Ridgefield Park News

RIDGEFIELD PARK a ' The charge detonated, and watermelon pulp and seeds flew skyward and then splattered 50 feet from a blast site at a construction zone in Overpeck County Park.

For many New Jersey residents, the Fourth of July will come and go without a bang.

What does it mean to be born on the Fourth of July? Readers answered that question with an outpouring of patriotism.

In a number of districts with sizable middle-class populations, 14 percent or more of the students are taking the SRA route to graduation.

Dictionary.com describes a volunteer as "a person who voluntarily offers himself or herself for a service or undertaking; a person who performs a service willingly and without pay." As the state budget eases closer to becoming reality, local emergency medical technicians may feel one of the harshest cuts from the financial scalpel.

Student at the blackboard at the Watchung School in Montclair. There's a certain mood in the country right now, and it's all about saving, not spending.

It may be as American as apple pie, but many communities this July 4th are seeing their traditional fireworks turn into a bitter fruit.

If undocumented immigrants are valuable enough to be counted in the Census, then they ought to be legalized.

City schools Superintendent Bessie LeFra Young got a pay raise, and jumped three places to become the eighth-highest-paid superintendent in New Jersey.

At a council meeting in Bogota, Steve Lonegan stood up to ask the mayor a question: What can the borough do about the noisy, low-flying planes over town? "They were so close, you could see the pilots in the windows," Lonegan said recently.

WHAT'S NEW: The state Department of Transportation will resurface and waterproof the Route 46 bridge over the Hackensack River in Ridgefield Park and Little Ferry in Bergen County.

They were mistakenly omitted from the Classified section. * In a list of finalists for the Russ Berrie Awards for Making a Difference that ran Thursday on Page L-3, one of the qualifications for Mary Hirschman of Ridgefield Park was mischaracterized.

The signs in the window tell the story: freshly squeezed juices. Cream sodas and smoothies.

A Middlesex County man was arrested Tuesday, accused of using the Internet to arrange a sexual encounter with a 10-year-old girl, authorities said.

Private contractors will soon oversee the cleanup of the vast majority of New Jersey's contaminated sites, a sea change in the way the state has dealt with its long history of industrial and residential pollution.

After five months in prison for dealing drugs, Nashon James was going straight. He cut hair at his mother's barbershop, tried making money on eBay and even joined a bowling league.

Readers love to write me about their least-favorite potholes, but few send photos, and none but Jeffrey Krieger is clever enough to include a ruler in the picture.

RIDGEFIELD PARK a ' Village officials are seeking to reinstate suspended Court Administrator Susan Vargas now that she has been cleared of any wrongdoing in a 2006 incident with police.

"Despite weakening fundamentals, we still remain confident that stability will return to New Jersey's industrial market due to the strong buying power of private and public companies, particularly smaller foreign companies and entrepreneurial tenants that will be in a position to take advantage of the current market softness by locking in longer ...

A county park in Ridgefield Park: It's about time. IN 1949, the Bergen County Park Commission unveiled plans for the development of a grand park in the valley of the Overpeck Creek, then a free flowing stream emptying into the Hackensack River at the southern tip of the village of Ridgefield Park.