Son of ex-Hackensack Mayor Cerbo is running for council

Richard Cerbo urging the Hackensack City Council on Tuesday night to persuade Bergen County and Hackensack University Medical Center to contribute more to the city in view of their tax-exempt status. Cerbo is seeking a seat on the council in a special Nov. 3 election.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Richard Cerbo, son of former Hackensack Mayor Fred Cerbo, says he has filed a nominating petition to run in a special Nov. 3 election for a vacant seat on the City Council.

Fred Cerbo served on the City Council before he was elected Hackensack's mayor in 1981.

The lifelong city resident died in 2012 at the age of 87, according to a North Jersey.com obituary that you can read by clicking on the following link:

'He cared about the town'

'Tax-free buildings'

At Tuesday night's City Council meeting, Richard Cerbo, 63, noted there are "tax-free buildings everywhere" in Hackensack, including the county jail and courthouse, and the unemployment office.

Those agencies and services -- as well as the non-profit Hackensack University Medical Center -- draw thousands of residents from other towns to the city, Cerbo said.

For that reason, he urged city officials to try and persuade the county and hospital to contribute more to Hackensack.

Special election

The Nov. 3 election will fill a seat left vacant by the resignation of Councilwoman Rose Greenman.

The seat has been filled temporarily since April by an appointee, Jason Some, owner of Some's Uniforms on Main Street.

Greenman was severely criticized by Board of Education President Jason Nunnermacker, board Attorney Richard Salkin and other allies of the Zisa family political dynasty that ran Hackensack for decades.

Nunnermacker, an attorney, was one of the Zisa-backed candidates who ran unsuccessfully for council in 2013, losing to a reform slate that included Greenman.

Now, Nunnermacker has declared his candidacy in the Nov. 3 special election to fill her seat.

THE SUITS: Hackensack Board of Education President Jason Nunnermacker, right; board members Joseph Barreto and Timothy J. Hoffman, on aisle; and smiling board Attorney Richard Salkin took up positions in the back of City Council Chambers. Only Salkin and Barreto spoke during the public comment portion of the meeting.

Board Attorney Richard Salkin addressing Mayor John Labrosse, City Council members and City Manager David R. Troast, left, on Tuesday night. 

School board

Nunnermacker, two other board members and board Attorney Richard Salkin attended Tuesday night's council meeting after conducting their own meeting.

It's not clear why the school board holds meetings on the same night as the council, unless it is intended to deny most residents a say in how the city's schools are run.

Residents are allowed only 3 minutes to comment, in contrast to the 5 minutes Salkin and others are given at council meetings.

To make matters worse, I cannot recall The Record covering a school board meeting in Hackensack in a year or more.

Board members count on apathy from residents as well as The Record's editors, as they did this year, when fewer than 1,000 of the city's 20,000 registered voters cast ballots and approved a $107 million budget, exceeding the city's own spending plan.

Todd South, the reporter assigned to cover Hackensack, was at Tuesday night's council meeting, but nothing about the meeting appears in the paper today.

Music in park

Hackensack City Manager David R. Troast announced three lunchtime concerts in the new Atlantic Street park on Friday, and Sept. 11 and 18.

Troast said a few downtown restaurants will take lunch orders and deliver them to the new park.

Today's paper

The Hackensack news drought apparently mirrors fear of a severe water shortage in North Jersey, where the primary supplier is asking residents "to voluntarily conserve," according to The Record (L-1).

What little news there is from Editors Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza in today's Local section includes reports on Paterson gangs, sexual assault of a college student and lots of other crime and accident news (L-1, L-2, L-3 and L-6).

In Bergenfield, Bergen County's first female police chief was sworn in, and will be paid more than Governor Christie (L-1).

Page 1 news?

On the front page today, Editor Martin Gottlieb runs a sensational report on the arrest of Dr. Raja Jagtiani of Dumont.

The doctor was charged with criminal sexual contact and other counts for allegedly touching a patient and three employees inappropriately at his Bergenfield practice, and biting one of them on the cheek (A-1).

Page 1 is dominated by two stories on the pope's downplaying "the sin of abortion," but nowhere in the two long narratives do reporters mention the hard-line views of Republicans seeking their party's presidential nomination, including Christie.

'Hurricane Chris' is full of hot air

This glass-repair company's motto reminds local readers of how editors of The Record treat them: They consider readers' "stand points," then reject them wholesale.

It doesn't look like the city of Tampa, Fla., has anything to worry about from Tropical Storm Isaac, but it should be on guard against all the hot air coming from Governor Christie.

