Page 22 THE VILLADOM TIMES IV • June 13, 2012 obviously plastic, but in the middle of our one outdoor barbecues that featured charming domestic wines, I noticed that the owl’s baleful yellow eyes, which had been facing off toward the street when I first sat down, were suddenly staring at me. My son-in-law and daughter told me it was a solar-powered owl, put there to discourage squirrels and crows. I felt much better knowing that. Wanting to show Kate, my granddaughter, some animals that were not sinister automatons, we took a couple of side trips. The Palo Alto Children’s Zoo is a charming little place with a recreation room full of scientific toys and an animal collection including ferrets, raccoons, and a bobcat who clearly knew he was the biggest beast of this turf. A half-hour drive took us to Hidden Villa in Los Altos Hills, which my wife dubbed “the little hippie farm” and found utterly lovable. Hidden Villa was established by Frank and Josephine Duveneck in 1924, and is a location right out of John Steinbeck”s “Of Mice and Men” or “East of Eden” with James Dean and Raymond Massey (one of my wife’s favorite movies). The horse in the 1860 barn was plastic, but there were real sheep, goats, a cow, and the only birds other than crows and distant hawks that we saw on the whole trip. The place is a working farm, but for $5, a carload spectators can walk around, take photographs of the animals, and walk on trails ranging from an easy 1.5 miles to the “difficult” 10.5-mile Black Mountain trek. Warning signs tell visitors to beware of mountain lions and rattlesnakes, but all we saw besides the farm animals were chickadees and hummingbirds – always my wife’s favorites. We all liked “the little hippie farm” a lot and hope to go again, but I am bound to relate that there are more varied and numerous domestic animals at Abma’s Farm in Wyckoff, where admission is free, though nice people tend to buy something from the farm store to cover the costs. This point goes to northwest Bergen County. We also paid a visit to the Stanford campus. The Stanford Museum, which is free, is a must. One whole floor covers the history of Western art from Greco-Roman times to the 19th century. The Stanford displays are not on the same level as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but there is nothing remotely like them on this side of the Hudson River north of Princeton, which also has a superb collection. Stanford has the best collection of Rodin this side of Paris, great Western landscapes, a nice Pacific Coast Indian collection, and African tribal art and modern art not seen elsewhere. The Hoover Institute has one of the nation’s great archives and a friendly staff. All you need to get in and have expert staff members bring you rare materials out of the archives is a photo ID such as a driver’s license or a passport. The display of World War II propaganda art had some posters I had not seen before. My daughter also took us around the neighborhood and told us what property values were like. One house that would not even qualify as a McMansion in Glen Rock was for sale for $15 million. A house like the one she and her husband rent was $5 million. The place next door to hers looked like it would fall over if I leaned on it, but it’s valued at over $1 million. That place needed a total remake, with or without a bulldozer. Houses that would bring $800,000 in Ridgewood were many millions in Palo Alto, and they are not places with park-like yards and swimming pools. The civility and the friendliness we encountered while strolling with the stroller were pegged, I think, on the mellow climate, but also on the fact that these people have to be so well off that the strife that makes other people edgy is not a factor in their lives. Who has anything to prove when their residence costs more than the White House or the Taj Mahal? One of the hardest things to get used to about California is that the grass turns golden yellow in the spring and stays that way until the winter rains, when it apparently sops up enough water to stay dormant for another nine months. Native oak and intrusive eucalyptus trees dot the landscape of dry grasslands – like most of Africa. After we unfolded from the plane ride home and had a good night’s sleep, my wife and I got right back to work. I had a budget introduction to cover, and she had another assignment in Paramus. While driving through part of Glen Rock and part of Ridgewood, I think we both noticed for the first time how lucky we were to be in a town where the trees, the grass, and the shrubs were monochromatic, but affordable. “Good to see everything green,” my wife said. “Yeah,” I said cleverly. She was talking about the foliage. I was talking about daily expenses as compared to the lining of my wallet. Northwest Bergen County and northern California are said by many people to be the two most desirable places to live in the United States, if not the world. Which spot is more desirable, and in what ways are they different? Now that I have unfolded myself from the airplane seats and gotten myself back on a schedule where my body anticipates the sunrise, I can reflect on the recent shift in locations, landscape, lifestyle, and opportunities. My wife and I were quite glad to be back in northern New Jersey, but my daughter and her husband have no desire to move here on a permanent basis. Here, then, are reflections of what we like about each venue. Here’s one point for California: No one there seems to smoke cigarettes. Based on a recent survey, California has the lowest incidence of cigarette smoking of any state in the nation except for Utah, where the Mormons have religious objections. If your religion forbids or discourages suicide, you should also have religious objections. Lung cancer would be my last choice of a way to go, yet people still smoke. The number of adults who smoke in California is about 10 