 59% of the pre-K through grade 12 school aid.
#2 The most important factor for quality education is effective teachers. Districts must be allowed to have systems in place to attract and retain effective teachers. Statutory and contractual impediments to this must be eliminated. Essentially, the memorandum calls for eliminating LIFO (last in, first out) when there is a reduction in force (RIF) of the teaching staff. The memorandum also calls for streamlining the process of removing tenure teachers who are ineffective. It requests that the court allows the Commissioner to override contractual impediments in teacher contracts that negatively impact on student achievement.
In another document released last week, the State Auditor listed flaws in the way the state distributes school aid. There were four recommendations:
#1. School funding should be distributed based on current district data — for example — current enrollment and district demographics. The state is not using current data. Eighty percent of districts are receiving less aid than what they should receive under the current state aid formula, School Funding Reform Act of 2008 (SFRA).
#2. Special Education funding is not being distributed on the actual number of special education students in a district. Under the 2008 state aid formula, the state started using the census model to distribute money using the assumption that every district had a14.78% special education classification rate. Some districts have higher classification rates. According to the report in 2015, 234 districts, and in 2016, 258 districts, had actual classification rates that were more than10% higher than the state’s rate used for funding. This funding is not tied to actual need.
#3. Pre-school aid should be adjusted for actual enrollment. According to the report, in 2016, 30 districts over estimated enrollment and overpayments to these districts from the state amounted to $32.9 million
#4. The per pupil cost for preschool ranges from $2,036 to $27,663 and this disparity leads to imbalances in funding. It should be noted that districts receiving pre-school funding can offer half day or full day programs creating disparity in the educational experiences and opportunities offered these students.
This report is linked below.
Finally, Senate President Sweeney and Senator Ruiz introduced a concurrent resolution, SCR119, to establish the State School Aid Funding Fairness Commission consisting of six members who would be appointed by the Senate President (2 members ,one of whom would represent the NJEA), Speaker of the General Assembly (2 members, one of whom would represent a NJ education professional association), Senate Minority leader (1 member), and General Assembly Minority Leader (1 member). The Senate approved SC119 on Thursday. The Commission would be charged to study the following issues:
#1. the impact of School Funding Reform Act of 2008 (SFRA) adjustment aid and state aid growth limitation provisions;
#2. the tax levy growth limitation and the ability for school districts to adequately fund operating expenses;
#3. the per pupil administrative cost limits and its impact on district staffing and operations;
#4. determining local fair share amounts and how property tax abatements impact fair share; and
#5. the ability for districts that are at or above adequacy budget to lower their tax levy if given additional state aid
The report must be issued no later than June 30, 2017 with its findings, recommendations, and proposed legislation. The legislation would be introduced in the Senate and the Assembly. It would not be referred to committees. The proposed legislation would be given three readings and must be approved or rejected by the Senate and the Assembly without changes or amendments.
Over the next 5 years, $500 million would be added to the state budget for school districts to give districts 100% of the aid as determined by SFRA.
The process for the commission will include three public hearings to gather input and then three hearings after the report is issued to elicit public input on the findings, recommendations, and proposed legislation.
It now goes to the Assembly for consideration.
https://www.nj.gov/governor/
https://www.njleg.state.nj.us/
Reader ...”I worked part time and my kids got picked up at their elementary school and transported to enrichment 2-3x/week. My greatest joy was picking them up from kindergarten, watching them play with friend in the playground and then going out for lunch or.making.lunch together. As a parent, I would not want ffull day K…they grow up too quickly not to treasure those early years together.”
Forget the Common Core, Finland’s youngsters are in charge of determining what happens in the classroom.
“The changes to kindergarten make me sick,” a veteran teacher in Arkansas recently admitted to me. “Think about what you did in first grade—that’s what my 5-year-old babies are expected to do.”
The difference between first grade and kindergarten may not seem like much, but what I remember about my first-grade experience in the mid-90s doesn’t match the kindergarten she described in her email: three and a half hours of daily literacy instruction, an hour and a half of daily math instruction, 20 minutes of daily “physical activity time” (officially banned from being called “recess”) and two 56-question standardized tests in literacy and math—on the fourth week of school.
That American friend—who teaches 20 students without an aide—has fought to integrate 30 minutes of “station time” into the literacy block, which includes “blocks, science, magnetic letters, play dough with letter stamps to practice words, books, and storytelling.” But the most controversial area of her classroom isn’t the blocks nor the stamps: Rather, it’s the “house station with dolls and toy food”—items her district tried to remove last year. The implication was clear: There’s no time for play in kindergarten anymore.
The public vote on full-day K is November 8. Public presentations will be on October 5 at Benjamin Franklin Middle School and on October 27 at George Washington Middle School. The question on the ballot will be as follows:
RESOLVED, That there shall be raised an additional $929,800 for General Funds in the 2016-2017 School Year. These taxes will be used to employ additional personnel and to acquire additional equipment and supplies in order to implement the District’s full-day kindergarten program. Approval of these taxes will result in a permanent increase in the District’s tax levy.
The additional taxes authorized herein will be used exclusively for purposes described herein and to finance expenditures that are in addition to those necessary to achieve the Core Curriculum Content Standards.
file photo by Boyd Loving
By Erin O’Neill | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on September 27, 2016 at 5:35 PM, updated September 27, 2016 at 6:03 PM
Home prices in the New York area ticked up slightly over the last year but increased at a slower rate than 19 other major metropolitan markets in the country, according to a new report released on Tuesday.
