JANUARY 29, 2016 LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, JANUARY 29, 2016, 12:31 AM
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
Board ‘committed’ to settling contract
to the editor:
At Monday’s Board of Education meeting, 20 Ridgewood teachers spoke at the podium. They spoke passionately about their love of teaching and their deep commitment to our children. With pride, they enumerated the educational opportunities that Ridgewood provides and acknowledged the exceptional quality of our district. They implored the Board to reach a “fair” settlement and expressed their frustration that the contract remained unsettled.
The Board is sympathetic to the concerns expressed by our teachers and shares the desire to complete negotiations as quickly as possible. The Board has made every effort to listen to the union’s concerns and address them.
On Jan. 20 at our last negotiation session, the Board made a new comprehensive proposal that would have increased the take-home pay of every teacher through a combination of salary increases and revisions to the health care plans offered to the REA members. The Board also offered to discuss several ideas to ameliorate the impact of the 35 percent employee health care premium contributions paid by the highest paid staff.
These proposals address the teachers’ primary concerns while staying within the district’s financial capabilities.
Some of the teachers’ comments questioned Ridgewood Public Schools’ spending on improving curriculum, professional development, technology and eBooks in our elementary school libraries. While our teachers and the work they do are key to making Ridgewood the superior district that it is, we know that their jobs would be exponentially more challenging if they did not have new and improved textbooks, revised curriculum and the technology enhancements such as Chromebooks.
As the Board of Education, we are committed to balancing these competing costs and the need to continue to deliver a well-balanced educational program to our students. With the state-imposed hard cap that restricts district property tax revenue increases to 2 percent or less of the prior year taxes, this is a very tough assignment.
We have had numerous meetings with the REA team and are willing to meet at any time to negotiate all components of the contract.
In the meantime, we will move forward to fact-finding. Next week, both sides will have the opportunity to submit their positions, arguments and exhibits to an independent, state-appointed fact-finder. We expect the fact-finder to issue his non-binding recommendations by the end of April.
This Board is committed to settling an equitable new contract that treats our teachers fairly, is respectful of the taxpayers and maintains the financial integrity of the district. Most importantly, we want to end the unrest that drains our staff’s energy so that they can focus on the important job of teaching our children, which is something that they do exceptionally well.
We are united with the teachers in the goal of continuing Ridgewood’s “Tradition of Excellence.”
The below document represents answers, approaches and comments to questions, concerns and issues that were raised by residents and the Council regarding the leasing of Habernickel’s Gate House to Health Barn, USA. The Village Council will discuss two resolutions at the Wednesday, February 3rdmeeting: one to change the use of the Gate House for recreational and educational purposes, and the second to authorize the signing of the lease between Health Barn and the Village. The vote on these resolutions will not be held until the Council session on February 10th. Any comments or questions can be directed to Roberta Sonenfeld ([email protected]) and Janet Fricke ([email protected]).
Gate House at Irene Habernickel Family Park – HealthBarn, USA
Response to Frequently Asked Questions
1.27.16
Traffic Safety Issues
Ridgewood Police Department completed a traffic study on Hillcrest Road in the Habernickel Park area during the fall recreational season; additional studies are planned – one for winter, another for spring recreation season. The traffic study shows that the average speed falls within a safe area and even though there were a couple high end speeds that percentage was minimal. As far as existing volume, the street has a low volume even though this area is a known “cut through” street. Traffic study was passed on to the Engineering Division for review and implementation.
The Village Engineer recommended:
Short Term:
Stripe 2 crosswalks- at Norman and at Hillcrest. Double yellow center line on Hillcrest Rd. (Morningside to Monroe); signage to alert motorists that they are approaching a crosswalk.
Paint white “Tic” marks on Hillcrest at private driveway openings to allow for better egress.
Amend ordinance to allow for parking on the park side (north) of Hillcrest and not the opposite (south) side. Ordinance #3517
Plans were presented and approved at the monthly Citizen’s Safety Advisory Committee Meeting held December 17th, 2015. Resolution #16-21
ii. Long Term:
Extend sidewalk in front of park to Andover Terrace;
Installation of sidewalk on south side of Hillcrest – Morningside to North Monroe.
Speed humps/ bumps are not recommended by Police or Engineering Division; the double center line is recommended for traffic calming.
