Editors gaze into crystal balls, ignore our messy present

This morning, Euclid Avenue in Hackensack, between Main Street and the railroad tracks, remained a one-lane street -- just one of the many spots city plows missed after the snow stopped falling on Saturday night.

On Main Street in Hackensack, between Berry and Passaic streets, parking was banned this morning, above and below, until the city could clear all of the snow in front of parking meters.

Lavash City, an Armenian restaurant, and other businesses on this block of Main are lucky to have a rear parking lot for customers.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The Record's editors are so bored with our dysfunctional state government and the blizzard of 2016 they are already looking into the future.

On Page 1 today, Washington Correspondent Herb Jackson and Staff Writer James O'Neill are gazing into crystal balls on November ballot questions and the weather for the rest of the winter.

On the Local front, the moronic Road Warrior, John Cichowski, continues to ignore blizzard dangers -- even as the death toll mounts -- and referees a pissing match over whether residents are obligated to clear fire hydrants of snow (L-1).

On the first Business page, Staff Writer Joan Verdon delivers a breathless report on a German discount supermarket chain that isn't expected to open stores in the U.S. before 2018 (L-8).

Snow clearing

The snow stopped falling Saturday night, but pedestrians continue to encounter third-world snow clearing in Hackensack and many other towns, where bus stops, corners, turn lanes, parking meters and crosswalks remain covered or barricaded today.

On the Local front, the editors published an image rarely seen in the Woodland Park daily -- a Hackensack bus stop blocked by a snowbank (L-1).

On Sunday and Monday, reporters visited a couple dozen towns, but pretty much ignored the amateurish job turned in by municipal crews -- as The Record has done for decades. 

Snow job

One example was reporting from the front lines in Teaneck by resident and Columnist Mike Kelly, the veteran reporter whose work appears regularly on the front page. 

Here is an excerpt from his hard-hitting report in Monday's Local section:

"By noon Sunday, Teaneck's main business district along Cedar Lane was buzzing with traffic and pedestrians."

Kelly probably could have described Cedar Lane the same way on any Sunday, given the large number of Orthodox Jews in town who are forbidden from shopping on Saturday.

He also noted "mounds of snow" were "left at the end of [residents'] driveways by snowplows that worked through the night to clear town streets."

Apparently, Kelly didn't venture very far, because he missed the poor job the snowplows did on Cedar Lane, where only one of two travel lanes was clear between the Hackensack line and River Road on Monday morning.

Wrong headline

Even though a number of people died from shoveling snow, carbon-monoxide poisoning and hypothermia over the weekend, Monday's local front carried an upbeat headline and sub-headline:

Postcards from a wintry land

North Jersey
worked hard
in storm, but 
played, too

This is what a block on Main Street in Hackensack looks like after the snow was cleared from in front of parking meters.

The bus stop at Euclid Avenue and Main Street, where you can board NJ Transit buses to the city, remained buried under snow this morning, including the city provided bench.

Ditto for the bus stop across the street from Sears on Main Street.

Governor Christie

Wow, would you look at all of the ink on Page 1 today criticizing Governor Christie for leaving New Jersey on Sunday and returning to New Hampshire in his futile campaign for the GOP presidential nomination (A-1).

I can't recall headlines this big or similar criticism when he did a number of things as governor -- from cancelling new Hudson River rail tunnels in 2010, waging war on teachers and other members of the middle class, and executing more than 500 vetoes so far to stop bills on gun control and a host of other issues.

Burger King

An editorial today on the response to the blizzard doesn't question why employees of Burger King in Hackensack didn't call police when an elderly New York woman told them she was afraid to drive home in the storm on Saturday afternoon, and planned to park in their Hackensack Avenue lot (A-8).

Police Director Mike Mordaga says in a news story on A-6 today the body of the unidentified woman, 78, was found in her gold Cadillac on Monday morning.

The Burger King had closed at 5 p.m. on Saturday, and didn't reopen until Monday morning.

On Spring Valley Avenue in Maywood, near the Hackensack border, a woman was forced to walk on the pavement this morning, only inches from passing cars on a street that is too narrow for all the traffic it carries in even the best of weather.

