Today’s story on new TZ proposals popping up gave me a case of deja vu. What jolted my memory? A new option that includes “keeping the existing bridge and pairing it with a sister span.”

Flashback May 1987. I was a copy editor for Gannett Suburban Newspapers, in the Harrison office. We were talking about a Rockland staff writer’s article. The state Department of Transportation had announced plans to study constructing a “companion bridge” for the TZ, to be completed by 2010. Why do I remember this? Well, we were all trying to think of funny headlines (that’s what copy editors do. They work nights. Constantly on deadline. Limited opportunity for joviality. Funny headlines, that’s all we got.) So, what did we come up with? “Build the Bridge a Buddy”—Of course, it didn’t run. The best headlines are the ones you can’t publish, but I digress. (And, no, it’s not funny. Read this at 2 a.m., after several cups of coffee. Trust me, you’ll giggle.)

Another chance to digress! I didn’t want to rely on my memory, so this morning I headed to our archives (the electronic library misses this by a couple years.) The drawer that contains the “Tappan Zee Bridge” files is on the bottom. The little finger-hook-shape button you slide over to open the drawer is broken (no kidding.) So, I enlist a mechanically-inclined person (James Walsh was strolling by, so he instantly qualified.) He takes out the drawer above (they are long metal drawers) so we can dig into the other one without opening it. I find the envelope, marked, “Tappan Zee Bridge II 1987” and dig out the clips. Let’s just say the headline we wrote that night wasn’t very funny, either: “Report calls for 2nd Tappan Zee Bridge.” (By the way, the leaders of river villages (on both sides) didn’t find it funny. The headline on the sidebar about reaction to the plan was, “From Hudson’s shores, alarm.” Again, not funny.)

Well, here we are, 10-plus years later, with the DOT now in charge of a TZ Bridge/I-287 Corridor overhaul, and what pops up in the plans? Yeah, let’s build the bridge a buddy.

State Sen. Thomas Morahan’s had a busy few days, according to his press releases, much of his recent work an extension of his role as chairman of the Senate Committee on Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities. Just this week, he’s passed legislation in the Senate (now headed to the Assembly), he’s reintroduced other legislation and he’s been named to a key budget position, all tied to his work to better the lives of those with mental illness or impairment.
Recent developments:

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Eli Manning has grown up before our eyes over the past month, finally fitting more comfortably into his role running the New York Giants offense.
But if you watch Eli and Patriots quarterback Tom Brady in press conferences, Eli’s got a lot of growing up to do.
It’s understandable that Brady, after several trips to the Super Bowl and lots of time behind a microphone would be more polished. Besides, the guy knows how to dress.
If he’s Mr. GQ, Eli’s solidly Mr. Gee Whiz, the county boy in search of a pole and a fishin’ hole.
I’ve always liked Eli and like him all the more since it looks like he’s finally found his comfort zone in the Giants backfield.
Now if he’d just get a Big Boy haircut…

If the Hillary Clinton campaign is mailing out every press release they send via e-mail, there’s a forest disappearing somewhere.
Just take the last four days.
Friday started off with Hillary Clinton pledging to protect college students and their families from predatory college loans. At a college in South Carolina, she was calling for a Bill of Rights for student borrowers. That was at 9:26 a.m.
Just before noon there was a release announcing an event in Rochester, N.Y., at 2 p.m.—the same day.
If you read it quickly, you wondered how she was going to time warp up from South Carolina in time, but then you realize it would be campaign representatives discussing “growing plans for the Rochester area.”
Around dinner time Friday, there was a release touting a similar event in Rockland yesterday.

“In celebration of the Clinton campaign’s strength in Rockland,” it said, Rep. Jose Serrano and Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion and grassroots supporters would be meeting at the Quisqueya Sports Club in Haverstraw. Still later, there was the announcement that the Amsterdam News had endorsed Clinton and another about grass roots supporters conducting a phone bank the next afternoon in Poughkeepsie.
That one got repeated Saturday morning, followed by word of a house party later in the day on Long Island where women could get their questions about Clinton answered. The event was sponsored by the campaign’s “Ambassadors for Hillary” program, which they say has about 1,600 women involved in lining up support for her candidacy.
If Saturday was an easy day for the press office, they made up for it yesterday with five releases. There were two about the Haverstraw event and another about an event in Syracuse today. There was one celebrating Clinton’s 28 percent lead over Barack Obama in a USA Today/Gallup poll in New York and a statement from Kathleen Kennedy Townsend differing with Caroline Kennedy and Sen. Ted Kennedy and announcing her support for Clinton.
There have been two releases e-mailed before noon today, so it’s looking like a busy one in the Clinton press room.

