Our Montville

Kiwanis Food Pantry is Serving a Need

In the 15 months since the Kiwanis Club started a food pantry, it has grown in every way  imaginable: the need, the donations, and the locations. At the Food Pantry, volunteers Deane Driscoll, Janie Hines and Nancy Flanagan have room for more items on the shelves.

The pantry is the brainchild of Joe O’Dowd, its unofficial chairman, who suggested it after what he describes as the "perfect storm" of events.

Long before the food pantry, located at the United Methodist Church in Towaco, was ever an idea, the Montville Township Kiwanis Club was distributing food to needy families – in baskets for Thanksgiving and Christmas. The members received help from the teens in the Key Club at Montville Township High School who conducted a food drive at the school.  Continue reading NorthJersey.com.

OurMontville.com wants your "Report Card" on Montville

So now that Montville has been ranked 17^th in the nation as one of the best places to live, and is  also part of Morris County’s happiest residents in the state……where do you think we actually fit in?

Considering that so many residents seem to engage in heated debates about anything from putting turf on the high school fields to the intense political battles that ensued this year, one cannot help but wonder how our residents really feel about this highly rated and happy town!

Montville Ranked 17th in the Nation Among the Top 100 Places to Live

Five N.J. towns among top 100 small towns to live in country, Money magazine says

Five New Jersey towns have been ranked by Money as among the top 100 place in the country to live, according to the magazine's September 2011 issue.

The five towns in the state that cracked the rankings are Montville, which ranked 17th in the nation, South Brunswick (No. 22), Ridgewood (No. 26), Madison (No. 33) and Hillsborough (No. 53).  Continue reading NJ.com.

Poll: Morris County residents happiest in state

An article in the Daily Record, on August 1st, shows that Morris County residents are the happiest in  the state.  What is your opinion? We'd love to share your comments with our readers! 

Residents of Morris County have a higher perceived quality of life and are more satisfied with the state as a whole than residents of other parts of New Jersey, according to a Monmouth University poll.

“I think there is a certain cordiality about the county, we used to refer to it as a gentleman's county,’’ said John Pecoraro, a judge of the Morris County Surrogate Court. “It is a county where people respect each other.”  Continue reading Daily Record.

Towns’ efforts are getting green support from Trenton

The Department of Environmental Protection announced earlier this month that New Jersey's   municipalities and counties are receiving $12.8 million in grants to help them implement and enhance local recycling efforts.

"Recycling remains a high priority at the DEP because it is the right thing to do for the environment," Commissioner Bob Martin said. "We continue to look at ways to improve recycling rates. This grant program is an important part of our efforts because it helps municipal and county governments work to improve local recycling programs, which have been at the core of New Jersey's recycling efforts for nearly 25 years."  Continue reading NJ.com.

"Financial Fridays" - Handling Market Volatility

Welcome to the "Financial Fridays" section of OurMontville.com!!  Harold F. Wachtel, Jr., founder and chief investment officer at Wachtel Capital Management, LLC and Wachtel Capital Advisors, LLC is located at the Montville Executive Suites at 330 Changebridge Road, Suite 101, Pine Brook, New Jersey, 07058.  Harold has been kind enough to share some helpful financial information with the readers of OurMontville.com!!  

Conventional wisdom says that what goes up, must come down. But even if you view market volatility as a normal occurrence, it can be tough to handle when it's your money at stake. Though there's no foolproof way to handle the ups and downs of the stock market, the following common sense tips can help. 

Solar Industry Still Hopes to Stand Out

New Jersey has been proud of its commitment to renewable energy, and legislative policies have encouraged the installation of photovoltaic solar arrays to the point that the state is second only to California in solar power production, according to the Board of Public Utilities.

But in June, Gov. Chris Christie’s administration announced that it was withdrawing New Jersey from a 10-state regional energy plan, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.  Continue reading Daily Record.

Get Your Priorities Straight

It is important for us to educate ourselves on issues pertaining to everything from social security to the debt crisis, right down to local decisions regarding whether to turf the fields at the high school or not. There are a myriad of opinions on these topics, some which tend to get very heated, often based on a personal perspective rather than fact.  It's time to delve, very deeply, into genuine factual information, and stop all the finger pointing.

Social Security part of the American Dream

This is an article submitted to the Daily Record by Kathleen Miller of Chatham.  OurMontville.com would like to share your opinion on this important topic with our readers.

Social Security represents the best of the American dream — the idea that my lifetime of hard work will let me live comfortably in old age. It’s not a handout. It’s money that I earned and deserve to have when I decide to retire. Americans believe in this program, whether they vote Republican, Democratic, Tea Party or Independent.

The only people who don’t seem to believe in this program are politicians and their big corporate donors, who would rather see the rich get more tax breaks than for hard-working Americans to get their Social Security checks.

Any representative who says that Social Security needs to be cut because of the debt ceiling is lying — Social Security doesn’t contribute to the deficit, and using the current climate to cut benefits is unacceptable.