In Hackensack, a vote for the underdog is a vote for reform

Independent Hackensack City Council candidate Victor E. Sasson is urging the Borg family to offer 20 acres along River Street, including The Record's old headquarters, above, to the developer of a controversial Long-Term Acute Care Hospital proposed for a small parcel on Prospect Avenue or to the city for the site of a community center and public pool.

 

Hackensack residents won't find any news of their city in The Record today, but they'll have a lot of questions for the outgoing mayor and other City Council members after reading a story in the Local section.

The borough of Ridgefield is voting on Tuesday to decide whether officials should spend $550,000 initially toward the construction of a $15 million civic center (L-3).

Hackensack doesn't have anything like a $15 million civic center or even a public pool.

The City Council in "Zisaville" has raised property taxes 65%, but can't afford to pave streets.

And the council, along with City Attorney Joseph C.  Zisa Jr., squandered $6 million in legal fees on all of the civil and criminal cases sparked by his cousin, Ken Zisa, the former state Assemblyman and convicted ex-police chief.

Independent candidate Victor E. Sasson (Line 11) is urging residents to get out and vote for reform. He is considered an underdog.

Five members of the Citizens for Change slate also stand for reform (Lines 1-5).

But Coalition for Open Government candidates can be counted on to perpetuate the Zisa family's politics of greed (Lines 6-10). 

The Hudson Street building with the private law offices of Hackensack City Attorney Joseph C. Zisa Jr. is available for lease, according to a sign in a first-floor window.

One-track mind

Today's Page 1 story on NJ Transit's failure to safeguard hundreds of train cars and engines from Superstorm Sandy was coordinated with WNYC-FM, the National Public Radio station, which aired the first of two parts this morning. 

The station identified Staff Writer Karen Rouse as "a senior reporter at The Bergen Record," and credited her with breaking the story of NJ Transit's expensive screw-up.

There was no mention of how The Record's coverage of mass transit before Sandy hit on Oct. 29, 2012, consisted of sending a reporter to meetings of NJ Transit and the New Jersey Turnpike Authority.

Nor that the editors never assign Rouse, Road Warrior John Cichowski or any other reporter to ride buses and trains, and report on them from the commuters' point of view. 

Dissing Hackensack

WNYC-FM also aired a story on Tuesday's municipal election in Jersey City, but turned down a request from Sasson for coverage of the crucial Hackensack contest.

Sasson and other City Council hopefuls appeared at forums held in four high-rises and two churches, but the Johnson Public Library refused to hold a candidates' night.

And the Teaneck League of Women Voters, which also covers Hackensack, told Sasson that as an independent candidate, he could not ask the group to moderate a debate.

The polls in Hackensack are open from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday.
 

Voter apathy stifles reform in Hackensack

Voters will find this flier in today's Hackensack Chronicle, which says it has a circulation of more than 20,000 in Hackensack and South Hackensack.

Victor E. Sasson and other reform candidates in the May 14 Hackensack City Council election are fighting an unseen enemy.

Voter apathy in "Zisaville" may prove to be more powerful than allies of the ruling family who are trying so desperately to hold onto power.

That 5-person slate is headed by alleged sign-stealer Kenneth Martin, a retired African-American police detective who boasts of having been the first resource officer at Hackensack High School.

His dumb move -- caught on Hackensack Market's video-surveillance camera -- is a cautionary tale for the few voters who are paying attention to the campaign.

Read it and weep

Another lesson in the sad state of democracy in Hackensack can be seen in the number of registered voters and the turnout in the 2009 and 2005 City Council elections.

On April 24, 2009, the number of Hackensack residents registered to vote totaled 19,868, according to figures released by City Clerk Debra Heck.

Only 3,731 of them voted in the May election, giving victory to all but one of the Zisa-backed candidates. 

That vote total was actually down from the May 2005 election, when only 4,568 residents voted out of about 19,000 who were registered.

On March 6, 2013, 21,090 people were registered to vote in Hackensack, Heck said.

Official apathy

Apathy isn't reserved for Hackensack voters.

Last week, an aide for state Sen. Loretta Weinberg told Sasson, the only independent cadidate, the senator does not get involved in municipal elections.

Sasson wanted Weinberg to pay for robo calls, urging Hackensack voters to back reform candidates in the May 14 election.

Sasson called Weinberg's Teaneck office again this week, hoping the senator would at least issue a neutral, get-out-the-vote message. But his call hasn't been returned.

Apathetic editors

More apathy is evident at The Record, which so far hasn't covered the Hackensack campaign, except to report on the arrest of Martin and related news.

The Woodland Park daily doesn't see voter apathy as the big story of the municipal election, because voters "everywhere" are apathetic.

Two other news outlets, News 4 New York and WNYC-FM (New Jersey Public Radio), also have declined to cover the campaign.

Borgs and Zisas  

Here is a fascinating glimpse into the relationship of the Borgs -- owners of The Record -- and the Zisas, including mention of Jack Zisa, Lynne Hurwitz and other Hackensack movers and shakers:

The Zisas and the Borgs 


End alliance now

The number of empty storefronts on or near Main Street in Hackensack and the limited jurisdiction of the Upper Main Alliance are two powerful arguments for disbanding the public-private partnership formed in 2004.

