LG deal in Englewood Cliffs exposes big flaw of home rule

On a busy street near Palisade Avenue in wealthy Englewood Cliffs, domestic workers have to walk on the pavement, close to speeding cars, because the borough never installed sidewalks.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Is Englewood Cliffs anything like Hackensack, once known derisively as "Zisaville" for the decades-long political dominance of a single family?

On the front page of The Record today, a photo shows Englewood Cliffs Mayor Joseph Parisi applauding a deal between LG Electronics and environmentalists (A-1).

But the upbeat coverage sounds more like public relations than objective reporting (A-1 and A-8).

And it doesn't explore the decades-long rule of the Parisi family in the Cliffs, just as The Record hasn't done any probing in Cliffside Park, dominated for more than 50 years by the Calabreses.

Home-rule communities like Englewood Cliffs resist consolidating services with neighboring towns, and are desperate for ratables to cover the resulting inefficiences.

Englewood Cliffs fought a "racially tinged legal battle" to remove its students from Englewood's Dwight Morrow High School that began in 1985 and dragged on for years, The Record has reported.

Then, in October 2014, the state decided to cut nearly $600,000 in aid for 33 students from the Cliffs who were attending Dwight Morrow's Academies, a magnet program.

Hungry for ratables

More tax revenue was likely the motive for the borough to throw out its 35-foot height restriction, and approve the Korean company's plan for a 143-foot-high building on 27 acres between Sylvan Avenue and the Hudson River.

Now, the height will be reduced to 69 feet or five stories, but that still will be the biggest building ever approved for the Palisades north of the George Washington Bridge.

And in return for despoiling the majestic cliffs, Parisi and other borough officials will be celebrating an additional $2.5 million in property tax revenue every year.

Cliffs resident Donald Rizzo, who favored the higher LG headquarters, put it succinctly in a sidebar with a sub-headline reading, "Residents will benefit from revenue."

"A bigger building means more tax revenue. I'm all for it. I was never worried about the height of the building. I was worried about letting LG go" (A-8).

Maybe, the town can now afford to put in sidewalks on Summit Street to protect pedestrians and dog walkers.

In the county seat

In Hackensack, dozens of lawsuits filed against Ken Zisa, the former police chief and state assemblyman, cost the city so many millions to settle that one block of Euclid Avenue hasn't been paved for 30 years.

Prospect Avenue, lined with high-rises, and many other streets are in such poor condition one resident at Tuesday night's City Council meeting compared them to T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land."

Hackensack's school board spends more money per pupil than Ridgewood's, yet feeds high school students food of such low quality that many race out to Starbucks, Chipotle Mexican Grill and other lunch spots.

Hackensack's property tax payers are so shell shocked they even objected to the city spending public funds on a downtown park and arts space as part of the redevelopment of Main Street.

Hackensack news?

On the front of Local today, Teaneck residents find two stories on Monday night's Township Council meeting (L-1).

But there is nothing about Tuesday night's council meeting in Hackensack.

As Police Director Mike Mordaga and Capt. Timothy Lloyd listened, clergy from Mount Olive Baptist Church and other churches commented on the killing of two suspects by city police officers in recent weeks.

They urged Hackensack to find money to buy Tasers or non-fatal stun guns.

As a result of the shootings, five police officers are "on leave," city officials acknowledged, but they insisted the department is not "understaffed."

HUMC pact

A lawyer hired by the city reported a federal anti-kickback law prohibits Hackensack from continuing to ask Hackensack University Medical Center to provide ambulance services to residents for free up to $140,000 a year. 

Still, Board of Education attorney Richard Salkin rose and rambled on about the lawsuit he has filed to enforce the original 2008 pact with HUMC that he negotiated for the city.

Editors miss the mark on home-rule reporting

Jitneys such as this one heading to Manhattan relieve the pressure on NJ Transit, which doesn't provide enough rush-hour bus or rail seats for North Jersey commuters.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor


Mike Kelly pushes a lot of words around on The Record's front page today without coming close to answering some of the biggest questions about local police departments:

What exactly does the chief of a small department do, and why do we need nearly 70 of them in Bergen County alone (A-1)?

When The Record's Local section runs stories about a string of house burglaries, readers in such wealthy towns as Tenafly know what the chiefs don't do.

So, isn't it a good idea to empty the office of police brass and get them out on the street in Englewood Cliffs and other towns, where they can try to stop burglaries and enforce speeding laws?

But Kelly, aka "The Shit-Eating Grin," beats the subject to death, relying on one of the silliest comparisons I have ever seen:

"Think of this as the law enforcement equivalent of a restaurant with too many cooks and not enough waiters to serve the food."

No. Think of this as a columnist who long ago ran out of steam, and has been reduced to rewriting news stories.

Elderly and dead

Another front-page story today continues The Record's portrayal of the elderly as so demented they wander off for days -- or end up confined to a long-term care facility (A-1 and A-9).

