Hackensack, you can stop Zisa virus from infecting schools

A change in landing patterns ordered by the Federal Aviation Administration to keep noisy business jets away from Hackensack University Medical Center, as reported by The Record, hasn't brought much relief to city residents. This jet, with its landing gear down, was one of four or five to pass over southwest Hackensack homes and the Fanny Meyer Hillers School in about 30 minutes on Monday afternoon.

Many parents picking up their children at the Hillers School were unaware a Board of Education election is taking place today. The Record's local-news staff has ignored the issues or the attempted political comeback by the Zisa family. Three seats on the school board are up for grabs, and voters can say "yes" or "no" to a $79 million tax levy in support of a bloated $104 million school budget.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The powers that be don't want you to vote in today's Hackensack Board of Education and school budget election.

First and foremost are former Mayor Jack Zisa; brother Ken, the disgraced former police chief; their cousin, former City Attorney Joseph Zisa; and Ken's son, high school teacher Anthony Zisa.

The Zisas ruled Hackensack for decades, and stigmatized the small city with the accursed name of "Zisaville."

Now, they are attempting a political comeback by backing three Board of Education candidates under the banner of Team Hackensack. 

The world may be worrying about the Zika virus, but Hackensack fears the spread of the Zisa virus throughout the schools.

Three other candidates are believed to have the support of the political machine that propped up the Zisas for so many years before Citizens for Change, a slate of reformers, was elected to the City Council in May 2013.

This campaign flier urges voters to pick candidates 1-4-6, but someone ordered removal of the numbers on today's school ballot, below.

The ballot in today's election lists nine candidates for three seats on the Board of Education, center, and a proposition on the school budget, right.

Citizens for Change

Citizens for Change is supporting three other candidates, who call themselves Citizens for Better Schools:

Lawrence E. EISEN, Lancelot POWELL and Victor E. SASSON.

Their platform includes improving poor test scores and engaging parents in the education of their children.

Last week, the Zisas obtained the addresses of all of the members in the teachers union, and sent them an invitation to a Team Hackensack barbecue at Anthony Zisa's home, which was handed down from his grandfather, Frank C. Zisa, who was on the City Council for 16 years and mayor from 1977-81. 

Teachers union President Michael DeOrio blasted the Zisas, and called for "sanctions and/or discipline" for those involved.

The ballot

You need a PhD to figure out the ballot in today's school election.

Citizens for Better Schools is appealing to voters to pick candidates in positions 1-4-6, but someone ordered the numbers removed.

So, voters should look for candidates' last names in capital letters: EISEN, POWELL and SASSON.

Many residents also don't know they can vote on the school budget, which represents 44 percent of the property tax bill in Hackensack.

A tax levy of $79 million is up for a "yes" or "no" vote, but the total school budget is about $104 million.

The budget is bloated by administrators' salaries (some make nearly as much as or more than Governor Christie); legal fees and high rent for a Catholic school building.

A "no" vote would send the budget to the City Council, which has the power to trim it.

Campaign signs on Main Street in Hackensack.

Voter suppression

The powers that be have long conspired to suppress the vote in school elections by holding them in April, and not opening the polls until 2 p.m.

Today, the polls will be open until 9 p.m.

Although Hackensack has about 20,000 registered voters, only about 1,300 cast ballots in the last school election.

That apathy is fed by Editor Deirdre Sykes of The Record, which moved out of Hackensack in 2009.

Sykes was elevated to editor this year after many years of running the paper's local-news section.

Her distaste for local elections is well-known, and a couple of decades ago, she streamlined coverage of Boards of Education by reporting only on contested elections.

Now, she is ignoring even the hotly contested Hackensack school election.

Update

At 2 this afternoon, when the polls opened, only a small sign indicated where voters should cast their ballots at Hackensack High School, above and below.

Most of the voters I saw between 2 and 2:30 this afternoon were seniors from the neighborhood, which includes many of the high-rises on Prospect Avenue.

Today's paper

Three of the four major elements on Page 1 today are what editors call "process stories."

None of them are news, just endless descriptions of the process of repealing the estate tax in New Jersey, electing a president and how the Supreme Court will rule on a better deal for undocumented aliens (A-1).

The fourth major story is an incredible waste of space describing the legal pissing match between a millionaire with 30 Rolls-Royces and Bentleys, and The Plaza co-op high-rise in Fort Lee (A-1).

Bergen's Keystone Kops are alive and well

More than 50 years after the invention of the turn lane, none exist on Passaic Street at Summit Avenue in Hackensack, meaning drivers behind a turning vehicle feel lucky if they can squeeze through on the right, above. Often, they can't.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Two days after an undercover cop was shot in a Garfield pot sting that went awry, a big photo of plainclothes officers at the suspects' court hearing appears on the front page of The Record today.

Let's hope none of the cops in the photo are actually working undercover or the photo makes their future effectiveness questionable (A-1 and A-6).

Only four days earlier, Page 1 reported that a Bergen County police officer was hospitalized in critical condition after an allegedly drunk driver crashed into the back of his marked vehicle, which was stopped in the right travel lane of Route 46 in Lodi.

Good police work?

Are these two examples of misplaced police priorities, and a cop who didn't know enough to pull his vehicle onto the shoulder to avoid a drunk who used the vehicles flashing emergency lights as a target?

Even civilians know enough to pull ahead of a vehicle stopped on the shoulder of a highway to avoid just such an eventuality. 

So far, The Record hasn't reported whether the cop was following procedure.

Heroin, not pot

The Woodland Park daily also conveniently ignores its own series of stories in 2013 on a heroin epidemic in Bergen County, and four dramatic ads paid for by Prosecutor John L. Molinelli, sounding an alarm in March over the rise of opiate addiction and heroin overdoses, and announcing stepped-up enforcement.

