To their credit, crews from the Town of Clarkstown and the state Department of Transportation were out early, hitting the roads with material shortly after the snow began to fall in Nanuet. Crews in other towns likely were out too, and good thing.

Where roads were treated this morning, the going was easy. But where trucks hadn’t yet been, the going was pretty slippery.

Just about 9:30, the snow in West Nyack changed from an almost mist of light flakes to heavier, chunky-style globs.

The forecast for tonight is frigid, with wind chills of close to zero degrees anticipated for midnight in Times Square, which, in my book, makes it a good place not to be. That goes double for what likely will be slick, frozen roads on New Year’s Eve.

Remember the guy who paid his $200 bail with two fresh and crisp $100 counterfeit bills? That happened earlier this month in Clarkstown.

Well, he was just a sign of things to come. USA Today reports that counterfeiting has gone mainstream.

I was in Chinatown this week and a clerk was saying that all the stores weren’t accepting $100 bills because there had been many turning up counterfeit. Last week’s police blotter in The Journal News reported that security personnel at the Kmart department store at the Crossroads Shopping Center in Greeburgh reported receiving 38 counterfeit $10 bills, all on one Sunday.

Creative solution for tough times? Nah, just plain old illegal.

An Opinion Page column in today’s TJN and on LoHud examines the ideas floating around for a public-private partnership to replace and run the Tappan Zee Bridge. Here’s the column.

For more on PPPs, which are growing in popularity around the nation, look here at a USA Today wrap up of states taking an interest in PPPs for operating everything from parks to airports to roads and bridges. (South America, Europe, Canada, etc. have scores of such arrangements, big and small.) BTW, I’ve heard from many experts on this that “selling” isn’t really in the cards, but leases are.

Thre was one comment on which I wanted to elaborate. (Yeah, hard to believe there’s more; it’s kinda long … but this is a very complex and interesting concept, and much more information is out there on PPPs.) When talking with Jon Peters, the finance prof. from The College of Staten Island, he illustrated the importance of the profit part to attract investors. Looking at the TZ, he said, the state could expect plenty of investors because it has a proven track record of attracting traffic (tolls, tolls, tolls) and links to major metropolitan areas with lots of destination points. He recalled the notorious “Bridge to Nowhere” plan for Alaska, which would only be done as a public works project. Because, after all, who would want to pay for something that would attract such little use? Where’s the investment return? After all, a PPP only works if there’s something worth investing in.

On the flipside, governments have to be aware of that value. And, contracts have to be written with every possible variable included, or you end up paying to park in the shade at an airport, or not getting potholes filled frequently enough, or rates that jump sky-high 20 years into a deal, with 79 more to go.

Tricky stuff, PPPs. If this is the future of the TZ, let’s hope we get some really smart people reading the fine print.

We’re well into Christmas Eve and judging from traffic while I was running an errand a little while ago, lots of people have places to be and for a lot of those people, the place is the Palisades Center.

I had to run up to Pomona around 2:30 and the cars were moving well on the northbound Palisades from  the Thruway to Exit 12. But the traffic was heavy and steady.

A second errand took me over to New Clarkstown Road, so I headed south on Route 45 through Hillcrest to Eckerson Drive and east on Eckerson.

I was smart enough to head south on New Clarkstown and then east on Smith to avoid the lights and  traffic around Route 59 and the  Spring Valley Marketplace. That was a good move, but I missed another opportunity to cut across from Middletown Road to Route 304, which would have allowed me to take West Nyack Road to return to the newspaper offices on Crosfield Avenue.

Instead, I stayed on Middletown all the way to Route 59 and then inched my way east toward Crosfield and the Palisades Center beyond it.

Now, after an hour back at the paper, I’m watching cars stream east along Route 59, heading to get that last last-minute gift or meet friends for a holiday toast and dinner.

There’s still time, but if you venture out please take it slow.

With the sun fading, we may see some of what melted during the day turning back to ice, like this morning.

Be careful, stay safe and enjoy the holiday with loved ones.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and happy holidays to all.

The Editorial Board spends this time of year compiling a list of the “big events” and
newsmakers of 2008.
I wanted to take a moment here to remember some of the people who we
lost, those who touched our communities and helped make Rockland special.