The corner of Main Street and Johnson Avenue in Hackensack.

When paving streets, residents' income level is crucial

In March, a light rain highlighted broken pavement on Louis Street in Hackensack's Fairmount section, one of the city's nicest residential areas.

At this week's City Council meeting, Hackensack City Manager Stephen Lo Iacono delivered some bad news to well-off residents who hope to see their streets paved before 2050.

This year's proposed municipal budget contains only $300,000 for repairing streets, but the city also will receive an unspecified amount in grants for that purpose.

However, the grants come with a catch. There is less grant money to pave streets where residents have higher incomes, Lo Iacono said.


Go figure. If residents of a street have higher incomes, it's likely they also have more expensive homes or apartments and pay higher property taxes. 

Why doesn't that help determine the amount of paving grants for their streets?

Euclid Avenue

Victor E. Sasson, editor of Eye on The Record and  the only independent candidate in the May 14 Hackensack City Council election, has joked he is running to get his street paved.

Euclid Avenue hasn't been paved since 1979, according to long-time residents of Hackensack, and each year for the past few years, Sasson has called the Department of Public Works, only to be told his street is "on the list." 

Lo Iacono told Sasson at Tuesday night's meeting Euclid Avenue will be paved this fall, which is the "paving season."

Sasson replied his street is far from the worst street. What about Louis Street or Prospect Avenue?

Lo Iacono also said he couldn't even give a ballpark estimate of how much it costs to pave one block, noting it depends on how much of the street has to be torn up and so forth.

'19-story monster'

Residents of Baridge House questioned City Council candidates on Wednesday night, in the second such forum sponsored by the Prospect Avenue Coaltion, which has been fighting a 19-story Long-Term Acute Care Hospital proposed nearby for more than 3 years.

Moderator Ted Moskowitz, an attorney, referred to the plan, known as LTACH, as the "19-story monster down the block."

All of the candidates pledged the city's total resources to stop the hospital. The developer is appealing the city zoning board's 5-0 vote, denying him the variances he needed to build. 

Sasson suggested that all or part of the 20-acre River Street parcel owned by North Jersey Media Group, publisher of The Record, would be an ideal site for the proposed hospital and more than 400 parking spaces. 

The Record, which abandoned Hackensack in 2009, didn't cover Wednesday night's forum or the first one on March 20.

Tick-Tock plot

On the front page of today's paper, regular users of the New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway found out why state police haven't been enforcing laws against speeding, tailgating and reckless driving.

In the best New York tabloid tradition, Editor Marty Gottlieb splashes a sensational tale all over Page 1 about a diner manager who allegedly cooked up a plot to kill his boss and the boss' wife.

No patrols

Unfortunately, the "hit man" and a second undercover operative were state troopers pulled off speeding patrols, and who knows how many other state police officers were working behind the scenes.

Is this story really worth an overlong news story, a  sidebar on the Tick-Tock Diner, a map and all of those photos?

And, of course, all that overblown coverage guarantees plenty of errors by head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and Production Editor Liz Houlton, supervisor of the luckless copy desk.

The drop headline says awkwardly the manager of the diner "hired hit on boss." 

"Hired hit"? What's missing? The full drop headline is:

Police say

manager of 

diner hired

hit on boss, 

wife's uncle

 


But the "boss" and "wife's uncle" are one in the same, according to the story, and the photo caption also identifies him as such.

The story also refers to the boss two ways, as "the owner" of the Clifton diner and as the "co-owner." Which is accurate?

yBad lesson

Sykes' Local news section today is dominated by school news, but the only mention of Hackensack is in a chart on per-pupil spending.

With four days before Hackensack's school board election, Sykes still hasn't published a story on the six candidates and what they want to accomplish.   

Scouring Page 1 for scraps of local news

Euclid Avenue, near Grand Avenue, in Hackensack's Fairmount section, above and below, is another street officials have neglected for decades. Residents say it hasn't been paved since 1979, yet taxes and city employees' salaries continue to rise. 