percent, but I didn’t see one person smoking or spot one cigarette butt on the ground the whole five days we were there. I do not believe I saw a single butt container, either. Among educated people who can afford top-end places like Palo Alto, cigarette smoking appears to have been eradicated. In New Jersey, about 17 percent of adults are smokers. That is still much too high. Discarding cigarette butts on the street is an act that should be fined on a level with parking offenses. We can all use the money. Politicians should have banned cigarette production 40 years ago, but we all know that the national politicians in both parties are in politics for the money. None of them cares about the American people as much as they care about the campaign funds from the cigarette lobby -- except just before Election Day. Here’s a second point for California: No one in Palo Alto fusses over lawns. Walking around my daughter’s neighborhood, I saw every kind of front yard in the world – except the kind with manicured grass. Two doors up the street, there was a yard where a sign proclaimed that the owners had received an environmental credit because they put in plants that do well in a dry environment. Some of the flowering plants were attractive. Other yards featured palm trees, a good-sized redwood tree, and any number of landscaping combinations. The strips between the sidewalk and the curb were also landscaped with, among other things, flowering jasmine. There was barely a space not covered with concrete where the shrubs and flowering plants were less than two feet tall – including the curb strips – and multiple trees in every yard. The back yard at my daughter’s house has some lawn because my son-in-law and daughter want a place for my granddaughter to play, but the yard also has an enormous palm tree that looks something like an elongated pineapple. At the base of the palm tree sat an owl. The owl was New Jersey v. California Letters to the Editor Dear Editor: There are 15 condominium associations in Mahwah. Likely, there are hundreds throughout the State of New Jersey. Unbelievably, associations and management companies do not need to be licensed or registered with the state and the state has little or no authority over them. It’s akin to putting the fox in charge of the henhouse. There has been proposed legislation, but to date nothing has passed. The Association Regulation Unit in the Department of Community Affairs only has authority to intervene in three specific areas involving the operation of owner-controlled associations: the responsibility to ensure that associations enact and properly administer alternate dispute resolution procedures (ADR); comply with open meeting requirements; and provide owners reasonable access to accounting records. I wrote to my board in care of our management company about a board member (the president) who was no longer a unit owner here, a bylaw requirement for serving on the board, and asked that his resignation be immediately tendered. When they were unresponsive, I sent a letter in care of the association attorney advising that the board was in violation of its own bylaws. Moreover, the board is improperly constituted and has been for more than seven months by allowing this individual to remain on the board. Any actions or votes taken by the board during the time it was improperly constituted should be deemed null and void. Their “response” (sending me a bill) is testament to their attitude of “us v. them” (board v. owners). The association attorney’s interest should be that of the entire association, not for the board members. I gave them important information for the benefit of the entire association, and the attorney should not have billed me, but instead called upon the board to right their wrong. The management company billed me $290 for “May legal fees.” At no time did I contract with the attorney or his representatives to take any action. The board’s nonresponsiveness does not justify the association attorney billing a unit owner. Concerned by association’s actions When a condominium development transitions, someone from the state should go out and give the owners an informative talk. Any association attorney who sides with the board against the interest of the entire association should be fired. If the first board starts out right, it will do right. The first board absorbs the dictatorship of the developer. It is undeniable that we need governance of condominium boards and the management companies that market their services to these boards. To add insult to injury, management made a decision to withhold pool badges until evidence of an insurance document was provided to the association. They cited page 55 of the Public Offering Statement: “It is the exclusive responsibility of each unit owner to obtain, pay for and keep in force separate insurance covering his unit and the contents thereof. “It is tied to the pool badges as a way to ensure the timeliest rate of compliance for the protection of all homeowners.” The Public Offering Statement is binding on the developer (Ridge Gardens is not developer controlled and hasn’t been for more than 20 years) and only the governing documents (i.e. master deed, bylaws) and any rules that were in effect at that time, survive. The bylaws state: “Unit owners shall not be prohibited from carrying other insurance for their own benefit...” This language would indicate that it is not a requirement, but an option. Additionally, the State of New Jersey does not require one to carry homeowner’s insurance. Karen Levi Mahwah Dear Editor: The Second Annual Ramsey High School Auto Show at Ramsey High School was a resounding success. It would not have been possible without the generous contributions of the following families and businesses: Eodice Family, Fred Opert Corinthian Motors, ShopRite of Ramsey, (continued on page 24) Community fuels Auto Show success