Bus Drop Off (M-F 10am -3pm only) – Procedures will include drop off at entrance to Gate House. Buses may park in parking lot or return to premise for pick up. Engine idling prohibited.
Operation of Facility
When the Village purchased the Habernickel property in 2004 using Green Acres funding, a conservation easement was required to be placed on the deed. The easement states that Green Acres rules and regulations must be followed for this property. Green Acres requirements have been followed by Ridgewood, including most recently, the hearing to alert the public to the proposed change in use.
The Village Recreation Department will establish a satellite office on the second floor of the Gate House. The office will be used to provide any assistance or support necessary and will be staffed as needed.
No zoning changes were necessary for the Village to make this change in use.
The change will allow Recreational/ educational programing for the Gate House; no overnight accommodations or private counseling sessions in the Gate House are defined in the Lease.
HealthBarn will be required to follow procedures in the lease to make any improvements to the Gate House. The cost of improvements (including permits) will be covered by tenant.
Community Gardens are allowed in parks with permission from the Director of Parks & Recreation. All maintenance and related costs will be responsibility of HealthBarn. There will be no use of the Horse Barn itself.
Signage – A sign is allowed on the Gate House. Location and size is addressed in the Lease. Prior to installation, approval from Director of Building Department and a permit is required.
Security/lighting analysis will be made by Ridgewood Police for the exterior of the Gate House and will recommend appropriate action.
The hours of operation of any of the programs will be in accordance with the items listed on Schedule A – Mondaythrough Saturday – 9:00AM to 5:30PM; Wednesday and Friday evening. 6:30PM to 9:00PM. The Tenant will be permitted to open and close the facilities a half hour before and after the operation of the programs. Any temporary adjustments to days/hours of operation must be requested five (5) business days in advance, in writing, to the Director of Parks and Recreation or the LANDLORD.
The Gate House facility provides space for additional education/recreational programs for local youth that cannot be held elsewhere in Ridgewood as facilities are being used to full capacity.
Building Code Officials and the Fire Inspector have inspected the Gate House. They will make professional recommendations when questions arise in their area of expertise.
Park areas to be used by HealthBarn – the Gate House , Teaching Community Garden, and potentially some Habernickel field areas will be used by HealthBarn as approved by the Director, Parks & Recreation.
Green Acres does not deny public access to parks that are in the Green Acres program.
Student drop off and pick up area will be at the entrance to the Gate House. If parking is needed during classes, 12 onsite spaces will be used in the parking lot. In addition 3 staff parking spaces are available in the Gate House garage/driveway.
Mini buses carrying up to 14 may drop off at the Gate House entrance; mini buses may park in the parking lot for no more than 2 hours. No engine idling is permitted for any buses. Full size buses (carrying not more than 48 passengers) are permitted only during the hours of 10:00AM to 3:00PMMonday through Friday to drop off at the Gate House entrance. Buses can park in any offsite designated parking lot and return at agreed time for pick up.
Animals are not allowed unless by special request for a program or a certified service animal.
HealthBarn is a vendor to the Village of Ridgewood and as such all programs will be regularly inspected, reviewed and monitored by the Director, Parks and Recreation.
The Tenant understands that it is expressly prohibited from operating and holding private consultation sessions at the Gate House and on Habernickel parklands. One upstairs room will serve as an office. The building shall not be used for living quarters.
The Gate House and all programs shall be open for inspection by Landlord at any time.
Health Barn’s curriculum has been reviewed by Green Acres and Ridgewood Parks and Recreation to ensure that the educational and recreational standards are of high quality for each age group. It is not a daycare or babysitting operation. This enrichment educational experience provides families with nutritional guidance to facilitate better mealtime behaviors for a healthy lifestyle.
The Tenant will have appropriate number of students attending programs for each age and program type as approved through Ridgewood Parks & Recreation Department.
Business Issues
HealthBarn moved due to Abma’s Farm wanting to use their space to expand their own business. Ridgewood staff visited the HealthBarn operation at Abma’s Farm.
A local real estate professional conducted an analysis of the location to determine the base bid for this lease. The lease requires an annual Tri State CPI increase.
The initial lease is for 5 years with renewal for 1 more year adhering to Green Acres rules. A capital improvement of $50,000+ entitles the tenant to a 6 year lease.