The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller 20-City Composite index notched a 5 percent year-over-year increase in July led by big gains in real estate values in the Pacific Northwest, specifically Portland and Seattle. The New York region, including northern New Jersey, saw home prices rise just 1.7 percent over that same time frame, the weakest growth among all of the cities included in that index.
The Washington, D.C., area’s rise in home prices was the second-worst at 2 percent year-over-year.
https://realestate.nj.com/realestate-news/2016/09/homes_prices_case_shiller_new.html
It’s a done deal. I watched the Board of ED meeting last night and they said that currently 71 percent of parents pick up their kids from kindergarten and drive them to another day half day program. If those parents vote, the full day program will be implemented.
I think, not positive, that they said the cost to taxpayers would be about a little over $100 a year for each household.
I am not for it. They said kids get to more time for unstructured make believe play, imaginative play and socialization in the full day program.
I believe that unstructured make believe time should occur in a quiet setting where the imagination and creativity can best be free to roam without interruption and noise from a roomful of other kids.
As far as socialization is concerned , it happens folks just by living in a family, even if you are an only child. I mean hey, kids don’t live in that Emma Donaghue(spelling) Room (novel)setting. But if that’s what life is like with working mothers, that is the way it is going to be.
I sure wouldn’t want some teacher over my head while playing with my dolls and puppets. I remember being happy to come home after kindergarten and make up my own world. Try telling that to the types who teach young kids nowadays….ha ha ha. Real rigid unimaginative types with stereotypical ideas. By the way, I would love to read my first grade report card to the teachers who want full day kindergarten , after having only a half day of kindergarten before first grade. It is from 1949 and says how independent I was, that I didn’t need any prodding to do an assignment and that I loved to share my experiences with the class. We had sharing time. I had one sibling four years younger. So really no playing with a one year old. No pets at that time. A mother at home, a father working outside the home.
VILLAGE OF RIDGEWOOD ZONING BOARD OF ADJUSTMENT
AGENDA
Tuesday, September 27, 2016
Village Hall Court Room – 7:30 P.M.
Call to Order
Pledge of Allegiance
Statement required by the Open Public Meeting Act “Adequate notice of this meeting has been provided by a posting on the bulletin board in the Village Hall, by mail to the Ridgewood News, The Record and by submission to all persons entitled to same as provided by law of a schedule including date and time of this meeting”.
Please note: A curfew of 11:00 PM is strictly adhered to by the Zoning Board of Adjustment of the Village of Ridgewood. No new matter involving an Applicant will be started after 10:30 PM. At 10:00 PM the Chairman will make a determination and advise Applicants as to whether they will be heard. If an Applicant cannot be heard because of the lateness of the hour, the matter will be carried over to a future meeting to be determined by the Board at 10:00 PM.
Roll call
Approval of minutes:
Non-agenda items:
Board member comments
Members of the public comments
Discussion: Capital One Bank, 10 Godwin Avenue – material for base
Public hearings
Old Business:
121 FRANKLIN AVENUE ASSOCIATES – An application to permit use of the property located at 121 Franklin Avenue, Block 2010, Lot 16, as a drive-through Starbucks Coffee Shop, and to permit construction of an addition to the existing one story building. The applicant requests use variance approval to sell products outside the confines of the building. Additional variances being requested include a side yard setback for parking spaces of 3.5 feet where 5 feet is the minimum required, and sign variances. The property is located in an R-2 zone. (Continued from September 13, 2016)
PANICO – A request that the approval of variances for the property located at 152 Valley View Avenue be extended for a period of one year, through September 22, 2017.
AGENDA – CONTINUATION September 27, 2016
McHUGH – An application to permit the construction of a second floor addition which will result in Gross Building Area within 140 feet of the front lot line of 36.4%/3,823 square feet where 32%/4,060 square feet is the maximum permitted at 624 Shelton Road, Block 3308, Lot 4, in an R-2 zone. (Continued from August 9, 2016)
VERIZON WIRELESS, 6 S. MONROE – Whispering Woods settlement hearing – Proposed wireless communications facility amended to provide that antennas be placed inside of the existing steeple behind RF friendly material. The proposed settlement would also provide that the condition that “no part of the premises shall be rented to outside entities” shall be interpreted to mean that the uses currently being conducted at the Church shall be permitted to continue. (Continued from August 23, 2016)(Carry to October 25, 2016)
New Business:
TZOULAFIS – An application to permit the construction of a covered porch, two-story and second story addition which will result in coverage by above-grade structures of 22.5%/2,500 square feet, where 20%/2,250 square feet is the maximum permitted and coverage by above-grade structures within 140 feet of the front lot line of 23.4%/2,428 square feet, where 20%/2,100 square feet is the maximum permitted at the Property located at 426 Colonial Road, Block 3609, Lot 5, in an R-2 Zone.
ANGIOLINO – An application to permit the construction of a second floor addition and front portico which will result in front yard setbacks of 32 feet to the front steps, and 39 feet to the portico, where 40 feet is the minimum required and a distance of 9.83 feet to an accessory structure from the principal structure, where 12 feet is the minimum required for the Property located at 706 Ellington Road, Block 4606, Lot 24, in an R-2 Zone.
HALLOWELL – An application to permit the construction of a one-story addition and to relocate the rear steps which will result in a side yard setback of 17.5 feet, where 20 feet is the minimum required; coverage by above-grade structures within 140 feet of the front lot line of 20.8%, where 20% is the maximum permitted, and coverage by improvements of 50%/4,898 square feet, where 45%/ 4,410 square feet is the maximum permitted for the Property located at 126 Avondale Road, Block 1402, Lot 5 in an R-1 Zone.
Resolution memorialization:
Discussion
Adjournment