This week, the New City Library Board of Trustee election stirred up some controversy.

What was all the fuss about? The Board of Trustees election this week saw two new board members chosen who had not gone through the library board’s usual interview process with a nominating committee. Instead, three people submitted petitions to get on the ballot and two of them won. In fact, the voting takes place during one hour in the evening.

That’s mighty different than how most library trustee elections happen.

How can this be so different than how other libraries operate? Although all libraries are funded with taxpayers’ money, there are many different ways libraries are organized. For example, the New City Library is an “association library,� which is run differently than a “school district� library (Nyack and Nanuet libraries are examples of these) or a “public library� tied to a municipality, like the Orangeburg Library.

The New York State Library Web site contains a page, Types of libraries, that offers some good comparisons and contrasts about the different ways libraries can be structured. Here’s a synopsis:
• Association library: May receive funds from a government agency, and can also tax with a vote of residents within the area served. Does not have to accept the lowest bidders for projects or materials, but instead can select what it deems to be the lowest responsible bidder. Employees are not covered by Civil Service. There can be between five and 25 trustees.
• Public library: Budget is approved by a county, city, town, or village board. Lowest bids must be accepted for projects or materials. Employees are Civil Service. There can be between five and 11 trustees.
• School district library: Budgets are approved by school district voters, or by school boards in city school districts. Employees are Civil Service. Lowest bids must be accepted for projects or materials. There can be between five and 11 trustees.
• Special district library: Special districts are created by the state Legislature, with no comprehensive legal definition of a special district. Budgets are subject to the approval of voters within the district. Lowest bids must be accepted for projects or materials. Employees are Civil Service. The number of trustees is set by the state’s legislation.

I was in downtown Nyack, checking out the new multi-space municipal meters. I wanted to see what was up in the latest chapter of the Nyack parking saga.

It was easy. I plop in a couple quarters and viola, my little time-stamped piece of paper appears. Then, I look at the slip and see that it reads: 12:05. But it’s only 9:30 in the morning! DUH! The meters kick in at 11 a.m.—oh, I knew that!

The muni meter gave me the hour, plus a 5-minute grace period. So, I got outsmarted by a parking meter! All in the name of research, I might add.

The Ramapo Central community’s been talking for weeks about a possible scandal involving sex, drugs and alcohol, with minors in the mix.
To probably no one’s surprise anymore, an indictment unsealed this morning charges Beth Modica with one count of third-degree rape and four counts of third-degree criminal sexual assault. She also faces 30 misdemeanor charges: four counts of third-degree sexual abuse and 26 counts of endangering the welfare of a child.
Because it’s not a surprise doesn’t mean it isn’t a shock.
The case will certainly work its way through the legal system slower than it did through the rumor mill. That, one would hope, would ensure much more thoughtful examination of the situation, and the charges, than the other path has.
Plenty of us will be second-guessing the legal system, speculating on motives, and playing psychologist. While we dabble in those, let’s remember that families, young people, neighbors and friends are vulnerable here. Let’s remember that though these are serious accusations of behavior that violates the law, and basic trust, they are just that, accusations.
Some will look for a bigger morality tale of middle-class suburban life. Some will jump to conclusions. Some will deny. Some will blame, blame, blame.
Some of the rumors and comments that will come out contain information about people that will be none of our business (and, as we’ve found with plenty of what we’ve heard in the last couple weeks, not true).
This is the tough stuff. It’s ugly. It’s complicated. In the end, though, the community affected will likely change, but it is that same community that will get many through the ugliness.