The Lease document will be available to the public when it is complete.
Required Insurance coverage is $1,000,000 per occurrence and $2,000,000 is aggregate. The Village of Ridgewood is listed as additionally insured.
All employees, agents and representatives of HealthBarn must have satisfactorily passed background checks. Documentation will be kept on file.
The Gate House will provide program space as well as office space for registration, planning and operational needs. No overnight accommodations are permitted. The Gate House will be regularly monitored by the Parks and Recreation Department and will be inspected by the Ridgewood Building, Fire and Health Departments and comply with all of their requirements.
The Village is not entitled to the Tenant’s business plan.
The Lease includes legal language to protect the Village if the tenant does not follow lease requirements and termination is needed.
The tenant of the Gate House is required in the lease to submit a quarterly listing and analysis of classes and programs, including attendance, staffing, and related costs to the Director, Parks & Recreation Department for review. The tenant’s current listing of programs is part of the Lease as Schedule A and is the standard (baseline) for all HealthBarn programs. Birthday parties are an approved use by Green Acres. If the tenant wishes to make changes to programs, it must be cleared five days in advance by the Director of Parks & Recreation.
The intelligence community has deemed some of Hillary Clinton’s emails “too damaging” to national security to release under any circumstances, according to a U.S. government official close to the ongoing review. A second source, who was not authorized to speak on the record, backed up the finding.
The determination was first reported by Fox News, hours before the State Department formally announced Friday that seven email chains, found in 22 documents, will be withheld “in full” because they, in fact, contain “Top Secret” information.
The State Department, when first contacted by Fox News about withholding such emails Friday morning, did not dispute the reporting – but did not comment in detail. After a version of this report was first published, the Obama administration confirmed to the Associated Press that the seven email chains would be withheld. The department has since confirmed those details publicly.
The decision to withhold the documents in full, and not provide even a partial release with redactions, further undercuts claims by the State Department and the Clinton campaign that none of the intelligence in the emails was classified when it hit Clinton’s personal server.
Fox News is told the emails include intelligence from “special access programs,” or SAP, which is considered beyond “Top Secret.” A Jan. 14 letter, first reported by Fox News, from intelligence community Inspector General Charles McCullough III notified senior intelligence and foreign relations committee leaders that “several dozen emails containing classified information” were determined to be “at the CONFIDENTIAL, SECRET, AND TOP SECRET/SAP levels.”
Thousands of longshoremen in New York and New Jersey walked off the job on Friday, grinding activity at some of the busiest ports on the East Coast to a halt and threatening to disrupt the delivery of goods across the region.
The walkout surprised many involved in the operation of the ports, according to officials, and the reasons behind the move were not immediately clear.
News of the work stoppage came in an alert issued by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which acts as a landlord for the ports but does not control daily operations.
“Due to the current work stoppage in the port, no new trucks will be allowed to queue on port roadways,” the alert said. “Do not send trucks to the Port at this time.”
Officials with the New York Shipping Association, which runs the ports, could not immediately be reached for comment.
A spokeswoman for the association who spoke to Bloomberg News said the group was “trying to understand the reason for what appears to be a walkout and will take every measure available to ensure work resumes.”
The International Longshoremen’s Association, the union representing port workers, also could not be reached for comment, but a representative of the union told a local radio station that the dispute centered on hiring practices.
Ridgewood Nj, Congressmen Scott Garrett confirmed his offices have received some calls about this IRS fraud. Please spread this information from the U.S. Department of the Treasury to friends and family so they know to be on the lookout for these phony phone calls.
Sources tell the Ridgewood blog that scammers feel people are more vulnerable near tax time .
The IRS generally contacts people, first, by mail – not by phone – about unpaid taxes. The IRS will not ask for payment using a prepaid debit card, a money order.
“The IRS is Calling Me? Can This Be For Real?” (TIGTA PSA English) 60 seconds
Fraud is real. Just hang up on Fraud. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration is warning taxpayers to be on high alert for scammers who impersonate IRS employees in aggressive phone calls that demand money. Don’t believe them; just hang up! For more information and to report a contact, visit us at www.tigta.gov.
