Grocery store patrons may soon see a big difference in these two Hudson County cities in the coming months.
An ordinance up for approval on June 17 by the Bayonne City Council would ban most single-use plastic bags and straws throughout the city. Meanwhile, Jersey City, which approved its own ban in June 2018, is set prohibit the use of single-use plastic throughout the city on June 28.
If Bayonne approves its ordinance, it would join Hoboken, and dozens of other municipalities in the state including Belmar, Point Pleasant and Teaneck by banning all retail locations from providing single-use plastic bags to customers.
The Bayonne council is expected to vote on the ordinance June 19.
“Our administration supports a cleaner community. This proposed ordinance is an important step towards achieving that goal,” Mayor Jimmy Davis said.
Like Jersey City, Bayonne’s ordinance includes some exceptions: plastic for loose produce; newspaper bags; dry-cleaning bags; bags to wrap frozen food, meat or fish; and bags intended for use as garbage, pet, or yard waste will be permitted.
All food service establishments, with the exceptions food trucks and mobile food courts, would be affected by the ban.
Bayonne’s ban would go into effect on Jan. 1, 2020.
Last year state legislators passed a bill that would force customers to pay 5 cents for each plastic bag, but it was vetoed by Gov. Phil Murphy, who said the bill did not go far enough.
The Bullitt Foundation is nearing the end of grant-giving that has infused the Northwest environmental movement with more than $200 million. The relatively small foundation has had an outsized impact as it pushed the region toward a greener future. Much of that is due to President and CEO Denis Hayes, left, known for organizing the first Earth Day. He walks with Deborah Sigler, who leads tours of the Bullitt Center in Seattle, aka the “Taj Mahal of energy efficiency.” (Photo: Ellen M. Banner / The Seattle Times)
Fred Snowflack is a columnist for InsiderNJ June 10, 2019, 12:19 pm
TRENTON – Just whose side are Democratic leaders in the Legislature on?
That was one of the provocative questions Monday morning when a number of liberal groups rallied outside the Statehouse in support of raising income taxes on millionaires.
The governor supports a millionaires’ tax and polls show a majority of voters do as well. Public support is no real surprise. It’s human nature to support taxing other people and most people, of course, do not earn a million dollars a year.
Gov. Phil Murphy speaks of “tax fairness” when he talks about increasing the rate on those earning a million dollars a year from the current 8.97 percent to 10.75 percent. There’s also the not so insignificant fact that a higher tax would raise close to $500 million.
That was on the mind of Jeff Tittel, who heads New Jersey’s Sierra Club. He said more revenue may stop cuts to the Department of Environmental Protection budget. He said that in New Jersey, a millionaires’ tax “is an environmental issue.”
Senate President Stephen Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin oppose the tax.
Here’s where the politics gets interesting. Back when Republican Chris Christie was governor, the Legislature with Sweeney still leading the Senate passed a millionaires’ tax only to see the governor veto it. So why would Sweeney and other Democrats not support it now?
Could it be that years back Sweeney and others were pandering to the more left wing faction of the party? He’d support the tax to please the left knowing that Christie would veto it.
Now that the governor represents the more liberal wing of the Democratic party, Sweeney can no longer have it both ways.
Sweeney at times has said the so-called Trump tax cuts are influencing his thinking. His point is that limiting the federal deduction for state and local taxes to $10,000 can greatly impact the wealthy who are prone to live in lavish homes and this being New Jersey, pay much more than $10,000 a year in property taxes alone. It’s a plausible argument, although worrying about multi-millionaires is not normally a Democratic concern.
And as was pointed out Monday, the federal tax changes, which reduced tax rates, can benefit the wealthy as well.
There was a bad omen for the gathering, light rain and chilly temperatures for June. But led by an energetic Sue Altman, the head of New Jersey Working Families, about a half dozen speakers talked about the need to increase taxes on millionaires and more importantly, perhaps, to hold Democratic legislators accountable. A letter in support of the tax was signed by more than 100 groups.
But the organizers promised their campaign would be far more active than writing a letter. They said they wanted an “up or down” vote in the Legislature on a bill to raise taxes on millionaires and that they would “escalate” their efforts in the coming weeks.
That sounds like fun, but when you put aside the rhetoric, you can see a compromise coming. Recall that Murphy wanted a millionaires’ tax last year as well and the compromise raised taxes only on those earning more than $5 million a year.
So, how about lowering that threshold to $3 million?
By Clara Lefton – Special Projects, Philadelphia Business Journal Updated Jun 7, 2019, 12:31 pm EDT
He was a political legend in South Jersey – and a major force behind the Atlantic City Expressway, the Garden State Parkway and Stockton University.
Sen. Frank S. “Hap” Farley was known as the boss of the Atlantic City Republican political machine that is chronicled in the book Boardwalk Empire. He inherited control of the machine from the notorious Enoch “Nucky” Johnson, whose exploits were highlighted in the HBO series of the same name.
Born in 1901, he served for 34 years in the New Jersey legislature. He died in 1977, but his name lives on through the Frank S. Farley Service Plaza – a popular stop on the Atlantic City Expressway.
Now, his longtime home at 6104 Ventnor Ave. in Ventnor is for sale for $685,000. Check out the photos in the gallery above. The house has four bedrooms, two-and-a-half baths and sits on a 6,900-square-foot lot that’s two blocks from the beach. Under the current owners, extensive renovations have been done to the home.
A mass shooting ruined the 2018 Art All Night festival, but the free community event is making a triumphant return this year thanks to grit and popular demand.