Just imagine how our obese governor is sweating bullets going to and from appearances in connection with the Republican National Convention.

Talk about "the elephant in the room."

The Record's fawning editors are knocking themselves out to stay on his good side.

They continue to prostitute themselves with four straight days of front-page coverage, culminating in today's Page 1 story and column on Christie's keynote speech tonight.

No Jersey impact

This, after all, is a speech that has no impact on New Jersey and its residents. 

It's just divisive politics, the same kind of rhetoric that has paralyzed Congress, but the bored media can't get enough.

Bad journalism

I've been looking over the five editions since Friday, and can't find anything worthy of note. This is as bad as local journalism gets.

Today, Hackensack residents see really bad news -- a new date for the sentencing of their disgraced police chief, Ken Zisa (L-3). 

Hard to imagine Superior Court Judge Joseph S. Conte didn't realize he had "conflicts" in his schedule until Monday. 

He put off Thursday's hearing until Sept. 20. Let's hope that's the last delay, and that he remands Zisa rather than allowing him to remain free pending his appeal.

More on Zisaville

The Zisa coverage has been so intense there have been no stories  about anything else in Hackensack -- not even such basics as the budget, tax rate and so forth.

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, were so desperate to fill today's Local news section they had to resort to three non-fatal accident photos.

Desperate columnists

On Monday, Mike Kelly was so desperate for a column he wrote about stuff Zisa did in 2008 (L-1).

On Sunday, Road Warrior John Cichowski was so desperate for a column he wrote about people who bicycle across the George Washington Bridge (L-1).

Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung also was desperate for a Sunday column (BL-1).

She wrote about a New York organic bread bakery whose products are available in only a handful of supermarkets in North Jersey.

If the stuff is so good, why isn't any of it served in North Jersey restaurants?

Long live Mayor Cerbo

On Saturday's L-6 , an obituary of former Hackensack Mayor Fred Cerbo failed to mention one of his strongest assets is that his last name wasn't "Zisa."

Editor Marty Gottlieb must have been scraping the bottom of the barrel by leading Friday's paper with a rehash of Zisa's ex-wife seeking half of his $11,000 monthly pension.

The same, exact story ran a week earlier in the Local section (Aug. 17).

The only thing notable about Friday's story is that Staff Writer Karen Sudol actually interviewed seemingly ordinary residents about the issue, rather than quoting the usual gadflies and longtime city critics. 

Tomorrow: Who Marty should fire

When the Zisas came to power

Image via Wikipedia

Here's another detailed recollection of Hackensack's past -- the election that consolidated the Zisas' power. This is from  just watching, a contributor to Hackensacknow.org. Of course, you won't find anything like this in The Record, which bid farewell to Hackensack when it moved to Woodland Park last year.

"Of course, there were more issues in the 1989 election such as the recent re-evaluation that occurred right before the real estate market tanked, causing so many houses to be over-valued (interesting pattern, since it just happened again).  And there were four complete slates running in 1989.  It cannot be understated how much the local Democratic organization was divided by the election, and how people like Daniel Kirsch wound up on D'Arminio's ticket.

"The Zisas were considered a breath of fresh air, a "clean sweep" over the stagnancy of the Fred Cerbo Administration. Cerbo was a former mail carrier who somehow rose thru the ranks of the US Postal Department, and then decided to get into politics. He had no people skills, and was once denounced by the ACLU for plotting against a school teacher circulating recall petitions. They referred to him as the Mayor of Moscow.  There were no glory days before the Zisas came to power.

"The Zisas and their political associates were good people when they came to power in 1989. They were young, energetic, and committed to preserving neighborhoods, zoning, and the environment.  They had strong family values, and four of the five elected in 1989 had children in the city's school system (the exception being Sandra Robinson). They were bursting at the seams with new ideas. They had tremendous vision for the city's future, and they wanted to stop urban decline and the spread of inner city problems. 

"In 1989, Ken Zisa was a low-ranking police officer in charge of interacting with the city's youth. By all accounts, he excelled at that task.  Jack Zisa was a young accountant in his 30s working out of a humble little office on Hudson Street, and son of a former Mayor.  First Cousin, Joe Zisa, was an attorney, son of a former city judge, with dreams of following in his footsteps.

"What happened to the Zisas? Why did  they change?.  Why did all this happen?"

Homer Jones, another contributor to Hackensacknow.org, offers this in answer to those questions:

"Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

(Photo: Bergen County Courthouse in Hackensack.)