Several residents reported having received a phone call from a man identifying himself as Dennis Gary with the treasury department, The caller requests that you call him back to avoid an enforcement action from the IRS. This is a scam do not call the number back. One of several numbers tied to the scam is 303-479-3380.
The IRS does not:
1 Call you to demand immediate payment. They will not call about taxes you owe without first mailing you a bill.
2 Demand that you pay taxes without giving you the chance to question or appeal the amount they say you owe.
3 Require you to use a certain payment method for your taxes, such as a prepaid debit card.
4 Ask for credit or debit card numbers over the phone.
5 Threaten to bring in local police or other law-enforcement to have you arrested for not paying.
If you get a phone call from someone claiming to be from the IRS and asking for money, here’s what to do:
• If you know you owe taxes or think you might owe, call the IRS at 800-829-1040 to talk about payment options. You also may be able to set up a payment plan online at IRS.gov.
• If you know you don’t owe taxes or have no reason to believe that you do, report the incident to TIGTA at 1.800.366.4484 or at www.tigta.gov.
• If phone scammers target you, also contact the Federal Trade Commission at FTC.gov. Use their “FTC Complaint Assistant” to report the scam. Please add “IRS Telephone Scam” to the comments of your complaint.
. Remember, the IRS currently does not use unsolicited email, text messages or any social media to discuss your personal tax issues. For more information on reporting tax scams, go to www.irs.gov and type “scam” in the search box.
DES MOINES, Iowa – The campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is raising questions about the involvement of Microsoft in the Iowa Caucuses, now just days away, and has built a independent system to check the official results.
For the first time this year, Microsoft partnered with the Iowa Democratic and Republican Parties to provide a technology platform with which the parties will run their caucuses. The software giant created separate mobile apps for each party, which officials at hundreds of caucuses across the state will use to report out results from individual precincts to party headquarters for tabulation.
The arrangement has aroused the suspicions of aides to Sanders, whose regularly warns that corporate power and the billionaire class are trying to hijack democracy. Pete D’Alessandro, who is running the Iowa portion of Sanders’ campaign, questioned the motives of the major multinational corporation in an interview with MSNBC: “You’d have to ask yourself why they’d want to give something like that away for free.”
The Sanders campaign has built their own reporting system to check the results from the official Microsoft-backed app. It has trained its precinct captain on using the app, which is designed to be as user friendly as possible, and the campaign will also staff a hotline system as further redundancy.
“It’s just a way that our folks can have an app that we trust to get the numbers to us in a timely fashion,” D’Alessandro said. “I’m always going to be more for sure on the stuff that my people had control over the entire time… If there are any problems, we can spot them right away.”
Other Sanders aides noted that Microsoft employees have donated several hundred thousand dollars to Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton over her career, and questioned why the Iowa Democratic Party didn’t partner with a software company based in Iowa.
JANUARY 27, 2016, 6:44 PM LAST UPDATED: WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 27, 2016, 8:26 PM
BY SALVADOR RIZZO
STATE HOUSE BUREAU |
THE RECORD
Investment gains for New Jersey’s $79 billion pension fund fell sharply in the fiscal year that ended June 30, and those pension investments are in negative territory so far this year, state officials reported Wednesday.
Christie administration officials and the State Investment Council had acknowledged in July that, with 11 months of data, the pension fund was likely to see a sharp drop in its rate of return for fiscal year 2015. Now, with all 12 months of data, the state announced that it achieved investment gains of 4.16 percent, a tumble from 16.87 percent in the previous year.
New Jersey’s pension fund is the 17th largest in the country and 33rd largest worldwide – investing in everything from real estate, private equity, commodities, stocks, hedge funds and more. Nearly 780,000 public workers and retirees are beneficiaries of the pension system, meaning they depend on the success of those investments.
The state Supreme Court has said that public workers are entitled to their pension checks “when due.” If the money does not come from investment gains, it would have to come from state taxpayers or public workers.
The fund’s performance is in negative territory so far this fiscal year, down 3 percent for the July-through-December period, officials added.
Super Science Saturday 2016, the celebration of science and technology in our daily lives, returns for its twenty-seventh year on Saturday, February 27, from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Ridgewood High School, 627 East Ridgewood Avenue. Admission is free. Students are invited to sign up and exhibit at www.supersciencesaturday.org.
