The Record from Hackensack, New Jersey • 15

FILM New; NORTH JERSEY 3 COMMUNITY 4 OBITUARIES 6 EDITORIALS 10 OPINION 11 Friday January 14, 2000 Loca Etezoning bid has town in qiiandlairy Pompton Lakes residents up in arms ence at Wednesday's Borough Council meeting vented their anger at council members and Mayor John Murrin for even considering the idea. As one furious resident put it, borough officials should "just say By JAN BARRY Staff Writer POMPTON LAKES How to handle a request to rezone for residential development property that periodically floods and is zoned for conservation has become a hot potato for borough officials. Crowds of upset residents jammed into Borough Hall last month and again this week to protest a proposal by the Serenity Group of Riverdale to build a 700-unit housing complex along a bend of the Pequannock River. Many speakers in the standing-room-only audi- ough from conservation-recreation to a multiple-family district allowing development of 12 housing units per acre. Most of the roughly 68-acre site is privately owned.

Because much of that property is in a flood plain, the developer also is looking to buy adjacent property on higher ground, including several acres owned by the borough. Charles H. Sarlo, the group's corporate counsel, appeared before the Planning Board last month to describe a conceptual plan that might include a golf See REZONE Page L-3 The council can accept or reject the committee recommendation. The committee meeting and its report to the full council are scheduled for Jan. 26.

To accommodate the expected crowd when the report is made, that council meeting will be held in the high school auditorium. At that meeting, the council will consider whether to introduce an ordinance written by the developers that would rezone the southwest comer of the bor no! Murrin responded that the council is obligated under municipal bylaws to have its ordinance committee review any rezoning request and make a recommendation to the full governing body. r5 Li fi J) i -I I -J v-- Attorney disbarred for misuse of funds Mysak still facing charges of theft By JENNIFER V. HUGHES Staff Writer A Wayne attorney indicted for allegedly bilking five clients out of more than $100,000 has been disbarred, two years after his law license was first suspended. A former Wayne school board member, Charles Mysak, 48, was once known as much for his local activism, brash demeanor, and accumulation of traffic violations as for his lawyering.

Recently, though, he was found making his living by selling books on the streets of New York City. Mysak's disbarment stems not from the allegations of theft, but from technical violations in the early 1990s, including extensive problems with how he handled his clients' money. Officials with the state Office of Attorney Ethics could not be reached for comment, but according to the office's report on Mysak, investigators found that Mysak repeatedly used one client's funds to pay another client. The original client eventually was repaid, but laws strictly forbid the practice. The report also found that Mysak repeatedly paid himself and several other people from his trust account instead of his business account.

Mysak couldn't be reached for comment, but according to the state's report, the former attorney admitted he had problems with record-keeping, but said he was very busy with a complicated murder case at the time. He also attributed some of the problems to See ATTORNEY Page L-5 Short-term economies help budget in Passaic By DAN KRAUT Staff Writer PASSAIC The owner of a KLAUS-PETER STEITZSTAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Creativity helps Paterson native cope with wife's death Yesterday morning was perfecto, warmer than I deserved, shinier than sandiot yesterdays. This morning, the day I write, settles cough-cold and as gray as the final fog. 4 The creative world of Shotsie Gorman below, at home with Lucas and Emma Includes rugs based on his A in I A you can tell from the lead of this column, I'm no poet. Shotsie Gorman is.

Also a sculptor, son of a i and a tattoo of cop, tattoo artist, rug designer, Soho expatriate into suburbia, businessman, newly a single parent. There may be a couple of things unanes Lina-bergh, left. Far left, a sign advertising a Paterson Museum exhibit of his works. I've left out of .1 1 if TT Shotsie Gorman's resume, but you get the idea. Somewhere between shine and fog, Shotsie introduced himself, welcomed me into his home.

The woman he'd spent 28 years loving, the mother of his daughter and son i ft typical city home will pay about $138 more in taxes in the current fiscal year than in the last one under a budget agreement reached I am not an intruder at this emotional, recovering time in Shotsie Gorman's life; he asked, several times, for this interview. Shotsie is his own best press agent, a couple of N.Y.C. PR courses having taught him timely angle and persistence. Shotsie is an only child of 48 years. He grew up in Peterson's Brook Sloate housing project and in an apartment near it.

His dad retired as a straight-laced patrolman in Paterson; his parents now live in Florida. Shotsie graduated from JFK High in '69, was denied his father's support to attend art school, and was pushed into a phone company job, one with a pension after a quarter of a century. But he stayed there only three years. See ALLEE Page L-8 among members of the City his wife, Janet died a few months ago. So Shotsie was homemaking, cleaning, taking the call from the school nurse saving his son was feeling ill but would try to get through the day.

I am at this stone-and-timber ranch on a hilltop in Warwick, N.Y., to talk about Shotsie's poetry and his multimedia exhibit at the museum in Paterson, the city of his sandiot yesterdays. Big and sloped but with pointy boots and beard, Shotsie put aside the portable phone and made Italian roast coffee stout enough to carry out the garbage. The aereement. still subiect to minor revisions, increases police staffing, reduces librarv fundinz. and depends on short-term solu i.

tions to prevent an even larger tax increase. According to work sheets Dre- sented by the municipal auditor DON SMITHSTAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Wednesday night, total property taxes on a home assessed at $124,000. the citv average, will to W. Milford puts up funds to save rides for seniors tal $5,274 for the 12-month period ending June 30. That is 4 percent more than in the prior 12 months.

The auditor, Dieter Lerch, acknowledged that the projection depends on optimistic estimates of county and school tax rates. The taxes for municipal purposes will be about $33.9 million this fiscal year, which is about 13 percent higher than in the prior year. Mayor Margie Semler's initial proposal in September called for $36 million in municipal taxes or 20 percent more than in the prior year. But the council reduced that See BUDGETPage L-9 By KENNETH LOVETT Staff Writer WEST MILFORD A township senior transportation program has won at least a temporary reprieve as local officials have agreed to allocate municipal money in place of lost county funding. Township officials were alarmed after learning last month that the county Office on Aging had cut $19,000 in grants earmarked for senior programs.

As much as $10,000 of the money, part of fed said he will push for the township to continue the service in the 2000 municipal budget if the county won't cover it. As of early December, the township transportation program funded 1,381 rides in 1999 in a specially equipped van to nutrition programs, 660 rides for the develop-mentally disabled, and 73 for recreational purposes such as shopping. Another 776 rides took seniors to medical appointments. eral and state aging grants administered by the county, had been used to transport seniors to medical appointments, meal programs, and on recreational trips. The county opted to give the township $16,000 to join the pilot program Easy Access Single Entry, to formulate a single clearinghouse of information on senior services in Passaic County.

Township officials this week appealed the decision, saying that being able to tell seniors about services is meaningless if they cannot get to those services. The county was prepared to allow the township to use $4,000 of the $16,000 for the transportation programs. The rest would go toward enacting the state-sanctioned EASE program. Counties that don't begin enacting the program are in jeopardy of not getting future state aid increases. The township opted to earmark all $16,000 for the EASE program.

New Township Manager Ken neth Hetrick committed to funding senior transportation programs at least until June, said Transportation Coordinator Christine Beach. The estimated cost is $4,000. Come spring, the program likely will be revamped in an attempt to scale back costs, Beach said. "I'm not happy with the county, but at least the seniors won't lose their services for now," Beach said. Councilman Robert Moshman.