Editors ignore shameful record

Asked to allow affordable housing, Oradell proposed putting the units into orbit.

The low number of affordable homes in densely populated Bergen County -- only 300-plus in 2010 -- speaks volumes about how state and local officials have subverted two landmark Supreme Court decisions in 1975 and 1983. 

Let's do the arithmetic you won't find in The Record's Page 1 story today about low- and moderate-income units in Oradell.

To reach 300-plus units, each of the 70 towns in Bergen County would on average have to add fewer than five affordable units in the last 28 years (not 35 years, as I mistakenly wrote earlier). What a shameful record.

But today's story ignores everything home-rule communities have done to keep out minorities and preserve their overwhelmingly white neighborhood schools. 

Instead, the patch story focuses on Oradell's objections to a storage trailer sponsors want to use during construction of two duplexes.

Quote of the day

Editor Marty Gottlieb should have put this quote -- which appears on A-6 -- on the front page: 

"I don't think towns are responsible for fixing the racial and social problems of our society," Oradell resident Tomasina Schwarz told a reporter.

That says it all. If not towns, who or what? God? 

We certainly can't rely anymore on newspapers like The Record to bring about change or even accurately describe such issues as the history of affordable housing in Bergen County.

Doesn't compute

Also on Page 1 today, Gottlieb continues to nibble away at the optimistic revenue projections in Governor Christie's budget proposal. 

But on the continuation page, the word "accurate" appears to be missing in the text with the "Projections vs. collections" graphic (A-6). 

One story that should have been on the front page is an interview with Associate Supreme Court Justice Virginia Long, who has reached the mandatory retirement age of 70 (A-3).

Long is more than a trailblazer for women in the law and a champion of individual rights. Check out that stylish outfit.

Instead of putting Long on A-1, Gottlieb continues to bore us to tears with more about the (who-the-F-cares) GOP presidential primaries (A-1). 

What savings?

On head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local front, two stories purport to explore savings from a shared-services court agreement in Bogota and Little Ferry, and an efficiency study by the Bergen County prosecutor. 


But the stories, like so many others before them, fail to explain why, despite these and other savings, home-rule towns continue to increase property taxes.


Today's Local section is one of the thinnest in recent memory -- not so much in the number of pages as in how little town news it carries from big and small communities alike.

What are Sykes and her lazy, incompetent minions doing to earn their keep?