Admission is Free
The three-session presenters’ workshop begins on Thursday, February 4 and continues on February 11 and 25, from 3:30-5:30 p.m. at Benjamin Franklin Middle School. The cost is $20. Click here for workshop details and registration information.
Full details of the day, including registration forms, can be found on the Super Science Saturday website atwww.supersciencesaturday.org.
Click here for the latest Super Science Saturday flyer.
The real estate mogul refuses to budge on his debate boycott while his campaign accuses Megyn Kelly of being ‘totally obsessed’ with Trump.
By NICK GASS
01/27/16 06:37 AM EST
After Donald Trump declared Tuesday night that he would boycott Fox News’ Thursday primetime debate, the Republican poll leader is publicly refusing to blink, with his campaign manager accusing moderator Megyn Kelly of being out to get Trump.
“You know, what we know is Megyn Kelly is totally obsessed with Mr. Trump,” Corey Lewandowski told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” in a telephone interview on Wednesday. “She’s on show after show about why the media shouldn’t be having him on television.”
And Trump himself took to Twitter to — indirectly — call Kelly a nasty name that he’s broken out before.
“I refuse to call Megyn Kelly a bimbo, because that would not be politically correct. Instead I will only call her a lightweight reporter!” the real estate mogul tweeted early Wednesday.
Trump’s decision to once again wage war on Fox and Kelly so close to the Iowa caucuses is either a shrewd one or a boneheaded one, depending on who you ask. While some are contending that Trump risks coming off as a coward walking away from a fight, it’s undeniable that he’s robbing the media oxygen from his rivals as they try to make their closing arguments to caucus-goers.
The tiff apparently started after Trump tried to pressure Fox News to boot Kelly as one of the moderators. Kelly gained heightened notoriety after pointedly asking Trump at the first debate about his supposed “war on women.” But Fox refused to give in, issuing a biting press statement on Tuesday saying, “We learned from a secret back channel that the Ayatollah and Putin both intend to treat Donald Trump unfairly when they meet with him if he becomes president — a nefarious source tells us that Trump has his own secret plan to replace the Cabinet with his Twitter followers to see if he should even go to those meetings.”
Fox doubled down after Trump’s declaration of a boycott, issuing a statement Tuesday night that accused Lewandowski of threatening the network with “terrorizations” of Kelly.
“In a call on Saturday with a Fox News executive, Lewandowski stated that Megyn had a ‘rough couple of days after that last debate’ and he ‘would hate to have her go through that again,’” the network alleged.
Ridgewood NJ, New process could enable anaerobic digestion facilities anywhere in the world to capture biogas and use it to produce
renewable energy.
BioHiTech America, a subsidiary of green technology company, BioHiTech Global Inc. (which provides an innovative data-driving solution for
the disposal of food waste), has partnered with Natural Systems Utilities to test a waste to energy process that will enable
BioHiTech’s food waste disposal system to digest, tank and deliver the effluent from its system to anaerobic digestion facilities around the
globe, reported Biomass Magazine.
BioHiTech’s energy from waste system converts foods waste to greywater.
The company’s food waste disposal system is known as the Eco-Safe Digester. It uses an anerobic digestion process to transform food
waste to greywater, which is also referred to as effluent. Usually, the effluent is safely released into the sewage system and individual
wastewater treatment plants, so it can be treated with other waste that is deemed sanitary.
The new process that is being tested will tank the unit’s effluent, which will allow for transportation to an anaerobic digestion plant
where biogas can be captured and utilized to create clean energy.
According to BioHiTech, what makes the Eco-Safe Digester unique is that it performs the hydrolysis stage of anaerobic digestion at the
point of origin. Due to the fact that the anaerobic digestion process starts with the breakdown of solid organics to a liquid slurry, the
effluent can be pumped and transported without problem, arriving at the anaerobic digestion facility in a “predigested” condition. This
makes feedstock transfer more efficient and removes the need for expensive processing at the facility.
Currently, the new waste to energy process is being tested in New Jersey.
Other partners involved in the energy from waste project includes the village of Ridgewood, New Jersey, and Ridgewood Green RME, the latter
of which owns a 240 kW digester biogas power plant and a 20,000 gallon-per-day liquid waste receiving facility.
