Ribbon Cutting at Bridgewater's New Municipal Complex

The photo shows Bridgewater officials enjoying a light moment at the ribbon cutting ceremony held last week, May 7, at the new Bridgewater Municipal Complex on Commons Way. Mayor Patricia Flannery stands behind Township Council President Patrick Scaglione.

To the left is Council member Howard Norgalis, with Michael Hsing, barely visible, next to him. Bob Albano stands smiling to the right. Councilor Matthew Moench was unable to be present for the photo op.

This observance formally launched the new police and court facilities which are now completely functional. The administration building is still under renovation. A Township email advised that, “A more formal grand opening will be held once the entire project is complete in 2010.”

Township representatives gave tours of the police station and of the Municipal Court and meeting rooms. I was quite impressed with Bridgewater’s new operational headquarters. The police station is extremely functional and appears to be highly secure – you won’t want to fool around there.

The court facilities will also serve as the venue for Township Council and other meetings. The Court and Meeting Room area is quite imposing and much larger than the old facilities.

NJ Court Hits Foul Ball

This week, in another miscue, the New Jersey Supreme Court decided that local municipalities can no longer prevent registered sex offenders from living within mere feet of schools, day care centers and playgrounds.

The New Jersey legislature is expected to act quickly to enact Megan’s Law modifications which will change that dunderhead decision by the high court. The ruling by the NJ Supreme Court demonstrates just how irrationally selective that body can be.

There are few things any more heinous that the mental ravage caused by psychopathic sexual predators, as they stalk and abuse New Jersey children. The statistics clearly show – over and over again – that the recidivism among this class of criminals requires close and constant monitoring of their whereabouts.

The court’s ruling has made it possible for malignant sex offenders to fly under the radar and to rent or buy a home close to a grade school, playground or day care facility anywhere in New Jersey. This is a chilling reminder that courts can often be devoid of the most basic understanding of what motivates criminal behavior.

Let’s hope that the New Jersey legislature has a better sense of judgment and fixes this loophole in Megan’s Law. If there is any misgiving whatever about the rate of recidivism for convicted sexual abusers, it’s better to give the benefit of the doubt to a community’s children than it is to provide comfort to the predators among us.

The Changing Face of Local Journalism

In his latest regular column in the Courier News, managing editor Paul C. Grzella, commented on some of the feedback at the community outreach meeting from last week, one that I witnessed. He wrote that “one of the community members who attended talked about how an opinion piece she wrote and that we published in the paper generated some unkind words on our Web site.”

Before newspapers adopted the Internet, letters-to-the-editor were submitted for publishing either by email or ‘snail mail.’ Original letter writers and those wishing to respond were bound by the same crisp rule designed to keep at least a moderate level of sanity in the process:

As I remember it, the policy of the Courier News was that it would print only letters and responses signed and submitted with a name and legitimate telephone number for confirmation of the author’s identity. I think the author’s address also was required. Anonymous contributions were simply not published.

This process maintained a reasonable level of social consciousness and integrity. But Internet practice has flushed at least part of those rules down the tubes. Today, anyone with a fictitious handle can respond to just about anything on the ‘net.

A person can be as careful, thoughtful, and as intelligent as can be with his or her response to a known author. Conversely, a person’s Internet response can be …… well …… as inconsiderate, uninformed, and as dim-witted as one can imagine. But that’s the way it is. Most professional journalists that I read and the few that I know will tell you that they don’t like it.

But the newspaper business is in an economic crunch. The anything-goes rules for online reader responses have been cast in stone for a long time, and newspapers have little influence on those rules. There is a need to carry on and to keep getting those ‘clicks’ on Web pages and the accompanying ads that may help them to survive and to prosper.

Freedom of speech is a powerful instrument of liberty. But it doesn’t inoculate anyone from the written thoughts of aspiring dolts.

A Common Sense Missive from the Superintendent

Obviously, nobody likes to see the onset of what could be a major flu epidemic. Similarly, no one wants to see the start of a national panic, should people begin to throw reason out the window over the threat of the spread of swine flue. (The feds have now labeled it H1N1 flu.)

The superintendent of the Bridgewater-Raritan School District is one person among others who seems to be maintaining his cool and disseminating information to parents about what the status is in our schools.

In an April 30th email distribution, he quashed a rumor about a student at the high school contracting the virus – it didn’t happen – while letting us know that the Somerset County Health Department indicates that there are currently no reported cases in this county.

Using good judgment, he informed parents that “a 4th grade Milltown School field trip to Ellis Island” was cancelled. Too close to NYC which has a high number of swine flu cases. Also too risky because it would involve placing small kids on a public ferry.

If you’d like to see a bit more information, refer to this link at the B-R Schools website http://www.brrsd.k12.nj.us/news.cfm?story=570.

Thanks for checking in, and take care of yourselves. I’ll be recharging my spiritual batteries this weekend.


Update: Since this was posted two days ago, the Courier News reported on Sunday, May 3, that a Bernards Township girl became symptomatic. See C-N story at
http://www.mycentraljersey.com/section/NEWS0206

Boneheads, Pinheads & Incompetents

Yesterday dawned gorgeously sunny over New York City and the region, just like that fatal morning of 9/11, when two terrorist-controlled planes swooped low over the landscape and slammed into the World Trade Towers.

You’d think that no one would be stupid or insensitive enough to roughly replicate the flight pattern of the determined Jihadist extremists ever again. But we’d both be wrong to think that. Not only did it occur, but it happened when the President’s Air Force One (minus Barack Obama), flew low near the Statue of Liberty, followed by what people thought was a chase plane, a U.S. fighter jet.

It was just a photo-op, government operatives later told us. Too late. People in Manhattan, poured out of buildings nearly scared to death, thinking that it was happening all over again.

Upon learning of this idiotic event, the President, we are told, was “furious.” But not enough apparently, to fire the person responsible, Louis Caldera, head man of the White House Military Office who acknowledged responsibility for staging the flyover.

Another bureaucratic bonehead associated with this Beltway faux pas is Marc Mugnos, a city hall staffer who failed to alert New York’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg who was livid when he found out. Pinhead James J. Johnston of the FAA is the person who sent an email directing that the “flying photo-op . . . shall not be released to the public.”

Enough! It’s characteristic of the mindset of people who blindly do what they are told: “Just following orders.”


Sources: The Wall Street Journal and The Star-Ledger stories.