Raise Revenue, Not Taxes!

Ridgewood is a beautiful place, in my memory, and in its present incarnation. The Village seemingly  reinvents itself periodically, in an effortless fashion, as the old families who put their children through school move out and new ones move in to begin the cycle over again. This is fairly typical of suburban life in the Northeast US, except that Ridgewood does it as well or better than any other place.

This cycle of renewal of Ridgewood residents does come with a price, as any Village property tax statement will readily attest. It costs plenty to maintain a first rate school system, operate police and fire departments, and to keep the Village, including its gems like Graydon Pool, in pristine condition. This just names a few items which must be funded annually, and the price of all these amenities is only going up.

Let's be clear, I am all in favor of funding the tangible and intangible features of Ridgewood which add to the desirability of a living within its borders, and especially those that increase its attractiveness or value. I just want to point out the obvious that Ridgewood's next renewal will have to be predicated on finding new sources of revenue and not new sources of taxes.


This to me means growing the tax base by building housing in the Central Business District which are of the one and two bedroom variety. Besides offering a place for empty nest Villagers looking to downsize, they would also maintain a sense of continuity in the village. Downtown housing offers the opportunity, which is now largely lost when people move out, of protecting the Village's collective knowledge of what it is and hopes to represent. I maintain that the Village's Group Intelligence is a priceless asset, and one which common sense urges be respected and encouraged to developed further. 


In our likelihood in addition to downtown housing ideas, raising revenue and not taxes might mean swallowing hard and accepting ideas which might be aesthetically challenging like cell phone towers and solar panels.


I've never felt it was going to be easy for Ridgewood to contemplate, not to mention implement, its next period of renewal. I just put these ideas out for discussion and hope that I won't be shouted down. I fear and have felt the pervasive group think which is often inflicted ex-Ridgewood residents when they speak their minds regarding their old hometown. This happens often enough that it hampers our collective intelligence by limiting input to a select few individuals or filtering potential Golden Suggestions. My suggestions may not be "Golden" but they are worthy of consideration as a means for making the future of Ridgewood as bright and promising as it was when I lived there in the 1960s and 70s.

Happy Holidays!

Playing Games

"Before there were play dates there was play..."

I wish I could claim credit for the above statement as I share its sentiment. It was taken from a short documentary on the games children played in NYC in the 50's, 60's and 70s. They interviewed people from all the boroughs and the games were basically the same, though they might have called them by different names. The interesting part to me was that no adult ever showed the kids how to play these games, and that the origins of the games could be traced back hundreds of years by examining paintings of scenes of children playing.

We had many of the same games in Ridgewood, due in large part to the large migration of New Yorkers to the suburbs. Let me name a few and provide Wilipedia explanations for those that made the journey to Jersey:

Red Rover

The game is played between two lines of players, usually around thirty feet apart. Each team lines up along one of these lines, and the game starts when the first team (usually called the "East" or "South" team, although this does not relate to the actual relative location of the teams) calls out, "Red rover, red rover, send [name of player on opposite team] right over." or "Red Rover, Red Rover, let [name of player of opposing team] come over." or "Red rover, red rover, we call [name of player on opposite team] over."

Box Ball

Four square, also known as squareball, boxball, and in Canada, champ, is a ball game played among four individuals on a square court divided into quadrants. It is a popular playground game with little required equipment, almost no setup, and short rounds of play that can be ended at any time.

Stickball

Stickball is a street game related to baseball, usually formed as a pick-up game, played in large cities in the Northeastern United States, especially New York City. The equipment consists of a broom handle and a rubber ball, typically a spaldeen, pensie pinkie, high bouncer or tennis ball.

Stoopball

Stoop ball (also spelled "stoopball") is a game that is played by throwing a ball against a stoop (stairs leading up to a building) on the pavement in front of a building. The game is also known as "Off the Point". [1] Historically, it has been popular in Brooklyn and other inner cities. It first became popular after World War II.[2] A Portable Stoopball Striker has been patented. [3]

The games were usually impromptu and a group for the game could easily be mustered at the schoolyard or nearby park. These games taught us life lessons about who we could trust and how to negotiate. Though this posting is mostly about boys games, there were interviews with many girls, too. We might call them tomboys if they played the boys games but they had also hopscotch and skipping rope in a multitude of variations.

The other theme this all presupposes is that no direct adult supervision was required, though in all cases there were stay-at-home Moms, close relatives, and the ultimate arbiters the Police. All these groups kept order to a degree and kids knew they had to behave or else their parents would find out their infraction.

This is all a dream world supposition now, with fewer extended relatives like aunts and uncles living nearby, not to mention grandparents, fewer stay-at-home Moms, and lastly fewer kids playing on the streets. It seems that a combination of central air conditioning, television, and video games has depleted the streets and schoolyards of the armies of children who used to play the aforementioned games so regularly. This is not to say the games have vanished, only that their ability to bind us together and teach us life lessons has diminished.

Santa at the Old Garden State Plaza

All it takes is a quick search of Google these days to bring up memories of days past. I was not astonished when I searched for the picture of Santa in the chimney, which used to adorn the old Garden State Plaza, and quickly found numerous mentions in blogs. As the story goes it cost about $20,000 each year to repair Santa and another $20,000 to get him set up in the chimney. I suppose for the number crunchers who work for these retailers with their razor thin margins this was an expense which was easy to eliminate.

Santa was in the same category of 1960s excess as The 200-by-50-foot work, created by the Polish-born artist Stefan Knapp. It dominated the intersection of Routes 17 and 4 from 1962 to 1995. Constructed of red, orange and blue porcelain panels attached to a steel structure, it was commissioned for $250,000 by George Farkas, a former owner of the store.

People generally liked seeing both of these landmarks but were not going to put up a fight when both were kicked to the curb to make way for new stores. They'll live forever, however, in our memories and on the Internet.

I guess that makes us luckier than our ancestors, who had only grainy photographs of landmarks torn down to make way for something newer and better.