Trying To Have An Impact By Donal A. Meyers When my wife and I started Fairlawnonline.com in mid-October, 2004, our goals were fairly modest - to bring information to the Fair lawn community about the activities of the local government on a real time basis. We sensed in the Daly Field controversy an air of arrogance on the part of our elected leaders, an air that the opinions of the community were of secondary concern, the air that political power without meaningful competition brings to politicians. I had seen this before - in Nassau County on Long Island 30 years ago when the Republican machine had stifled political discourse, and all that mattered was winning the next election at all costs. The experience had soured me on politics for many years. It was the success of Howard Dean in the 2004 Democratic primaries that made us look at the internet as a tool for political change. Never mind that Howard Dean's campaign imploded in the harsh glare of an unforgiving media, it was the process, the power that Dean was able to harness, that fascinated me. When the Daly Field controversy burst on the scene, we looked, looked hard, did not like what we saw, and realized that the internet was an unharnessed force for change that could be brought to bear. The power of the internet is the ability to inform the user to the degree the user is most comfortable, letting the user pick and choose his or her own content. Television, while visually graphic, appears and is gone. The print media, while more permanent, is still limited by space and the unseen bias of the reporters and editors, presenting only the facts the reporters and editors deem relevant. Our concept was to air out the facts - as viewed through the prism of our personal opinions, to be sure - in a manner that would allow our readers to read not just our view of the facts and issues, but to be one mouse-click away from the original source material. We wanted the reader to be able to access the original material, on-line in real time, to test us, test our opinions, and be informed. We wanted to be controversial - to probe, to test the limits, make people angry, make people aware of what is going on in the community. I think we have succeeded. In our first seven months, we can point to a number of changes in the borough government that we helped bring about, although to be sure current administration would sooner gag than give us credit. For example, take the subject of environmental contamination in Fair Lawn. It was just this past January, when we made our requests for documents related to Topps Cleaners, that I was told by the Borough Manager that there was no problem with Topps that she was aware of. As a result of the controversy we stirred up, the NJ DEP now copies the borough health officer on all correspondence and reports, the Environmental Commission is apprised of the various hot spots on a regular basis, and our borough government is now receiving the information it needs to be the proactive advocate it needs to be to protect the health and safety of the Fair Lawn community in this era of tight state budgets and DEP funding cutbacks. The glare of publicity has induced some small measure of change in the political corruption arena. Last year, before leaving office, Governor McGreevy instituted changes to the campaign financing structure that limited contributions to county committees, and induced a wave of wheeled contributions here in Bergen County through municipal campaign committees, which were exempted from the new rules. In Fair Lawn, Barry Winston, the Fair Lawn Democratic leader, had a municipal committee all set up and ready to go. But he did not use it, we think in no small measure because he knew that we were here to publicize any move he made in that direction. We have helped in the fight to preserve the Naugle House on Dunkerhook Road. We were too new to the scene to effectively publicize the rezoning that took place below the radar screen, but we have shined the glare of publicity on developers who bring their plans to the Council and Planning Boards without formal application or public notice, helping to get the public involved at earlier stages of the proceedings, and in so doing helping to preserve the little green space left here in Fair Lawn. Along the way we have spotlighted the exorbitant increase in property taxes, which at the Borough level have increased at more than triple the rate of inflation. We have publicized contracts not being awarded to the lowest bidder, $650 garbage cans, $21 suspenders being financed over 20 years through bond issues, and other financial finagling. Currently we are spotlighting the Recreation Center boondoggle, and the tremendous extra costs imposed on the community by the politicians. Our site is an experiment, a work in progress. For the primary and general elections, we have offered our site as a venue for countering dirty campaigning and smears. Our campaign 2005 page contains links to candidate web sites, candidate financial reports, and links to a candidate's response to inaccurate campaign literature. At this writing we are hoping the candidates will take advantage of our services - we hope the voting public will as well. We also have links to our pay2play page, which allows the public to see who is giving and who is getting here in Fair Lawn. We are still growing. Yes, at times we miss the mark - it is the price of reporting on the edge. But when I attend a Council, Planning or Zoning meeting and see people asking questions of their officials while holding copies of documents downloaded from our site, it is at times like that that I know we are making an impact, and that the effort is worthwhile. After publication of the above piece, Fair Lawn News was asked by Mr. Barry Winston to publish the following:  You have seen fit to publish another one of the many inaccurate and irresponsible Donal Meyer's "pieces" in the latest issue of Fair Lawn News that needs correction in order to present a fully accurate picture. Specifically I refer to the following sentence in his current "article:" "In Fair Lawn, Barry Winston, the Fair Lawn Democratic leader, had a municipal committee all set up and ready to go. But he did not use it, we think in no small measure because he knew that we were here to publicize any move he made in that direction." I have no idea what Mr. Meyers is referring to other than the fact that the Fair Lawn Democratic County Committee has been set up for more years than Mr. Meyers has been alive -- so his brief allusion to some sort of nefarious activity is ludicrous. That same committee is a statutory body whose authority and legal status has been set up by N.J. Statute. I have another surprise for Mr. Meyers. The Republican Party has one too, aptly known as the Fair Lawn Republican County Committee. If Mr. Meyers thinks that the actions of his slimy muck-raking, whose only objective is to smear and tarnish the reputations of decent people whose only objective is to give back to their community, could prevent the Fair Lawn Democratic County Committee from exercising its proper and statutory actions, he is more seriously ignorant than I had previously thought. There are many other inaccurate claims that Meyers makes, including factually incorrect references to actions of the Planning Board that need correction but since I have neither the time or the inclination to educate Mr. Meyers I will not go into it here. Suffice it to say, I can't recall a single meeting of the Planning Board that Mr. Meyers ever attended, including the ones on the Radburn-Daly Field issue despite his claims to the contrary. If he was there, I am surprised he never chose to ask any questions during the time for public comment as he does so regularly at Council meetings. Maybe he feels he can do what some recently disgraced reporters have done with "news" stories that were more creative than factual. Yours truly, Barry L. Winston  Municipal Chairman Fair Lawn Democratic County Committee