This Week: Rec Basketball, Referendum Forum, Walking Tour, Re-org Meeting

With the holidays now behind us, the borough gets back to business as usual this week.

Public schools were back in session Monday, although it was technically a public holiday; here’s a quick look at some of what’s coming up in the borough during the first week of the year:

The Fort Lee Girls Recreation Basketball League will hold its opening ceremonies Tuesday at .

Highlighting the opening ceremonies will be Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich tossing up the opening tipoff as he has done for the past five years to mark the beginning of the league’s 2012 season. The ceremonies will also include “coaches and players at all levels, sponsors, parents, friends and town dignitaries,” according to league president Michael Klein.

The opening ceremonies start at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the middle school. (Full Story)

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Also Tuesday, the Fort Lee Board of Education will hold the second of three public forums at 7 p.m. at the for its upcoming $30.2 million school bond referendum.

At the first forum on Dec. 12, school officials gave a presentation detailing the work—school-by-school—taxpayers’ dollars would pay for if the referendum passes on Jan. 24. That was followed by a question and answer session. (Full Story)

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On Wednesday at 11 a.m., the Fort Lee Board of Education continues its lobbying efforts for the referendum by offering the penultimate of five walking tours.

Participants will get a firsthand look at overcrowded lunchrooms and hallways, classrooms in what were once storage closets, music classes taught in hallways and stairwells, libraries doubling as media labs, leaking ceilings, antiquated boilers and hopelessly outdated and inefficient science labs, among other problems school officials believe the referendum would go a long way toward addressing.

The tour meets at the at 255 Whiteman St. (Full Story)

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The Fort Lee Mayor and Council meet Thursday at 6 p.m. at ’s council chambers for the recessed meeting of Dec. 15, 2011 and its annual reorganization meeting.

The recessed meeting—a very brief meeting at which the borough wraps up any business and closes the books on 2011 with a short consent agenda of mostly financial items—starts at 6 p.m. and will be followed “shortly thereafter” by the reorganization meeting, according to borough officials.

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The kicks off its “lifestyle enrichment programs” for 2012 Saturday at 10 a.m. with the first of two introduction and demonstration sessions of Falun Dafa—otherwise known as Falun Gong.

The library will also host its first concert of 2012 Sunday at 2 p.m., the husband and wife musical duo of Naoko Nakagawa, a soprano, and composer and pianist Satoshi Kanazawa.

The program Sunday will feature Nakagawa and Kanazawa performing Schumann, Gounod and Puccini, in addition to traditional Japanese folk songs and original compositions. (Full Story)