Non-profit medical center giving Hackensack $5.1 million

At Tuesday night's meeting of the Hackensack City Council, Jerry Lombardo, right, chairman of the Upper Main Street Alliance, announced that two developers, Alfred Sanzari Enterprises and Meridia, are donating $40,000 toward the cost of the Atlantic Street park the business group urged the city to build on downtown parking lots. George Capodagli, the developer behind the Meridia Metro apartment project on State Street, is giving $25,000 of that amount.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Hackensack University Medical Center, a non-profit that holds more than $130 million in tax-exempt property, will pay the city $5.1 million over three years, officials said Tuesday night.

In a second development, Capt. Nicole Foley, head of the Hackensack police Traffic Division, has been reassigned.

The move came after numerous complaints from residents that police failed to enforce no-parking rules on 70 streets during the winter, entombing vehicles, hampering snow clearing and endangering drivers on streets too narrow for two cars to pass.

HUMC payments

At Tuesday night's City Council meeting, City Manager David Troast said as the result of "tax appeals," the huge medical center will contribute $5.1 million over three years for "progressive projects."

He declined to be more specific.

At earlier meetings, Mayor John Labrosse, an HUMC employee, said the city was talking with the medical center about paying for the repaving of Prospect Avenue, a heavily traveled street lined with high-rises that resembles a third-world camel track from the pounding of traffic, including ambulances.

But the repaving of Prospect and other streets was announced a couple of weeks ago with financing from a bond and grants.

City Manager David Troast said a "frugal budget" approved by the Hackensack City Council will raise municipal taxes 3.99% or a hike of $155.99 on the average home. During the public portion of the meeting Tuesday night, no resident rose to comment on the spending plan.

Capt. Foley

The reassignment of Hackensack police Capt. Foley apparently is unrelated to the fatal pedestrian accident on March 9, when she cleared a detective of any wrongdoing in the death of a 64-year-old Vietnamese-American woman.

Foley was quoted in The Record's March 11 story on the accident at Jackson Avenue and Kennedy Street, saying police do not know where Hue D. Dang was "standing" when she was hit by an unmarked car driven by Detective Sgt. John C. Straniero, 49, of Wayne.

Foley did not mention the Jackson Avenue crosswalk to The Record's police reporter, Stefanie Dazio, nor tell her Dang fell to the pavement with her feet in the crosswalk and that a plastic grocery bag she was carrying fell next to one of the car's wheel.

Neighborhood residents believe Straniero may have been looking left to see if traffic on Kennedy was approaching Jackson Avenue and turned right toward Route 80 ramps, hitting the woman when she was in or near the crosswalk.

On Wednesday, one resident referred to Dang as the "woman who got creamed."

When Eye on The Record contacted the state police and state Attorney's General Office, expressing concern that no charges were filed against the detective, the Union County prosecutor's fatal accident unit was asked to investigate.

Today' paper

Staff Writer Todd South of The Record covered Tuesday night's Hackensack City Council meeting, but any story he may have written doesn't appear in the paper today.

As you can see from the Local section, crime news took precedence on L-1 and L-2.

Page 1

For the second day in a row, Editor Martin Gottlieb blesses readers with another all-New Jersey front page (A-1).

Unfortunately, Gottlieb included a boring Charles Stile column on Governor Christie's presidential ambitions that reads much like the 100 others the Trenton reporter has written on the same subject (A-1).

If you Google "Charles Stile and Governor Christie," you get 18,700 "results."

Gottlieb also included a big photo of Tiger Woods and his adorable children as the editor and sports Columnist Tara Sullivan try to help the wealthy pro golfer rehabilitate his image as a womanizer and home breaker (L-1 and S-1).

David Samson

In an unintentionally hilarious story, Staff Writer Shawn Boburg reports David Samson --Christie's father figure, confidant and adviser -- is retiring from the practice of law (A-1).

What's hilarious is that his firm, Wolff & Samson, is changing its name to a real tongue twister -- Chiesa Shahinian & Giantomasi -- and will likely lose millions in billings to other firms that are easier to remember.

Samson resigned as Port Authority chairman, the job Christie gave him, in the wake of the Bridgegate scandal. 

More corrections

Local Assignment Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza, and Production Editor Liz Houlton admit today to two major screw-ups on Tuesday's A-1 and in an L-3 story on March 31.

Detailed corrections appear on A-2 today.

One correction notes one of the Woodland Park daily's front-page stories on the murder-suicide in Elmwood Park incorrectly reported the day on which the elderly couple died.

"It was Sunday" (not "Wednesday afternoon"), the correction states, referring to Michael Juskin, 100, who killed his wife, Rosalia, 88, with an ax before slitting his wrists (see A-1 follow-up today).

In Tuesday's story, the "Wednesday afternoon" reference appears in the first paragraph of Staff Writer Stephanie Akin's A-1 sidebar on the prevalence of domestic violence among seniors.

How many editors read that first paragraph and missed the error before it was published?

How many of those editors are pulling down six figures and laughing all the way to the bank?

Don Smith

Photographs credited to veteran Staff Photographer Don Smith have been missing for weeks. 

Is he on vacation? Did he get fired? Has there been another downsizing at North Jersey Media Group?