• Conor Corish, only 15, was struck and killed by a train on a rainy day in
  May, taking a common shortcut along the NJ Transit tracks over the Thruway.
  Two months later, 22-year-old Ryan Fitzsimons was hit walking along the CSX freight train tracks near his West Nyack home when he was fatally struck. Their deaths are sad, senseless. This month, St. Margaret Elementary in Pearl River took part in an educational program offered by NJ Transit. Yes,
  sound travels strangely, and especially in areas with dense traffic, a train
  can indeed sneak up. It is a tragedy Spring Valley residents along Lawrence
  Street knew for years before a shortcut there was exposed for its danger.


• Ellen Ferretti, 91, was the woman who wouldn¹t sell. Her home on the edge of the Nanuet Mall parking lot symbolized fighting bureacracy, overdevelopment and the mall-ization of America, and winning.


• Clarkstown Justice Joel J. Flick, 69, died in August. The longtime lawyer
  was first judge to oversee a specialized domestic violence court established
  in Clarkstown in 2002 – the first such court in the state.


• VJ Pradhan, Rockland County legislator, who died at age 61. His life in
  India taught him about the world¹s inequities. He came to the United States
  and found opportunity, which spurred his devotion to community leadership
  and civic involvement.


• Dr. Fletcher Johnson,  77, was devoted to education, serving on Nyack¹s
  school board and the Rockland Board of Cooperative Educational Services
  board of education for many years; to public service, leading the county¹s Board of Health; and to his patients. Johnson, a 6-foot-5 quiet giant, struggled as a young black man to have access to education. That fueled his support for education and health care.

There are so many more. Please add your remembrances of special people here.

Time was, if you were crossing the Tappan Zee either way, you got to pay the toll.

Eventually, the westbound toll booth came down and the toll went one-way. Commuters got a break with a book of tickets that pretty much lasted a month, unless, like me, you found daily reasons for extra trips, like going home for lunch or to check the afternoon mail.

There was even an art to it. You had to hold the ticket book in such a way that you separated one ticket from the rest and held the expiration date so the toll clerk could see it.

But even in those days, if you forgot your book or ran out of tickets, you could throw a handful of change at the plastic toll basket and wait for the coin-counting equipment to do its thing and activate the green light to send you on your way.

We were talking something like $1 or $1.50 back then, an amount of change you could easily find with one pass searching the front seat cushions.

But no more.

Come Jan. 4, the one-way TZ toll is going up for the second time in recent memory — this time from $4.50 to $5.

We’re pretty much an EZ Pass culture now, but imagine trying to hand off 20 quarters at rush hour?

Or even finding five singles if your EZ Pass account is running on empty.

Back in the day, there was one pain-in-the-neck toll taker who periodically would take the ticket book from your hand to scrutinize it. He didn’t care if there were 50 cars behind you or if your engine was overheating and spouting steam and smoke, like mine once was.

Paying him in cash wasn’t really adding to his stress level. But I kinda wish he was around next month so I could stop at his booth and pay him a $5 toll in nickels — just once.

Of course, these toll increases are probably just the beginning. If some corporate entity buys the rights to the Tappan Zee as part of its rebuilding plan, we’ll probably need a bucket of quarters to pay the toll if EZ Pass has run dry.

I was out running errands on a day off when the snow started to fall in Rockland just about 12 hours ago.

As usual, I tried to keep up with the snowfall or even get ahead. It’s just too risky to sit and watch the snow all day and then try to dig out in one session.

So when I got home around noon, I salted the walk at home in Nanuet – just not enough to shovel as yet.

But at 3:30, I was outside for about 30 minutes to clear about four to five inches that had fallen by then. It was light and powdery and pretty easy to move  by pushing  rather than lifting.  That’s always a positive. I cleaned the walk and the driveway around two cars and the space  in front of mine, which is facing the street.

Making another pass at 7:30, the snow had moved on, at least for a while, leaving a total of about seven inches.

This time, I cleared the walks, the driveway and also cleared most of the snow off our cars.

As I headed in at 8 p.m., there was sleet falling, but it didn’t seem to last very long.

When I ducked outside minutes ago, at 10:30, the street was still except for a neighbor digging in his driveway.

No snow, no sleet, no rain.  But checking weather Web sites, it looks like more is expected, tonight, overnight and into tomorrow.

So, it looks like this may turn out to be a long weekend in more ways than one.

We’ll see what tomorrow holds.

Each year a ceremony involving the slaughter of a huge number of chickens creates a furor when the ritual’s site is left strewn with feces, feathers and other debris.