Three of us from The Journal News were in Tarrytown yesterday for a 3:15 p.m. Department of Transportation press briefing on changes in the process that will determine the future of the Tappan Zee Bridge.
The news, boiled down to basics, is that we’ll know in May what kind of mass transit is proposed for a Hudson River crossing and a new timetable for the overall project should save money, increase public input and assure a proper, detailed environmental study of the mass transit mode selected.
It’s pretty important stuff, but we learned about it totally by accident when Khurram Saeed, who covers transportation, called one of the agencies that is a partner in the Tappan Zee Bridge project. He was calling about an unrelated story and was asked if he planned to be at the briefing later in the day.
He alerted me and off we went.
We left our office less than 30 minutes ahead of the briefing, never receiving a press release that was supposed to have been e-mailed by 2 p.m.
When we arrived at the Department of Transportation’s new offices in Tarrytown, no one was ready for the press to be there.
Lucky for them it was just the three of us and WNBC-TV reporter Dianna Russini, formerly of News 12, and a cameraman.
Russini was reading a press release and when I asked for one, it set off a scurry of activity. Seems she had the only copy—or at least the only copy anyone was giving up.
There seemed to be some confusion about how and who would download more.
After about 20 minutes—during which time we passed around Dianna’s copy—we got our own.
There didn’t seem to be a DOT press person in charge and it only got worse.
Once a briefing for members of the Rockland and Westchester Tappan Zee Bridge Task Force ended—way past the scheduled 3:15 p.m. start of our briefing—we learned there would be no formal briefing, just an opportunity to speak with Tappan Zee Bridge Study Team leader Michael Anderson of the DOT.
We got a few minutes with him, but then were told he was late for another briefing, with officials like Assembly members Ken Zebrowski and Ellen Jaffee. Jaffee, too, had some trouble getting a copy of the press release.
We were given a few minutes more with Anderson, but didn’t have the opportunity for the kind of conversation where we could really explore minor details like who will actually pick the transit mode that gets intense scrutiny.
At one point, one of the DOT staffers who was running around mentioned getting us a press kit. If there was one, we never got it.
Anderson said over and over that the changes in the project timetable to allow more public involvement were meant to make the process more transparent.
If that’s the case, they got off to a lousy start yesterday.
The confusion made it clear they didn’t expect the press to be there and probably didn’t want us to be there.
It meant that two news outlets—The Journal News and WNBC-TV—got an exclusive.
That’s a win for us, but even we’d see that as a loss for the public, who will eventually get the bill for billions of dollars.

Ramapo’s first unity forum last night brought up lots of issues, and few answers, but some hints of movement toward more communication.

There were the niceties of pledged support. There were some pointed questions, about how many want a “ward system” for town board members, so that each member represents a geographical area of town; about the rejection by Ramapo (but acceptance by Haverstraw) of a petition to form a village of Ladentown; about lax code enforcement in unincorporated Ramapo; about old, worn-out infrastructure, about town leaders’ failure to respond to anonymous anti-Semitic literature in the last election (sadly, again, no response. Can someone just say it was bad, bad, bad?).

Town Supervisor Christopher St. Lawrence didn’t answer all questions, but he acknowledged them. He waxed philosophical about the board reconsidering a formal “dedication” of parkland that he has previously said is unnecessary, but now says may be considered as a “belts and suspenders” measure to make people more comfortable. He talked about people saying “Monsey is a mess,” and ways he’s worked with changing collection days so trash isn’t left out, and being frustrated with pedestrians using the streets. “If we’re building sidewalks in Monsey, people should be walking on them.”

There was, for the most part, good discussion. A couple speakers made clear that the issue is much more textured than a “religious” vs. “non-religious” issue, and that many in the Orthodox and Hasidic community are fed up with the problems mentioned, including density and code violations. One speaker talked about his family’s decision to move to Ramapo a generation ago because, for a Jewish family, “Ramapo was safe.” He hoped that feeling would continue. In fact, only one speaker used the term “secular community,” which, following the other hopeful statements, was slightly off-key.

Communication, it became obvious, is key. Spring Valley Village Trustee Demeza Delhomme, one of the first speakers, talked about his own past tensions with other leaders in his village, and how a concerted effort to reach some kind of understanding with them paid off for the village at large. He lauded the fact that the first Haitian county legislator, Jacques Michel, was just sworn in. That, he said, was a victory for the diverse District 13. His message: The town government and Preserve Ramapo should “find one thing you can agree (on), and work from there.”

Will that communication happen? Will anything change? It’s hard to say. Let’s see if the next forum is held in a location where a more diverse crowd can attend, notably members of the Hasidic and Orthodox community and Haitian and Hispanic communities. Yeah, some will see the whole thing as an exercise in futility. But even if the politicians don’t listen (and we hope they will) neighbors will hear each other.

Nancy posted a few days ago about the new LoHud.com Web site, and hopefully Rockland readers have registered and are exploring the news stories as well as the forums and blogs. In the meantime, check out the new feature on the homepage that lists the “Most Commented Stories.” Four out of the 8 stories are about Rockland County! (They are: Cancel returns to Haverstraw Town Board; the $13 million in cuts to the North Rockland school district budget; Ramapo sued by Yeshiva builders; and the Encore project in Haverstraw.) We know Rockland residents aren’t shy about weighing in on stories, so join you neighbors and add your voice to conversation. Then check out the forums