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| A long, elaborate wheelchair ramp connects the Avalon luxury apartment complex on Hackensack Avenue in Hackensack with the Home Depot Shopping Center. The rent for a 483-square-foot studio is $2,165 a month, according to the Avalon Communities Web site. The apartments, built between two shopping centers, are perfect for shopaholics. |
By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR
The Record's Dave Sheingold seems to have a bug up his ass that the annual police crackdown on seat-belt and child-restraint violators is catching a growing number of uninsured, drunk and reckless drivers (A-1).
Is there something wrong with that or with the extra revenue collected by cash-strapped towns, where property taxes seem to climb inexorably amid declining services?
During the two-week 2013 Click It or Ticket Campaign, Hackensack police issued 1,587 summonses -- triple the number given out in other communities -- but only 17.4% for seat-belt violations (A-8).
Does anybody care but the law-breaking drivers who were undone by the aggressive enforcement of traffic laws that began with the appointment of Police Director Mike Mordaga in February 2013.
Quoting morons
The anal Sheingold, the paper's computer-assisted numbers cruncher, even quotes Steve Carrellas, the moron who calls himself the "New Jersey coordinator" of the National Motorists Association, whatever that is.
"It's turning into a stop-and-fleece program. You're stopping people and taking their money away," claims Carrellas, who proves reporters will quote the most idiotic person they can find just to stir up needless controversy (A-8).
Someone should tell Carrellas driving is a privilege, not a right, and if reckless drivers, speeders, drunks, car thieves and other law-breakers are taken off the road, that's great.
We need the money
And if there is even a small chance Hackensack can use the extra money to help it climb out of the deep financial hole dug by Zisa family allies in the past decade, I say hooray.
As a property taxpayer, I can't wait for the time when hundreds of red-light and speeding cameras are installed to generate real money for towns.
That's especially the case in Hackensack, where officials have been reluctant to ask Hackensack University Medical Center and other tax-exempt entities to contribute financially to the city, which was fleeced by Ken Zisa, the corrupt former police chief and state assemblyman.
Hackensack should follow Jersey City, which is seeking $400 million from the Port Authority in a federal lawsuit that alleges the bistate agency "is not giving enough financial assistance in exchange for dozens of tax-exempt properties" (A-3).
Lazy reporting
Why does reader Dom Calicchio have to point out problems at NJ Transit's Kingsland rail station in Lyndhurst (A-15 letter to the editor)?
Transportation reporter Karen Rouse and Road Warrior John Cichowski should get off their duffs and give commuters firsthand reports on rail and bus service.
Apparently, they've been infected by the lazy bug that long ago bit Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza, who run the local-news assignment desk.
Sykes and Sforza had to fill today's thin Local section with two long wire-service obituaries for an obscure Venezuelan ex-president and a screenwriter nobody knows (L-5).
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