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Page 18 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • December 3, 2014 Why local shopping is important Here is a conundrum. Shopping at stores in your own hometown or elsewhere in northwest Bergen County could actually save you money. Local shopping could also save whatever is left of northwest Bergen County. First, there is the attempt to avoid clinical depression by shopping locally. A few weeks ago, amid the rumors that many large chain stores were about to put the lock on the door permanently, my wife took me on a shopping jaunt because she had some gift cards for merchandize. We set up a rally point and I wandered off in search of the past -- back when shopping malls were bustling with people eager to spend money. The ziggurat of one mall that looked like an outpost of Babylon had long since been taken down, so I used the escalator. The tubular elevator, it appears, has also been removed. To my delight, I saw that the copper-clad statue of the Indian boy riding the huge turkey was still extant. Paramus was an old Delaware (Lenape) Indian word for “turkey” before it became an archaic American word for “shopping center.” My depres- sion lifted and my vitality returned so I wandered into the chain bookstore and asked if the store had a copy of “Operation Snow” in stock. The nice woman at the com- puter said that no copy was in stock, but said it will be coming out in paperback in May. I rode the elevator with a sense of elevation. When I told my wife, she was also delighted. This was the only shopping trip I have ever enjoyed since I topped six-foot- five. Clothes my size and the research books and archival material I rely on generally come in a box. I am now negotiating to see if a couple of the photo- graphs left out of the first edition of my book can be added to the new one. But what had elevated my mood was noth- ing I saw at the mall, which looked bleak and gray and barely patronized. What elevated my mood was a decision by people I know personally and who had my best inter- ests at heart, twined with their own. Publishers want to sell books. When they want to sell MY books, we both prosper. Similarly, when people shop in local stores, both sides prosper. The shopper is spared a trip to Someplace Else where the gasoline, the wear and tear on the car, and the menaces of auto theft or purse-snatching generally out- weigh the amount of money to be “saved.” There are very few places in northwest Bergen County where even we old guys are in serious danger of being mugged. My son told me a few months ago that whenever you shop in towns just a few doors away, you should dress like a plumber on duty and never, ever talk on a cell phone when walking, let alone driving which, of course, is ille- gal. If guys my size need to hear this, there must be a lot of desperation out there. My wife was told by a friend that she could get some great bargains at a store one town outside the border. I dropped her off, felt something was not right, and drove back. Sure enough, while she was there, I could see her being targeted -- not once, but twice. I walked over and stood next to her. No takers. We have not gone back. Even if you enjoy getting bounced off the floor, replacing your eyeglasses if they break without taking out one of your eyes covers the savings of a dozen bargain shopping trips. I did the macho thing right out of college when I signed up for Army Airborne and hung out with drug dealers and motorcycle gangs to get stories the Ivy League guys could not. That was then and this is now. I have actually used a broken bottle in a fight. Most people around here have not. I do not recommend it. The bottles sometimes break in the wrong place. Saving your neck is good. Saving the town you live in is also good. Here are three news stories that, as far as I could see, received a large amount of coverage from this newspaper and very little from most others. First story: I think we broke all records for covering the ShopRite application before the Wyckoff Planning Board that lasted for 38 meetings over two years, and the appeals that followed and are still going on. I was not at every meeting. I was not at MOST of the meetings. But when the residents were allowed to speak, I showed up and the planning board members and I saw that 80 percent of the townspeople were in favor of the ShopRite applica- tion to fill a weedy parking lot that had been vacant for a dozen years, 10 percent of the residents wanted a smaller store, and only 10 percent were opposed to any store at all. The fact that the meetings got lot of coverage from our paper and very little from the others was also sheer coincidence. Second story: The same day that a reporter, Mike Sedon, received an adequate number of signatures to run for the Ridgewood Village Council, somebody sent an e-mail to Staten Island and warned his publisher about a “conflict of interest” if Sedon served on the council on a town in New Jersey and worked covering government at a town in Staten Island, which is part of New York City. Mike Sedon’s employers investigated and told him that, while there was no legal conflict of interest, there could be a perceived conflict of interest. Sedon stood on principle and resigned from his job. This was covered -- a little -- by one or two other papers, but I think not as much as we covered it. Third story: Artificial turf in Glen Rock. When the borough council members announced that they would bond $3 million in taxpayer money to install artificial turf at Faber Field, we covered both sides. The need for something reconstructive on Faber Field was very obvi- ous, but the objections to artificial turf for fiscal and envi- ronmental reasons were substantial -- and, as it turned out, seismic. After the opponents petitioned successfully for a referendum and got almost twice as many signatures as they needed -- and after the voters opposed artificial turf by a margin close to 3 to 1 -- the point became temporar- ily moot. The whole point of this paper is -- we live here too. We need the local businesses to stay in business so they can advertise with us -- and so that people who are at risk can shop with safety and convenience. Read any paper you want -- read all of them if you want -- but keep your shop- ping money home to support local papers that know the towns and share the concerns of the other people who live here. Letters to the Editor Scanlan deserves to be mayor Dear Editor: In the election on Nov. 4, Brian Scanlan ran a great campaign and knocked on the doors of 2,157 Wyckoff families, asking for their input and their votes. In the elec- tion, he won more votes than his opponents, Mayor Doug Christie and Christie’s running mate, Susan Yudin. Scan- lan also outpolled these opponents in every single district in Wyckoff, and voters sent a strong message about their confidence in Scanlan. Wyckoff residents voted for Scanlan because they see that he is doing an outstanding job as a member of the township committee and they want him to continue serv- ing our community in increasingly responsible positions. Voters value his perspective on the issues and his fiscally conservative common sense solutions to the problems we face. The township committee long followed a precedent where new members were elected deputy mayor and then mayor the following year. On rare occasions, there was a delay if for personal reasons the committee member needed to postpone his or her elevation, but this was always short term. The township committee ignored this long-stand- ing precedent and skipped over Scanlan when he was first elected to the township committee six years ago, and in every election since, repeatedly electing township com- mitteemen with less seniority into the deputy mayor and mayoral posts. It is long past due that the township committee needs to abandon its stance on the mayoral issue as concerns Scan- lan. The people of Wyckoff have spoken with their votes. The township committee needs to listen to the people of Wyckoff and ensure that Brian Scanlan has an opportunity to be mayor in 2015 or 2016. It is long overdue. Paul Apostol Wyckoff Scanlan has voters’ support Dear Editor: Final election results for the Wyckoff Township Com- mittee were as follows: Wyckoff Committeeman Brian Scanlan, 3,189 votes; current Wyckoff Mayor Douglas Christie, 2,788 votes; and Susan Yudin, board of adjust- ment member, 2,371 votes. It is a Wyckoff tradition that the deputy mayor subse- quently becomes mayor. Brian Scanlan has earned the right to be our next deputy mayor, or even our next mayor. Tom & Mary Bugel Wyckoff