ALIENATING LAKEWOOD EVEN MORE

This past Thursday the Lakewood Township Committee approved ten digital signs to be placed on main roads in our town. We will discuss at length the Backdoor dealings, exclusion of competition, and other serious matters in upcoming articles. For now I would like to focus on the intrinsic issue of the impropriety of the signs themselves.

Throughout our part of the state sign approvals are generally rationed. Everybody agrees that there should be a limit to how many billboards should be in a town.
Too many signs can make a nice tranquil town look like a circus of information, each sign begging for your attention, distracting, unnerving, and desperate. Digital signs are especially frowned upon since they bring the distraction to a whole new level, a constant changing stream of information blaring at a captive audience of drivers.

Which brings us to Lakewood. We are a town that always has dinners, campaigns for charities, events, carnivals, and sales that need to be promoted. Most of these events are foreign in nature to people outside of the Jewish Community. We have sufficient publications and mailings to inform most people in our town about any event. For goodness sake who doesn't know where Fiveish is? Who misses the BMG tent event because they didn't know about it?
Now imagine you are not from Lakewood, and you are not familiar with our community. Whenever you pass through Lakewood you will now see a 40 foot high bright sign that announces something about a Biker tcholim dinner. Or a once a year shaitel sale or kaporos, sukkah event, etc. etc. Will you ever consider stopping to shop at one of the many excellent stores we have in Lakewood? Or will you just go on thinking that Lakewood is a town that you should pass through as fast as possible?

We need to help businesses thrive in our town in order to survive. We need to attract businesses that will attract money from outside our community. We need to promote Lakewood as a town that is dignified and welcoming.

These ten signs will do the exact opposite. With their garish look that is not permitted anywhere else in the area, and the inevitable foreign announcements, it will be one more nail in the coffin to assure that Lakewood will never become a city we can be proud of.

Coming up Part 2 the dangers of driver distraction.

Digital billboards are approved for 10 locations on the township’s busiest roads, despite some residents begging the Township Committee to ban them because, they say, the signs distract drivers and cheapen the community’s image.

“Drivers will be looking at the signs and there will be accidents,” said an animated Harold Herskowitz, 47, who turned an imaginary steering wheel while looking up in the air to demonstrate the distraction. “Do we really need the money that bad?”

In addition to posing a distraction, the presence of digital billboards will cheapen the township’s image to the level of the “Vegas strip,” residents warned.

While the town allows billboards, digital billboards have not been a permitted use. The digital billboards will be privately owned, built, maintained and operated by one for-profit company that will meet the standards laid out by the new ordinance.

There will be no cost to the town. The digital billboards also will generate revenue of $500-a-year fee for locations along routes 9 and 88, 70, 623, 549; Cedar Bridge Avenue and West County Line and Lanes Mill roads.

The ordinance was adopted unanimously — after amending the permitted height from 65 to 40 feet— at Thursday’s Township Committee meeting.

Still, residents voiced concerns over the signs.

Noreen Gill, 70, said the signs are “degrading” in a town that has had much negative publicity, including a recent scandal over human-trafficking ring and brothels arrests.

Larry Simons, 77, balked at the initial proposal to allow the signs to be 65 feet in height.

“That is the equivalent of a six-story building,” Simons said in his opposition to the signs.

The billboards come with a host of stipulations, including no political advertising; allowing 10 percent of the screen be dedicated to township use as well as an 18-inch strip for public services messages; location restrictions and message details including no video or animation. The face of the total screen will be 14-by-48 feet.

“I have seen these all over the tri-state area,” Committeeman Raymond Coles said Friday. They are the same as any other billboard except the message changes.”

These are not the flashing red, neon billboards described by the residents who spoke against the ordinance, Coles said.

Source: APP

Why do I ask? I'm a 49 year old married father of five. I have a good job with what most consider excellent benefits. Just over $100 out of my weekly paycheck goes towards my health insurance and a little over $28 goes towards my dental insurance. Up until recently I never really thought about just how different these two insurances work.