A supermarket in New Jersey has been selected as a testing ground for the new process. Its waste is transported to an anaerobic digestion
plant that is operated by the village of Ridgewood at its water pollution control plant.
Additionally, in December, BioHiTech installed its Eco-Safe-Digester at a second Dunkin’ Donuts location in New Jersey. Its system is
helping the restaurant to save money on waste management while at the same time keeping its waste out of landfills.
Paul Knowles, director of technical operations of Natural Systems Utilities said that “Early trials to receive the material and feed it
to the digester have proven successful.” Knowles added that the company is “working with BioHiTech to expand the process so that they
can offer this solution to new and existing customers.”
CEO of BioHiTech Global, Fran E. Celli, also commented on the waste to energy project saying that BioHiTech has “developed a process for
those who want their food waste delivered to anaerobic digesters so that it can be converted to clean energy.”
Ridgewood NJ, The National Federation of High School Athletics recently announced that it has selected Ridgewood High School’s own Brian Quirk as the 2015 New Jersey Girls Golf Coach of the Year. Under Quirk’s direction, the RHS girls golf team has been ranked among the top team in New Jersey over the past six years. Last year the team won several major tournaments. Brian Quirk is also a physical education teacher at Ridgewood High School.
Ridgewood NJ, For years now we’ve heard the Aronsohn administration’s head cheerleader, Village Manager Roberta Sonenfeld, go on at nauseam about the importance of improving parking opportunities in the Village. We’ve listened to Ms. Sonenfeld, Mayor Paul Aronsohn and current Ridgewood Chamber of Commerce Presidnet Paul Vagianos proclaim at meeting after meeting why the availability of downtown parking is so crutial to the existence of RIdgewood’s business community. Nothing, they say, is more important to keeping existing Ridgewood businesses alive, and attracting new businesses to the Village, than maximizing parking opportunities. All of us have been led to believe that unless more parking opportunities are created, downtown Ridgewood will eventually become a ghost town.
So I ask, if the availability of parking is indeed so critical to the success of business in Ridgewood, why wasn’t snow cleared from every available parking space in the Central Business District prior to the start of business on Monday? The snow stopped falling at approximately 8 PMon Saturday – Portions of several municipal lots were still snow covered as of 3 PMon Tuesday. Metered parking spaces on Godwin Avenue and on Franklin Avenue were still inaccessible as of 6 PMon Monday. Metered parking spaces on Oak Street were still being cleared on Tuesday morning.
It is certainly understandable that the Village’s first priority was to clear traveled roadways, especially those near schools and medical facilities, and to ensure the safe egress of emergency vehicles in and out of their garages/headquarters locations. I also understand that there are a limited number of Village employees and limited pieces of Village owned snow removal equipment. But why where there no contractors called in to work exclusively on the removal of snow to facilitate downtown business operations, with a target of getting everything cleared out prior to the start of Monday morning business operations? And why weren’t contractor resources directed to remove snow from the Route 17 Park & Ride? Governor Chrisie encouraged commuters to leave their vehicles at home and take mass transit – that’s not easily accomplished if you can’t park your vehicle at a mass transit departure point.
Clearly, someone dropped the ball here. Contractors should have been placed on standby in the event the snowfall was too much for our own employees to handle. And I hope that Ms. Sonenfeld doesn’t use the lame excuse that contractors cost money – we’re prepared to spend over $12 million to improve parking opportunities, but won’t spend peanuts to remove snow from parking places? Give me a break!
I strongly encourage Village officials to be prepared for the next “big one.” Their lack of attention with respect to clearing snow from existing parking spaces suggests to me that all the talk about needing more parking is nothing more than a bunch of rhetoric.
Thank you for rescheduling Schedler as the agenda is so jam packed that we were all looking at another marathon meeting. I may not be an expert on anything but I do recognize when town issues have reached a critical mass level of concern. With hundreds of people speaking out on multiple issues and the vast majority offering well thought out solutions, it is time to go back to the drawing board. Had it not been for concerned residents speaking out on the garage we wouldn’t have known about the encroachment of all three options onto Hudson Street. This revelation has altered the integrity of the present plans so dramatically that the entire project is open for reevaluation on design and financing.