In The Record today, Jerry Lombardo, president of the real estate firm C.J.L. Lombardo and the alliance board chairman, discusses redevelopment efforts in Hackensack (L-8).

Lombardo doesn't disclose whether he owns property in the 163-acre zone and how much profit he will realize from redevelopment, which has been endorsed by the City Council.

When the alliance is disbanded, city employee Albert H. Dib, its executive director, should be ordered to devote his full time to economic development of the entire city, not just part of Main Street.

Dib also should be ordered to stop being the "Editor" of Hackensack Now.org, a Community Message Board.

Today's paper

Editor Marty Gottlieb devotes a huge part of Page 1 today to a "major heroin bust" that targeted spoiled brats from wealthy North Jersey suburbs who drive to Paterson to buy drugs (A-1).

You won't find a word in all this coverage (two stories, photos and a chart on A-1 and A-6) about the Paterson Police Department's lame efforts to control the drug trade or gun violence in the Silk City.

To be fair, 125 officers were laid off in 2011 after Governor Christie cut state aide to Paterson and other cities, part of the GOP bully's campaign against minorities. 

In June 2012, 37 were rehired.

More manure

Why is Gottlieb wasting precious front-page real estate on Ahmed Zayat of Teaneck, a multimillionaire gambler who gets high on the smell of horse manure (A-1)?  

And why does head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes keep on publishing anti-mass transit rants from Road Warrior John Cichowski, the self-appointed booster of drivers, cars, driving and related subjects (L-1)?

Today, Cichowski raises the "who will pay?" boogeyman in discussing extension of NJ Transit's successful light-rail system to Englewood.

He knows the real problem is not federal money, but lack of commitment to mass transit by Christie and Tenafly officials, and so-called journalists like himself.

Hackensack news

When I wrote this post, I overlooked an L-1 story on repairs to the Fanny M. Hilliers School, and an L-3 filler photo of the collision of a bus and "a vehicle" on Thursday at Summit Avenue and Passaic Street.

As usual, the photo caption is completely devoid of any information about whether either driver ran a red light or received a summons. 

Hackensack deserves better than this

Prospect Avenue and Golf Place in Hackensack as the sun set on Wednesday. High-rise residents are engaged in a bitter fight with a wealthy developer who wants to build a 19-story, long-term, acute-care hospital nearby -- in a residential neighborhood outside the city's hospital zone.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

On Friday, The Record ran a poorly edited brief on Hackensack's proposed budget, and buried it inside Local (L-6) -- in contrast to a full-blown story on Teaneck's spending plan on the front of the local-news section two days earlier.

And even though the May 14 Hackensack City Council election is the most important in decades, the Woodland Park daily has written a grand total of only three stories so far, and has denied equal time to a former staffer, independent candidate Victor E. Sasson, editor of Eye on The Record.

Hackensack deserves better than this -- unless head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, want to preserve City Hall's patronage system and control of the city by cronies of the Zisa family.

Today's paper

Residents of Hackensack and other communities assaulted by noise from private jets at Teterboro Airport are disappointed to see the airport's control tower spared from closing as a result of federal budget cuts (A-1 and A-5).

A correction on A-2 notes Production Editor Liz Houlton and her snoring copy editors missed the misspelling of a word used in the North Jersey Spelling Bee.

A photo with the story leading Local shows a suspect's heavily damaged car at Englewood police headquarters, but the caption states the vehicle "blocked an entrance to an elementary school after he allegedly went on  a drunken-driving rampage" (L-1).

Legalized theft

Friday is sentencing day at the Bergen County Courthouse in Hackensack -- one of the busiest in the state -- but readers are being asked to believe the sentencing of a woman for stealing money from a Hackensack lawyer was the only thing worthy of a story today (L-1).

On the other hand, given the $6 million in legal fees Hackensack has had to shell out in cases involving its disgraced former police chief, Ken "I Am The Law" Zisa, this is a rare instance where a lawyer isn't doing the stealing.

City Attorney Joseph C. Zisa Jr. -- the ex-chief's cousin -- and the City Council recently pushed through an additional $500,000 to pay for legal bills racked up by two police officers who were acquitted of criminal charges in one of those cases.

During the afternoon rush hour on Friday, commuters on the Garden State Parkway encountered delays of up to 30 minutes on the northbound roadway, above. The Record's transportation coverage continues to ignore overburdened roads and packed buses and trains.

$10.95 for bread?

The Record has put readers on a starvation diet with another half-page restaurant review from Julia Sexton, the critic for Westchester Magazine (BL-18 on Friday).

Does Sexton live in North Jersey? Is she a pal of Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill? Why is she writing restaurant reviews in the absence of Staff Writer Elisa Ung?

And why bother with Diwani, a mediocre Indian restaurant in Ridgewood that charges $10.95 for a bread sampler?

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