The Record often ignores vibrant seniors who are living full lives until they die.

Still, I searched Local in vain today for an expanded obituary of a noteworthy North Jersey resident. In fact, I haven't seen one in several days.

Assuming Staff Writer Jay Levin is on vacation, why do the editors simply sit on their hands instead of assigning another reporter to write a local obit?

God knows, readers can't figure out why the Borgs are paying some reporters whose bylines are as rare as blue moons or why head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes keeps making excuses for them.

Help for obesity

The Better Living section today picks up more of Local's slack with a cover story on where families can get help for their obese children (BL-1).

Now, the paper should publish a story on where its obese editors can go for help.

The section also appears to have ended "STARTERS" -- a feature on new restaurants -- and substituted a streamlined column called "NOW OPEN" (BL-1)

Today's piece on Fiona's Restaurant in Midland Park is by Staff Writer Sachi Fujimori, whose straightforward reporting is far better than the hard sell of free-lancer Joyce Venezia Suss.

Utility pole news undercuts new editor

Every North Jersey utility pole has a special place in the heart of Editor Deirdre Sykes, who is determined to chronicle their demise with photos in The Record's Local section.

Editor Marty Gottlieb delivers another strong front page in The Record today, but the Local news section's continued reliance on photos of vehicles hitting utility poles makes a mockery of his efforts.

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her incompetent flunkies have run numerous photos of fender benders, roll overs and vehicles damaging utility poles as fillers in the Local section in a desperate scramble to find local news.

Sykes, her minions and her local columnists, Mike Kelly and John Cichowski, are the personification of laziness, and they seem little changed since Gottlieb arrived last month from The New York Times.

A utility pole in Englewood Cliffs apparently was so revered that Sykes ordered her layout editor to place a  small photo and some text on L-1, directing readers to the earth-shaking news on L-3.

There, readers find a blown-up photo of an SUV and the pole, which "took a beating in an accident on Hudson Terrace in Englewood Cliffs on Friday," according to the caption.

Gee whiz.

Ring worm

Also on L-3, a story on Jay Patel, a Mahwah millionaire who allegedly cut down 221 trees on a neighbor's lot to improve his view, doesn't say whether the judge can order him strung up from any remaining branches in the vicinity.

There is no Hackensack news today.

Exposing Christie

The respected Standard & Poors rating agency exposes Governor Christie's voodoo budget economics, saying his revenue projections are much too rosy (A-1).

The story suggests Christie's proposal to cut income taxes will form a major plank in his re-election campaign next year.

A story on A-3 reports the governor wants to loot a Clean Energy Fund to the tune of $210 million to help him balance the budget, which would give a big tax cut to millionaires.

Old wives' tales

Back on Page 1, a story on streamlining elder-care services continues The Record's heavy coverage of seniors who are destitute and eager to stand in line for free lunches.

The paper basically ignores all of the wealthy seniors in Bergen County, as well as older drivers who need information on where they can go to improve their driving skills.

Three embarrassing corrections appear on A-2 today.

Did The Record beat competitors?

Image via Wikipedia

The Record of Woodland Park today was all over the parking garage collapse on Prospect Avenue in Hackensack, and may have beaten competitors by reporting that "at least two people" were trapped. Other media said rescuers were trying to reach only one person.


Coverage by 11 staffers -- including Hackensack reporter Monsy Alvarado -- takes up almost all of Page 1 and continues to nearly two full inside pages. The other story on those pages is the suspension of state vehicle mechanical inspections to save $11 million a year.


Although the coverage of the disaster is good, the human element is missing. To Hackensack residents, the luxury high-rises along Prospect Avenue are almost a city apart. Who are the thousands of people who live here? Are they mostly New York commuters with little or no attachment to Hackensack, or interest in civic affairs?


In today's paper, you won't find anything about the people who live there, and only limited information on the lifestyle of Prospect Avenue residents, who are accustomed to doormen, concierges and so forth in return for high rents or condo and co-op fees. You'd think Alvarado, who is assigned to Hackensack, would provide such specialized knowledge, but like the other reporters on the story, this might be the first time she has spent any time on Prospect Avenue, if she even went there.


In other words, you won't find much context, typical of the paper's system of entrusting most reporting and story decisions -- not to staffers in the field, but to a group of lazy, moronic assignment editors under Editor Frank "Castrato" Scandale and Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes. This continues in the office, where the assignment editors do the rewrites that any reporter worth his or her salt should be doing themselves.


Local is a thin section for another day, missing any municipal news from Englewood, Teaneck or Hackensack, but the flurry of Englewood Cliffs news continues, the second day in the row that small town is covered. Sykes and her minions are doing such a great job inspiring their reporters.

(Photo: The Church on The Green, Hackensack)

Sunday, July 4, 2010

I just flipped through The Record of Woodland Park for Sunday, July 4, when I was away. It took only about five minutes, but I didn't see any news about Hackensack's proposed budget and tax hike, the new mayor or any other subject.