Regarding Schedler, I urge you to refrain from the removal of structures or cleaning up of the woods until a fully vetted plan is in place with feasibility studies and financials that can be presented to the public for consideration. I became aware recently that a private citizen paid for the tarp on the Zabriskie/ Schedler House and that no town monies are available for needed repairs on said tarp. I was under the impression that the town had paid for the original tarp and I feel that I and others were misled.
I can only say that having been involved with saving the Stable and getting a community center for the town, it is very shortsighted to disregard the value and the potential use of this historic house and property. I can’t begin to tell you how important it is to save the woods, for humans as well as the bald eagles that are in the area. We can have it all plus a smaller ball field. Numbers show that more children are enrolled in RBSA programs than young adults . The smaller field will get much use. We might look at leasing/ renting field space in local towns.
Years ago, my kids played at Ramapo College fields, the Armory in Teaneck and the indoor arena in the Meadowlands. Not to leave out housing density changes in the CBD, Valley Hospital and the reported 600 leaf summonses that were given out and the large numbers who showed up at court in protest. Change is sometimes about doing less but more effectively. If ever there was a time to take a step back and examine the unintended consequences of massive change, it is now.
JANUARY 25, 2016, 1:10 PM LAST UPDATED: MONDAY, JANUARY 25, 2016, 1:12 PM
ASSOCIATED PRESS
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Environmentalists and business leaders will try to agree on what New Jersey’s beach access regulations should look like.
State Sen. Bob Smith, a Middlesex County Democrat, appointed a committee Monday to study the state’s coastal access rules and recommend ways to make them better.
The issue has been fought over for years. Some shore towns use the lack of parking and restrooms to discourage outsiders from using their beaches.
“It’s always been a gnarly problem,” Smith said.
The right to access river shorelines in heavily developed urban areas is also part of the discussion.
The group will include representatives of the American Littoral Society, NY/NJ Baykeeper, the New Jersey State Chamber of Commerce, and the state Business and Industry Association. The recommendations will be presented to the Legislature by April 25.
The committee arises from longstanding complaints from environmental and beach access groups that the state’s regulations do not do enough to protect the public’s right to reach New Jersey’s waterfronts. They favor previous rules generated by the administration of former Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine that imposed uniform access requirements along the shoreline, including access points every quarter-mile.
When Republican Chris Christie succeeded Corzine, the DEP rewrote the rules to give communities more latitude in granting beach access, letting each community decide for itself what level is appropriate.
Ridgewood Nj, OPRA requests are now not affordable in the town. They have now (since last 2-3 months) started charging hundreds of dollars for each OPRA request because they don’t want residents to questions all these things happening at the same time with unprecedented push, without satisfactory answers from the council and administration. The Mayor uses his personal email account for most emails and some of them use their cell phones (text) to communicate, even when they are sitting at the public meetings.
There cannot be smoke without fire. If so many residents are going to these council meetings and they are frequently going to 1-2AM with residents speaking for 6-7 hours, there must be something wrong going on. Hopefully this new prosecutor will look at this and get to the bottom of this, which we the normal residents can’t do without access to all the data.
There are state laws limiting the amount of fees that can be charged for filling OPRA requests (Open Public Records Act ). Anyone being charge excessive amounts should check that out and file a complaint.
A special service charge is essentially a labor fee that may be charged when a request is voluminous, requiring extensive time and effort, or when the request required extensive use of technology. Special services charges must be reasonable and based on actual direct cost of fulfilling the request. Actual direct cost means the hourly rate of the lowest level employee capable of fulfilling the request (no fringe benefits).
The imposition of a special service charge is extremely subjective and the determination is made on a case-by-case basis. No special service charges can be established in advance by ordinance.
The custodian must notify the requestor in advance of the special service charge. The requestor has the right to disagree with the special service charge. If the custodian and requestor cannot reach an agreement regarding the special service charge, the request is considered denied. Complainants may challenge a custodian’s special service charge by filing a Denial of Access Complaint with the Government Records Council or filing an action in the Superior Court of New Jersey.
The following is an example of a special service charge for a voluminous request:
Request: Meeting minutes from 2005 to present. There are 1,000 pages of responsive records which will take the custodian 2 ½ hours to copy. The Custodian may charge her direct hourly rate for the 2 ½ hours required to fulfill request. Custodian must estimate cost and notify requestor before fulfilling the request.
