Route 40 (https://rtforty.com/2018/03/)
Who among us hasn’t peed on himself while driving drunk, then been permitted to retire from his job as fire chief, then been allowed to collect “$671.86 per day for 241.5 unused sick days” he’d accumulated over the years? Also, did Rahway have a fire chief and a fire director, and were they both William Young?
Atlantic City Council on Wednesday night voted in favor of allowing open containers in certain parts of the city’s Tourism District. The city by itself has no power to permit local bars and restaurants sell take-out drinks. But the council’s move was an important step to show the state that the city wants the law changed, officials in favor of the legislation said.
Here is a small plot of land in Atlantic City’s Tourism District that happens to serve as a collection point for a lot of disused liquor bottles. Before we get ahead of ourselves, I have nothing against park-drinking.
Your friendly neighborhood development authority raised just over half a million dollars yesterday selling off some Atlantic City property that, actually, it decided isn’t useful for development after all (after some years of tax-free ownership that prevented anyone else doing anything with it). The Press of Atlantic City’s new reporter David Danzis has the details.
The biggest syringe-exchange program in New Jersey is facing pressure from Atlantic City Council, where some members are looking to revoke the local rules permitting its operation.
Last fall we did a story on the problem of discarded hypodermic needles across the Tourism District, and now one City Councilman says he has considered a proposal to pull the rules allowing the needle exchange on Tennessee Avenue.
For the record, it’s the editorial position of Route 40 that well-run needle exchanges are humane, save lives and save money. But we also think if the state uses “unsafe” and “unclean” conditions as an occasion to take over local government functions, it should
acknowledge the needle exchange is in the Tourism District that it administers.
Come and get your five free trees! There’s no catch. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection’s Forest Service has teamed up with Arbor Day Foundation to offer five trees to each New Jersey resident this spring. Each year they give out more than 100,000 seedlings. Each New Jersey resident can receive five one- to two-foot tall bare root tree seedlings in a bundle, according to the Forest Service’s Facebook page.
A big day in Trenton yesterday as various committees and legislative bodies etc. advanced bills on paid sick leave, pay equity, gun control and medical marijuana.
There’ll be a service interruption on the AC-to-Philly train line from April 9 to June 22 so you’ll have to take the bus to Lindenwold while they do track work. Lynda Cohen has further details, professionally reported, here.
A couple of Narcan stories in the news, since that’s so depressingly timely. Matt Skoufalos at NJ Pen has a piece on Camden County health systems teaming up to buy the opioid antidote in bulk, which could reduce costs on the list price by 50%. Meanwhile Assemblyman Herb Conaway said prison inmates who are addicted to opioids should be given Narcan when they get out of jail, since they’re often very susceptible then to OD-ing. Phil Murphy proposed raising the state sales tax, and Fitch Ratings called that idea a “positive step.” Never forget bond traders run the world.