“We are excited that it is actually happening. No Doubt,” said AAN organizer Lauren Otis, executive director of Artworks. “We don’t want the bad guys to win.”
The 13th annual Art All Night kicks off Saturday, June 15 and concludes on Sunday, June 16. Held at the familiar Roebling Wire Works building in Trenton’s North Ward, the big change at this year’s event is the introduction of enhanced security to promote safety and order.
For starters, “The whole perimeter of the event will be fenced off, and we will have two main access points,” Otis said, adding attendees will be subjected to metal-detector wanding and bag searches.
The security will be “multi-layered and multifaceted” inside and outside of the perimeter, Otis said. “The city is going to close off streets outside the event, Dye Street and South Clinton Avenue for a couple of blocks being the main ones. There is security on the outside, security on the inside.”
Dave Bannister (l-r) and Karen Farfalla look over some art on display at Art All Night in 2017.gregg slaboda – Trentonian File Photo
“I don’t want to go into a lot of detail,” Otis added, “because, to be honest, we’ve developed a security plan with the city. We’re all really good with it. It is safe to say there is going to be a lot of law enforcement there. There’s going to be private security, and I think the plan will ensure that it will be secure and safe, but it will not impinge on people. I think they will see law-enforcement presence, multijurisdictional, and they’ll see people in uniform, they’ll see people patrolling, but for the most part the event will be what it will be.”
Indeed, this year’s AAN will feature the same flavor and entertainment that historically attracts more than 20,000 attendees, including the trusty film festival.
“From the inside looking out, the event will essentially look the same,” said Art All Night event director Joseph Kuzemka. “We’ll have a lot of interactive events. We’ve got a community mural that is going to be painted. We’ll have the Murals All Night project, which is where we usually gather four to six muralists that paint these six-foot-by-12-foot murals over the course of the 24 hours. We’re also going to be working with Freedom Skate Park. They are working on a skateboard-art component with Wills Kinsley, who is a local artist.”
Art All Night 2010. Submitted Photo – Michelle Lawlor/Lucky 17 Photography
Compared with prior years, less bands will perform at Art All Night this year “because we did remove a stage, and then we only had so many time slots,” Kuzemka said. “We decided to simplify things a little bit and just focus our attention on the two stages and just go that route for at least this year.”
Prior years featured three stages for live music performances. “I think it’s important for us to be able to check ourselves,” Kuzemka said, “understanding that we have so many new aspects to the event this year that we can only handle so much.”
The enhanced security measures will prevent people from waltzing into the venue willy-nilly. Attendees this year will have to line up and cooperate with the screening process.
“It is going to be a whole new world because people actually will be lining up outside the event,” Otis said. “We just ask people to be patient, to be calm and patient. It’s new to everybody. You can’t just walk in and go hear your music. We just ask people to plan a little more, to plan their visit a little more, because definitely there’s a whole lot more to getting in this year.”
His father worked for Enoch “Nucky” Johnson, a ruthless political boss who controlled Atlantic City during Prohibition, and as a child, he eavesdropped on the conversations of men who gathered around his family’s humble kitchen table in Hammonton.
Decades later, J. Garfield DeMarco rose to become the Republican party boss in nearby Burlington County.
His nickname — God. A notepad kept on his kitchen table had pages that said “Message from God.”
But it was not until he died last month at age 80 that DeMarco’s spectacular fall from grace and fortune spilled into public view
DeMarco, who built a multimillion-dollar fortune while managing the nation’s third-largest cranberry operation and sitting on the Ocean Spray board of directors, died penniless. Nearly three years ago, he was evicted from his home and his car was repossessed when he defaulted on loans, legal bills, and taxes and declared bankruptcy.
SHARON GEKOSKI-KIMMEL / FILE PHOTOGRAPHThe DeMarco cranberry bogs in the Pinelands. The family’s 9,000 acres were sold to the New Jersey Conservation Foundation. The sale had implications for the Pinelands by connecting existing state parks and preserving ecologically-sensitive land.
Adept at keeping secrets throughout his life, DeMarco hid his deteriorating finances, kept up the guise of a lavish lifestyle and nurtured an image that exuded business savvy and steely control.
“Garfield squandered millions and many of us got to enjoy that extravagance,” said nephew Anthony DeMarco in a eulogy before a crowd of fewer than 50 people who attended DeMarco’s Funeral Mass at St. Mary-Mt. Carmel Parish in Hammonton last month. “It was fun to eat seven courses and drink thousand-dollar bottles of wine. We would sit in the front row of a Broadway show. He had a $25,000 fountain pen. He tipped 100 percent.”
In disbelief, some in the pews shook their heads.
Garfield DeMarco had been forgotten over the years by people in power and the legions of loyal followers who revered him when he was the powerful GOP chairman from 1974 to 1990.
FILE PHOTOGRAPHJ. Garfield DeMarco, a former GOP boss and cranberry magnate, outside the Maplewood Inn in Hammonton in 2002. At the time, DeMarco was contemplating selling his cranberry business.
His nephew went on to praise “Uncle Gar” for his generosity, intellect, political skills, and devilish sense of fun. Anthony DeMarco said his grandfather had been an influential politician — switching from Democrat to Republican to Democrat — and a successful cranberry farmer whose death at age 61 in a car crash led Garfield DeMarco to take over the family business when he was 26. As CEO, DeMarco, a freshly minted Yale-educated lawyer, doubled their land holdings in South Jersey.
But the good times were followed by family squabbles. In 1994, DeMarco’s brother, Mark, a prominent attorney, sued him, alleging mismanagement of the company and excessive spending