But the undercover operation at the center of Tuesday's shooting in Garfield was a $400 purchase of marijuana, not heroin.

Is stopping the distribution of marijuana really worth endangering the lives of an undercover police officer and Walmart shoppers?

Wasting tax dollars

Boy. If you wonder why our property taxes are so high, just look at Wednesday's Page 1 photo, showing at least 18 police officers, standing around and bullshitting in the shopping center parking lot in the aftermath of the shooting.

Don't they have anything else to do, like chase the suspects? 

And I'll bet all of their marked and unmarked gas guzzlers are running, wasting precious tax dollars and polluting the air. 

Maybe some of those idle officers could be used to boost DWI patrols and catch allegedly repeat drunk drivers like Michael Ettz, the high school teacher who slammed into the county police car.

No father figure

Wednesday's front page also carried a hilarious story on Governor Christie being named "a Father of the Year by the National Father's Day Committee," whatever that is.

Melissa Hayes, the adoring reporter who is assigned to cover the GOP bully, doesn't mention the contradiction of a doting father who treats middle- and working-class state residents like dirt.

Also on Wednesday, the Better Living cover promoted the expansion of Stickey's BBQ to Hillsdale, where sauces mask the taste of mystery meat and poultry pumped full of harmful animal antibiotics.

Today's paper

Today's coverage of the court hearing for two of the three suspects in the shooting of the undercover cop includes:

• An awkwardly written caption noting that Paramus Police Chief Kenneth Ehrenberg is "addressing the press," using an improper catch-all for print and electronic media (A-6). 

Dissing Hackensack

A brief on Wednesday's Hackensack school board election doesn't say how many residents voted in the election, which was ignored by The Record (L-1).

Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza couldn't rouse himself to actually ask a reporter to do a story on who was running and what they stood for, and Hackensack residents received no mailings from the candidates.

Today's brief notes the $140 million operating budget was approved, and reports for the first time a budget reduction of a half-million dollars will still result in a tax hike.

Zisa allies win

A total of 601 residents voted on the budget, less than half the number that cast votes in last year's school board election.

The four seats were won by allies of the city's former Zisa administration, including Joseph Barreto, a guidance counselor who ran unsuccessfully for City Council last May.

The highest vote-getter received 490 votes in a city with more than 19,000 registered voters.

Tabloid editor

It's clear municipal news isn't a priority for Sforza, the lazy editor who has taken over for boss Deirdre Sykes during her prolonged sick leave.

Today's Local section is filled with tabloid news, starting with the lead story on a Paterson man imprisoned for raping his daughter and fathering four children with her.

A road-rage story also appears on L-1.

And L-2 carries another sensational account, this one about a Hawthorne cardiologist accused of fondling patients.

Of course, cardiologists assigned to North Jersey heart-surgery units are cheering the news of Stickey's BBQ opening in Hillsdale, and a potential increase in patients.

A titanic error in editorial judgment

An iceberg gashed the hull of the Titanic below the waterline.

I'm trying to imagine the conversation at the meeting where Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin approved the cartoon that appeared in The Record on Sunday (O-2).

For the 100th anniversary of the tragic sinking of the Titanic, Margulies the cartoonist shows a faceless, older couple looking at a large painting of the passenger ship as it was going down in the Atlantic.

In one of those bubbles, these words appear (woman to husband):

"Did they ever figure out exactly what the captain was texting at the time?"

Texting? What the F is the cartoonist thinking?  What bubble does he live in?

Is the death of more than 1,500 such a light topic that Margulies can bring up a total non-sequitur in a pathetic attempt at humor? 

Putz Prize

Keep in mind, this man won a number of prizes before and after he came to The Record in 1990, and his cartoons are syndicated all the over the United States. 

What does this ridiculous cartoon say about the  committees that give out the nation's most-coveted journalism prizes?

What does it say about Doblin?

This is a really lame attempt at making the sinking relevant to a nation of mostly young people who are walking and staring down at their smart phones, and texting so much that they have lost the ability to speak to each other.

Today's paper 

Except for the off-lead story on Bergen County Executive Kathleen Donovan, the rest of A-1 is pretty ho-hum.

Editor Marty Gottlieb gives readers another story on Marcantonio "Marc" Macri, the lawyer and municipal prosecutor who is charged with money laundering in connection with a marijuana-buying ring (A-1). 

The Record should be putting lawyers on Page 1 every day for charging ridiculously high hourly rates, which deny most people access to the courts.

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes' Local section offers readers even less than the front page.

Screwing Zisaville

Hackensack readers get another blow-by-blow account of testimony in the criminal trial of suspended Police Chief Ken Zisa (L-3).

Police Officer John Hermann testified that Zisa came to the rescue of the chief's drunk girlfriend after she drove his car into a pole in 2008.

The lead paragraph is incorrect in saying "former girlfriend." At the time of the accident, Kathleen Tiernan was reportedly living with Zisa.

The next day, according to Staff Writer Stephanie Akin, Zisa made it clear to Hermann that he should keep what he saw to himself.

"He said," Hermann testified, referring to Zisa, 'I just wanted to make you aware, I don't want anybody to know about this. There are only three people aware of this. And if it were ever to come back to me, I would know who to come see.'" 

Fill in the blanks

"When you cross Ken Zisa ... ," Hermann continued, before he was cut off by an objection from defense attorney Patricia Prezioso.

Of course, anyone who lives in Zisaville can complete that sentence.

Sykes and Akin have been so busy covering the Zisa trial, they didn't find time to report and write a story on the six candidates in today's school board election.

Were you planning to vote? Just close your eyes and punch a couple of buttons.