As if a week or more of stories on the so-called sequester crisis wasn't enough, Editor Marty Gottlieb unleashes two more on Page 1 today that are guaranteed to put readers to sleep.

A third A-1 story is a trend piece on free online classes that seems to suggest Gottlieb is flunking his assignment of putting out a hometown newspaper filled with local news.

Shoot em' up

But the front-page is dominated today by a wildly exaggerated column on the AR-15 assault rifle by the tired Mike Kelly.

The main headline -- "Meet America's weapon of choice" -- is hype, and isn't supported by the text or the numbers in a graphic on A-6.

The graphic says 1.626 million were produced in a 21-year period -- this in a nation of 300 million people.

Maybe, the AR-15 is the "weapon of choice" for men who wish their cocks were that big.

More sloppy work

And typical of the work of Production Liz Houlton's copy desk, the A-6 graphic drops the word "million" in two places under a heading: "Number of firearms in U.S."

More errors

On the front of head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local, Road Warrior John Cichowski publishes an elaborate justification for all of the rollover-accident photos Sykes uses as filler in place of news she and her minions are too lazy to gather (L-1).

This column follows Cichowski's major boner on Friday, when he told readers toll agencies don't cross-honor E-ZPass discounts, when, in fact, they do. 

A reader concerned about Cichowski's accelerating inaccuracies sent this e-mail to management:

"Like death, taxes and rising tolls, there is another sure thing Record readers can count on: Endless mistaken reporting and misinformed responses by the Road Warrior to readers' questions without any corrections, even when notified about these gross mistakes.

"Road Warrior's glaring mistakes and made-up, uneducated answers were in evidence in the March 1 column responding to to readers' questions about E-ZPass and tolls.

"The Record should STOP the Road Warrior from misinforming its readers and publishing nonsense in response to readers' questions.

"The Road Warrior indicated that the New Jersey Turnpike Authority E-ZPass system won't accept discounts from other E-ZPass systems, including the Port Authority.

"In reality, the N.J. Turnpike E-ZPass Web page specifically states that its EZ-Pass users are eligible for discounts from various E-ZPass systems, such as the Port Authority's.

"The Road Warrior seems to be more interested in filling up column space rather than actually providing accurate answers to his adoring readers."

For the full e-mail, click on this link to the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers:

Answers pulled out of thin air 


Local snooze

Hackensack readers are accustomed to a Sunday paper without news of their city, but what about other towns?

The big news in Teaneck is a family and dog escaping a fire (L-3).

Hackensack, Teaneck and Englewood are conspicuously absent in the L-1 story on towns launching health and fitness "wellness" programs.

Empty plate

In Better Living, there is no explanation to readers for why The Corner Table column is missing today.

The column -- which often promotes chefs and restaurant owners -- is written by Staff Writer Elisa Ung, who is taking a break from weekly restaurant reviewing.

Hackensack DPW can't cope with mild storm

On Sunday morning, more than 24 hours after the snow stopped falling, Euclid Avenue, between Main and Linden streets, was still covered with the slippery white stuff. The Hackensack Department of Public Works apparently was hoping strong sunlight and higher temperatures would take care of the mess.

On Main Street, people had to climb over snow to board NJ Transit buses.

Snow also covered the pavement where Prospect Avenue meets Passaic Street.

Hackensack residents were thankful they didn't have to weather the full force of Friday's nor'easter, knowing how poorly the city's Department of Public Works does on clearing streets after major snowstorms.

Even after this mild snowstorm, the city's Department of Public Works plows missed a lot.

Early Sunday afternoon, I was driving behind a DPW dump truck filled with snow, and the driver never lowered his plow on the snow-covered block of Euclid Avenue, between Linden and Main streets, that other plows hadn't bothered to clear.

In decades of coverage, The Record's local news editors have never rated Hackensack and other municipalities on how well they do in cleaning up after snowstorms -- from plowing streets to clearing crosswalks and bus stops to enforcing ordinances on shoveling snow off of sidewalks.

That likely is one reason town officials have been able to shirk the duty they owe to provide safe streets and sidewalks for drivers and pedestrians.