I'm not surprised by the judge's decision, except that he didn't throw it out of court entirely. I had predicted that it wouldn't even get this far, but a judge actually accepted the case and made a ruling on it. I guess it's better that way, make it official.
I agree that the Record has been generally insensitive regarding the death of Joseph DeFalco. His death was a great loss to the high school.
However, I am not unhappy about the changes that happened on the city council. I believe that McAuliffe will be as good an office-holder as DeFalco, if not better. McAuliffe, like his 4 companions on the city council, has had no experience being part of a government beaurocracy. This I see as a positive. DeFalco, as principle of the high school, was by the very nature of his employment part of a bureaucracy (no slight intended against the high school). Having this life experience would have made DeFalco more passive in the formulation of city policy, simply because he was more well-rounded and experienced to know what "can" and "can't" be done.
Sometimes there's an advantage to not knowing the in's and out's of government bureaucracy. Sometimes not knowing that something can't be done makes getting it done possible. That's exactly how Borg's Woods was preserved. At the time, myself and my colleagues were too naive to know it couldn't be done, so we tried real hard, and we succeeded.
I think we need some bold changes in the City of Hackensack, and I am optimistic that the 5 current office holders are uninhibited to seek out these changes. Some of these changes may be things that "can't be done", but will wind up getting done because they tried. I for one, couldn't be happier with the constituency of the city council, and the tenure of Marlin Townes as Mayor. And now because of Contillo's ruling, we can take confidence in knowing that there won't be a gadfly on the city council to try and throw monkey-wrenches into all progress.