The organizers of the kapparot ritual, in which a live chicken is held above a person’s head and moved in a circle three times before it is slaughtered, say they do their best to avoid sanitation and health  problems.

And each year the Rockland Department of Health finds fault with their work.

There have been problems for years, including chickens running loose a few years back, although that may have happened with another organizer.

In 2007, the sanitation problems brought fines of $3,000 after Rockland mistakenly allowed Moshe Lefkowitz to use the site of the old Rockland Drive-in on Route 59 in Monsey, thinking the county owned the property. That year, the ritual, in the days before Yom Kippur, involved  11,000  chickens.

In February of this year, Lefkowitz wrote a letter, which was published on our editorial page, in which he issued a qualified apology for the problems with the 2007 ritual, although he deflected blame for the cleanliness issues. “The county government officials,” his letter read, “were fair in fining me. I respect them for their professionalism and what they did was correct. I am sad that anyone can be mistaken about that.”

Since then, he’s paid less than half of the $3,000 fine and this past October, at a different site, the ritual involved as many as 13,000 chickens with much the same result. This time blood was also allowed to drain into a catch basin.

Although the violations this year could carry fines of up to $10,000, a lesser amount has been  proposed by a Board of Health hearing officer. Only the lack of a quorum prevented the board from passing on the fines this week.

This time, Lefkowitz says he doesn’t believe he should be fined at all. That after an inspector told the board that  Lefkowitz and his son were warned repeatedly about  the  ongoing sanitary problems.  Kevin Mackey told the board the situation got worse rather than better as the week progressed.

Lefkowitz, in fact, said he was proud of the job he did this year. “This year was much better,” he said.

A lawyer for the school that hosted this year’s ritual didn’t sound like the chickens will be welcomed back, which means Lefkowitz will likely need a new site for 2009.

He also need a new plan. It’s way past time to scale back the size of the ritual, if only for a year or two, until they figure out how to hold it without compromising the public health.

Before Lefkowitz gets a break on his 2008 fines, he should also be required to pay the balance of the fines outstanding from 2007.

Rockland has been more than willing to work with Lefkowitz, but now he had to hold up his end and make things right.

The County Legislature passed a ban on texting while driving last night, 16-1.

Yup, 16-1. County Legislator Gerold Bierker, C-Bardonia (yes, he’s the only Conservative Party member of the Legislature, but caucuses with the Republicans) voted against the ban.

So, I called Gerry as to why he voted against. He pointed out the proposal that police officers were granted an exemption. Why should they be able to text and drive. He pointed this out as part of the “idiocy of the law.” He also didn’t like the original cell phone law. He points out that there are laws against distracted driving, which should cover talking on a phone or texting. “We have serious stuff to deal with, and we’re playing with this,” he said.

When the Editorial Board endorsed in his 2007 re-election bid, we cited his own words: “I have the vital role of being one who doesn’t necessarily go along with the tide.”

Now, it sounds like a silly law, but here’s the deal: When a ban on driving while talking on cell phones was passed, in 2001, not many were texting, so it wasn’t really on the radar. Now, people drive and text, and then, crash. OK, some don’t crash, but really, think of what can happen in the span of time it takes you to type BRB … you might not be!

The state Legislature has several bills pending to do the same thing, but Rockland legislators didn’t want to wait. Well, 16 of them anyway. And Vanderhoef still has to sign it.

The first time I ever visited the Bear Mountain Inn was on a senior class field trip with my 1965 classmates from Morris High School in the Bronx.

We had a great day out in the sun and enjoyed the inn, what with a form of architecture none of us had ever seen before.

It was the kind of experience that sticks in your mind.

So when life brought me north, first to Westchester and later Rockland, Bear Mountain was an easy destination and the Bear Mountain Inn became a traditional stop.

Sometimes it was for a brunch around the Christmas season or, perhaps, on Easter Sunday.  We made the trip on Mother’s Day and  for birthdays. And we made the stop for dinner after graduations.

So, of course, we missed the inn when it closed for renovations.

We were pleased when it reopened, at least in part, but were disappointed when it had to close again for more extensive work.

Just about every delay possible has slowed the progress, but now there’s word that the inn will likely reopen in late spring.

I’ll figure that that will end up meaning early summer, but we won’t mind once we can go there again and revive a tradition and replay the memories of good times there over several decades.