Craig Lechner visited the Fair Lawn McDonald's this weekend to reward his 3-year-old daughter with a Happy Meal. He left concerned the trip may have done more harm than good after the owner insisted on keeping the restaurant's television tuned to Fox News. "A man shot himself in the head live on Fox two weeks ago," said Lechner, a Fair Lawn resident with two young children. "If we were [at McDonald's], I would be explaining that to my kids." Lechner, a self-described liberal, said his opposition to showing Fox News on the restaurant's television is not a political issue, but rather one of …

In two short years, Naomi Kutin’s much-publicized powerlifting prowess has transformed her from anonymous eight-year-old to arguably Fair Lawn’s most renowned resident. The 4-foot-9-inch, 99-pound bundle of energy has appeared in newspapers and on television programs the world over. Her feats of uncommon strength were featured most recently in The Star-Ledger and The Jewish Daily Forward. Even an article about strongman competitions in The New Yorker’s next-to-last issue name-dropped Kutin, calling her “pound for pound, the strongest girl in the world.” On the evening I visited the Kutins at …

More than a year since council began to discuss installing solar panels atop some of the town's public buildings, the borough has begun meeting with solar providers about collector installation.  Borough manager Tom Metzler met recently with Johnson Controls, a leading global provider of products and services that optimizes energy and operational efficiencies of buildings, to discuss retrofitting the roofs of both the public library and public works garage. The borough ultimately expects to secure a win-win deal with a provider who would finance the entire installation project, while the town…