What do Hackensack residents get for their high taxes?

Hackensack gives property tax payers a 10-day grace period, so 1st-quarter payments are due on Wednesday. When is the last time you saw a story -- any story -- about local property taxes in The Record of Woodland Park?

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

If you live in Hackensack, Teaneck, Englewood, Ridgewood or another community with a tax-exempt hospital, you are paying more for such services as police protection and garbage collection.

In fact, residents are subsidizing the non-profit medical complexes, and in Hackensack, that means the city is powerless to collect more than $10 million on $257 million in tax-exempt property.

And Hackensack residents also are saddled with tax-exempt property owned by Bergen County, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Eastwick College and others.

All of them add to the disproportionate financial burden carried by residential and commercial property owners -- higher taxes that have been totally ignored by the local editors at The Record of Woodland Park.

At the same time, it's unclear what, if anything, those non-profits have returned to the city in lieu of taxes.

$4.5M payment

On Jan. 26, the Hackensack City Council voted to approve a settlement of claims, "some going back decades," that requires Hackensack University Medical Center to pay $4.5 million over three years.

The agreement also includes "which properties owned by HUMC and/or affiliated entities shall remain taxable."

HUMC also will pay $200,000 annually for pedestrian-bridge air rights on Atlantic and Second streets dating to December 2009, officials said.

City services

I've lived in Hackensack since 2007, and I'm pretty happy with police and fire protection, and other city services, with the exception of sloppy snow plowing, which endangers drivers and pedestrians.

Street paving also seems to be hit and miss, with some blocks showing rough patches after being neglected for more than 30 years.

And the city's free-spending Board of Education has been a thorn in taxpayers' sides, operating this year on a $106 million budget that exceeds the city's own.

My school taxes are 44.13% of my total property tax bill.

Police report

In a year-end report, Hackensack police said they issued 6,981 moving violations, but I still see stop-sign runners almost every day, especially at Euclid Avenue and the railroad tracks, where there are four stop signs.

The report listed 2,048 accidents, two fatal, and 465 "hit & run."

"Both burglaries and robberies in 2014 and 2015 were reported to be the lowest in past 30 years," the report stated.

"The Police Department worked closely" with the [tax-exempt] county homeless shelter on South River Street "in addressing the concerns of the homeless."

The report was silent on whether HUMC has agreed to provide medical staff who could help police cut down on the large number of trips transporting homeless people from the shelter to the hospital's emergency room -- another story The Record has ignored.

Hackensack news?

Staff Writer Todd South didn't cover the Jan. 26 City Council meeting in Hackensack or the two meetings before that.

South, who has been promoted to the Bergen County government beat from his Hackensack duties, today reports on a regional high school poetry contest (L-1).

In today's thin Local section, you'll find municipal news from East Rutherford, Rutherford, Leonia, Waldwick and Rockleigh, but nothing from Hackensack.

A brief on L-3 today must make the 535 residents of Rockleigh feel really safe, and speaks volumes about how North Jersey is poorly served by the home-rule system of local government.

The borough's Fire Department has only two fire engines, so the council "is exploring" an agreement to "borrow" a vehicle in an emergency.

Staff Writer Marc Lightdale doesn't shed any light on whether the vehicle would be another firetruck.

Page 1

Editor Deirdre Sykes and Managing Editor Dan Sforza have been in their new positions for only 10 days, but their front-pages have been uniformly disappointing.

Today's is dominated by politics and sports -- again.

Sykes and Sforza still can't shake their old roles as local assignment editors who did their best to screw readers searching for news of their town.

Does anybody still read Columnist Charles Stile's almost daily assessment of Governor Christie's doomed campaign for the GOP presidential nomination (A-1)?

The CNN Poll of Polls is reporting Christie will be the choice of only 5% of New Hampshire Republican primary voters or seventh in the field of eight -- just above Dr. Ben Carson's 3%.

Editors cranking up Christie P.R. machine on front page

Parking meters that accept payment by credit card have arrived in Hackensack. This one is next to the Atlantic Street Park. The new rate is 25 cents for 15 minutes, two to four times the cost at some older meters.

Not far away from the new meters, several copies of The Record of Woodland Park were delivered to an Atlantic Street law office by throwing them onto the snow or sidewalk.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Like her predecessor, Editor Deirdre Sykes is doing her best to keep alive Governor Christie's doomed campaign for the GOP presidential nomination.

Today's Page 1 headline and story on the GOP bully downplaying his pathetic 10th-place finish in Iowa essentially repeats the same upbeat message readers saw in Tuesday's A-1 column from the shameless Charles Stile.

Today's story also corrects Stile, without acknowledging the veteran reporter goofed (or was it deliberate?) when he claimed Christie finished seventh in the hayseed state's caucuses on Monday.

Stile was quick to climb into bed with Christie right after he took office in 2010, and he's stuck with him, even as he waged war on the middle class and used more than 500 vetoes to get his way with the Democratic majority in the state Legislature. 

Stile's columns and today's story by Staff Writer Dustin Racioppi amount to little more than public relations for Christie, who has turned his back on New Jersey to pursue his selfish political ambitions.

Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin should be demanding Christie's resignation, not waiting for the results of the New Hampshire primary (A-10).

On Monday, only one lane was open on Main Street in Hackensack near the railroad tracks. So much utility work has been done on Main the roughly patched downtown street is one of the bumpiest stretches in Bergen County, from the state courthouse to Euclid Avenue.

Test scores

A story on public school students failing new state tests discloses the percentage of Hackensack students in Grades 3-8 and 9-12 to meet expectations was among the lowest in Bergen and Passaic counties (A-1 and A-6).

This despite the city's free-spending school board approving a $106 million budget that exceeded the city's own last year.

The graphic on test results in Hackensack is the first news Sykes has published on city schools in one, possibly two years.

And as she did when she was running the local-news section, Sykes devotes a huge amount of space to first responders doing their job, in this case saving a 9-year-old girl "trapped by smoke and fire" in Mahwah (A-1).

This story falls into the same category as endless reporting on police, fire and EMT training; and photos at council meetings where cops join the force or are promoted.

They aren't news, and have no place in a paper that does such a poor job of reporting on how well or poorly our towns are being run.

Local news?

Readers of Local haven't been told which assignment editors succeeded Sykes and Dan Sforza, who was promoted to managing editor on Friday.

But today's section, dominated by sensational crime news, is more of the same old crap the lazy, incompetent assignment editors jammed down readers' throats for years (L-1).

More Law & Order news appears on L-3, including the earth-shaking news Harrington Park is seeking a $1.48 million federal grant to replace an aging firetruck and buy gear for volunteers.

Road Warrior John Cichowski has turned his commuting column into anything but (L-1).

Instead of writing about crowded buses and trains, the hopelessly confused Cichowski churned out an entire column today on taxis outside the Secaucus Junction rail station.

Artery clogging

There is nothing like artery clogging butter to ruin a heart-healthy fish dish, but don't tell that to Food Editor Esther Davidowitz, who today promotes a smoked sablefish risotto prepared by a chef at a Manhattan restaurant (BL-2).

Extra-virgin olive oil is the smart choice, but more butter appears in a pasta recipe from clueless freelancer Kate Morgan Jackson in Upper Saddle River (BL-2).

All but one of the items in FYI, a feature claiming to report "what's new, what's happening, what's trending in the North Jersey dining scene," appear to be taken straight from press releases put together at great expense by public relations firms (BL-2).  

The three food features on BL-2 today amount to the crumbs readers have been thrown on Wednesdays since Publisher Stephen A. Borg folded The Record's award-winning Food section.