With my medical insurance, as a family we have a small deductible of $250 dollars after which I am responsible for a copay with every doctors visit or procedure. There is a maximum to the coverage but its a very high number, in fact I had gallbladder surgery two years ago where insurance laid out over $20k and I spent about $100 out of pocket.

Dental insurance? Not so simple. In fact, unless you're a dentist it's very difficult to figure out what you pay for every visit. There's this whole schedule of fees which tells you what they pay for any given procedure and what you are responsible for. The problem is they don't always use the same language as the dentist and the dentist doesn't always agree with their fee! So I usually ask the dentist to check with my insurance and give me a price. Once I get the price from the dentist, I decide whether I can afford to do this now or of I should wait. BIG MISTAKE.

Detroit is bankrupt. Government employees may lose millions in pensions. Utilities and services may be suspended in parts of the city. A call to police can take over an hour for a response.
Overlooking all of These problems, the Motor City is moving ahead with building a $450 million hockey stadium for the Detroit Red Hooks.

Michigan Republican Gov. Rick Snyder touted the plan as an investment in Detroit's future, saying the arena "should increase the tax base of the city longer term, and should increase the employment opportunities for Detroiters." But if that's what Detroit and Michigan lawmakers are banking on, they are setting themselves up to be sorely disappointed.

"Sports stadiums typically aren't a good tool for economic development," Victor Matheson, an economist at Holy Cross and an expert in sports economics, told Travis Waldron and me last year. As Matheson wrote in a study with economist Robert Baade, "Researchers who have gone back and looked at economic data for localities that have hosted mega-events, attracted new franchises, or built new sports facilities have almost invariably found little or no economic benefits from spectator sports." This is particularly true of a hockey arena that is only in use 41 dates a year (unless the arena's calendar is filled up with concerts or other events, and assuming there is not another lockout).


Adding insult to injury, the bankrupt city is going to be spending money to build a new arena for a bonafide billionaire. Mike Ilitch – who founded the Little Caesar's pizza chain and owns both the Red Wings and the Detroit Tigers – and his family have a net worth of $2.7 billion, according to Forbes. The Red Wings are the sixth most valuable NHL franchise. Yet public money is being ponied up to give them a new home.

This certainly isn't a problem that is unique to Detroit. The city of Glendale, Ariz., recently decided to give a huge package of subsidies to the NHL's Phoenix Coyotes, despite the fact that no one goes to see the team and the city is slashing public services. Washington, D.C., is about to spend public money building a new stadium for Major League Soccer's D.C. United. American taxpayers are actually paying some $4 billion to municipal bondholders for costs associated with stadiums, while Harvard professor Judith Grant Long has found another $10 billion in hidden costs to taxpayers for professional sports facilities. There are very few instances in which any of those "investments" are going to pay off in any meaningful way.

But Detroit's decision is even more ridiculous given its bankruptcy. On one hand are pensioners making $19,000 per year for their work for the city; on the other is a billionaire who owns an immensely successful restaurant franchise and two professional sports team. Thus far, the city has only ensured that it will be taking care of the latter.

A study in Traffic Injury Prevention says that digital billboards hold the gaze of drivers longer than two seconds. Many studies have shown that anything that takes a driver's eyes off the road for longer than two seconds increases the risks of a crash.

"This study validates what is common sense when it comes to digital billboards," said Mary Tracy, president of Scenic America, a national nonprofit group that seeks to limit billboards. "Bright, constantly changing signs on the side of the road are meant to attract and keep the attention of drivers, and this study confirms that is exactly what they do."

The report was presented to a national transportation conference in Washington, D.C. Last month a three-judge panel ordered the removal of 100 digital billboards in Los Angeles, and Denver has banned them. Currently 39 states allow digital billboards.

"We would need to review more research, so it's premature to call for a ban," said Jonathan Adkins, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association. "There is a role for digital messaging such as that employed by states to convey Amber Alerts and other safety messages."

There are more than 1,800 digital billboards nationwide, more than double the number in 2007. While there is no solid data that indicates an increase in accidents caused by the Bay Area signs, many drivers are opposed to them.

"The brightness is by far too bright for at night," says insurance agent David Whitlock. "When the advertisement switches from a brighter color to a darker color, your eyes cannot adjust fast enough and you end up losing vision of the roadway."

A Concerned Yid

A Concerned Yid, its what sets us apart.
While there may be some areas in which we are lax,
A concerned yid always has his fellow yid׳s back.

A prostitution ring was arrested today in Lakewood, once again bringing a bad image to our town. The good news? There will be many more cleaning ladies Availble.

From NJ.com

The women left Mexico and put their lives in the hands of shifty border smugglers just so they could be baby sitters or house cleaners, anything that would pay enough for a nice apartment, a good meal and perhaps some money to send home.

It was a simple dream.

But it soon became a living American nightmare.

State authorities today announced the arrests of six people charged with running several brothels in Lakewood that were part of a human trafficking and sex slave network spanning New Jersey, New York and surrounding states.

Lured into the U.S. by smugglers working for the brothels, authorities said, the women were forced to become prostitutes, swapped between pimps like trading cards and sold to as many as 100 men per week for as a little as $30 each.

“It is hard to comprehend the state of subjugation and degradation in which these victims submitted to such ridiculous and heinous demands,” acting state Attorney General John Hoffman said at a news conference in Trenton.

Hoffman said the Lakewood brothels were run by Jose Cruz Romero-Flores, 38, also known as “Chato,” who made thousands of dollars off the operation and wired much of the profits back to Mexico, where he owned a number of properties.

The women were paid a pittance, he said, and trapped by the fear that they would be arrested for being in the country illegally. Women were also pressured to keep quiet through intimidation or threats of violence, Hoffman said.

“For too long, human trafficking victims have suffered out of sight on the fringes of society,” he said. “It is the antithesis of what we as a society stand for: hope, optimism, self determination and freedom.”

Authorities arrested Romero-Flores on July 11 at his apartment in Lakewood. Four of his associates were arrested the same day, and his girlfriend, Odulia Bedran Trejo, 22, was arrested three days later, authorities said.

Romero-Flores allegedly operated at least three brothels in the town, including one that was active at the time of the arrests, authorities said.

Hoffman said several victims of the sex-slave network were rescued at the time of the arrests and would be provided help through the state, but he declined to say precisely how many were involved or what would happen to them, citing an active and continuing investigation.

The Lakewood brothels were part of a series of loosely linked operations along the East Coast, authorities said, which constituted the “circuit,” where women would be moved from time to time to provide fresh faces for clients.

Sex was offered at the brothels, authorities said, or women could be ordered to go and delivered to a client’s location.

Authorities said they believe several dozen women worked in the Lakewood brothels and estimated hundreds could be part of the entire network. The women would see as many as 100 clients per week, authorities said, and 40 in a single day.

In addition to the sex work, the women were often forced to pay as much as $5,000 to the very smugglers who tricked them.

The state’s investigation, dubbed “Operation No Boundaries,” began in March 2012 and was merged with a similar federal investigation undertaken by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security after the two cases crossed paths.

It began under former state Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa, who created a new Human Trafficking Unit within the state Division of Criminal Justice and ordered law enforcement across the state to bolster trafficking investigations. The charges in this case were the first to be filed by the new unit, Hoffman said.

Romero-Flores was charged with first-degree human trafficking, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. But Hoffman said he was not sure if any of the defendants would serve in prison before being deported if they are convicted.

Romero-Flores also faces charges of second-degree promoting organized street crime and third-degree promoting prostitution. He was being held in Ocean County jail on $1 million bail, and the other five were being held on $100,000 bail.

All six defendants are illegal immigrants and were also being held on federal detainers by immigration authorities. Attorneys for the defendants could not be reached.