the staff of The Ridgewood Blog
Ridgewood NJ, although intended to calm nerves, the well rehearsed/scripted “notification of test results timeline” presented by Mayor Paul Vagianos (with the assistance of Matrix Engineering representatives) during this past Wednesday evening’s Village Council Work Session did quite the opposite.
Many additional questions were raised by the Mayor’s presentation, leaving more questions about what actually took place left unanswered than answered.
Here’s a current list of issues that has us scratching our heads:
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Matrix Engineering was informed by a testing laboratory of the test results on May 15th shortly after midnight. Matrix allegedly did not communicate those results outside of their organization until the morning of May 28th. What took so long?
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Matrix Engineering communicated the test results to Village Engineer Christopher Rutishauser on May 28th via a voice mail message left on his office telephone. Huh? Is that Matrix’s standard protocol for the communication of critical information to a client? A voice mail message? Left only for a single person?
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Having been notified of the test results by Matrix on the morning of May 28th, NJDEP initially communicated the test results that same day at 11:05 AM to the Ridgewood Police Department’s non emergency telephone number. The operator at the Village’s emergency dispatch center who took the call did nothing other than log the information into the dispatch center’s computerized automated dispatch database. No one in authority was notified by phone, two-way radio, or e-mail. Is that standard protocol at Central Dispatch? Just log critical information in and tell no one?
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NJDEP also notified Village Clerk Heather Mailander via e-mail in the early morning hours of May 29th. Ms. Mailander forwarded the e-mail shortly after 9:00 AM that same day to Village Engineer Christopher Rutishauser and to Director of Operations/Director of Ridgewood Water Richard Calbi. Mr. Rutishauser was reportedly on vacation. Mr. Calbi in turn forwarded a copy of the NJDEP notification e-mail to Village Manager Keith Kazmark. However, Mr. Calbi did not take this action until well after the close of business on the 29th. Why wasn’t Mr. Kazmark sent a copy of the e-mail at the same time Mr. Rutishauser and Mr. Calbi were?
- The public was notified of test results via a communication sent from Village Manager Kenneth Kazmark’s office late in the afternoon of May 30th. More than 15 calendar days had passed since Matrix Engineering became aware of those results. 15 calendar days? Wow!
Thankfully, this particular notification did not concern an imminent disaster capable of causing loss of lives and/or damage to properties. Let us hope the powers to be in Ridgewood have taken steps to prevent communication/notification delays like this from taking place in the future.
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You could not write a comedy script like this one in a jillion years.
This is going to be a Class Action Suit for the ages. Hilarious!
All the town employees, the village residents touring the site, the dozens of sub-contractors working on the property the last five years…all exposed because the Village “Engineer” botched the testing process? Did he even complete training/ receive certification to oversee said process? Hmmm…
And when Habernickel proves toxic?
We could be talking about 1000 plantiffs.
Frankly, this clown show outkicked their coverage here. They should have taken the 2018 Schedler plan and moved on to grift/deliver their quid pro quo to the sports bunnies and silly Dads at Valley.
Hope the Diner Owner and his trio of dolts are prepared to raid their 529 funds for lawyer fees!
That’s the town of Ridgewood.. would expect nothing less! Follow the money I’m sure the soil company is related to someone
The whole show on Wednesday night was intended to showcase candidate Vagianos.
Such a shame…after all that hard work, the failed Assembly candidate is going to peak as a one-term hack mayor, one facing massive litigation.
Trenton and DC will have to wait…time to set up a tip jar at the restaurant for Paulie’s legal defense fund!
Every contribution will get you your choice of an “I Understand” or “My Three Stooges Love Trees” bumper sticker.
very much like Trump using the media as a campaign outlet during his many court appearances. Vag may not be a good mayor but he is a great spin doctor and a master at gaslighting, just like Wingrad and Weitz. Pam is just a disappointment from beginning to end. She is not malicious, just misdirected.
Literally, a comedy of errors.
An idiot festival…
Clearly the required supervision during the free dirt dumping festival was lacking and perhaps Heather was too trusting with village employees involved in this process and let engineering get away with a quick and dirty assessment of what we now know was contaminated soil. I would have assumed that the village would have really scrutinized this if indeed they expected a future park where children would be playing, no? But the idiot festival just goes on and on. Vagianos was busy bringing Primavera in to meet with the VM and engineering too, no worries about the soil I guess as his agenda and priorities were focused on just providing that sports complex as soon as possible as he promised for his buddies. Now we are in a fine mess and welcome to expensive will be the name of the game. I hope Kazmark knows what he is doing with all of these moving parts and mandates and he should ensure that there is a full investigation into each step of what happened. This is very serious now, no time for any more mistakes. People’s health may be compromised, not only village staff, but anyone living in that neighborhood.
It’s a bunch of bull shit. We are so angry about this.
An old Turkish proverb says that “When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus.” And it sheds light on many of the situations we are witnessing now. Keith Kazmark and Mayor have to go!
Who are they fooling? Matrix told VOR-Keith Kazmark and company, they sat on it for two weeks.
NJDEP got involved and that’s the only reason the VOR acted. Before that, it was all a coverup. Don’t believe for a second that their contractor didn’t try telling them from May 15 to May 29.
Keith Kazmark, “Village Manager” is a boob!
100 percent
Still no investigation?
From talking to employees that Worked on that site , They were told that the soil was tested. It was A-OK. Guess not we wonder if the mayor council health department d e p Are reaching out to employees for their health and well-being. This is going to be interesting. Let’s see if they do the right thing. There are peoples health at risk here. No one knows what the long-term effect is going to be , do we.
Listen supervision knows past and present employees that worked on that site from the street department to the water department to engineering. They should at least set up a meeting and get employees that were in the grind of that site. Is anyone Mentioning that? Has anyone reached out to all the employees cause it seems like everybody’s like hush-hush over this, when this has hit the news and it’s all over the place, it’s their responsibility, Let’s professional the Village is. Because when they are a pickle, move very slow.
Look they are trying not to get royally sued. so they are probably doing an quiet investigation pulling work records and files, seeing who has already retired and who is still an active employee and talk to their lawyers to find out what the next steps are to see if anyone can sue. As far as I know, neighbors did not receive communications but the village has told everyone not to worry so I am assuming they are not concerned. If later down the road a doctor tells you that you developed something from breathing in toxic dust or something to that effect, who knows but village probably would not approach neighbors, they’ll play it cool and probably on that front wait to get sued. It could go a lot of ways and any other know sites where potential contamination may exist, especially where children play, should be a concern. Where are the sports teams and why are they only concerned about removing the berm for a bigger field (like Winograd did on behalf of RBSA) do they not care about the health of children….shameful. Sounds like their priorities are about field size and not about public health advocacy. Welcome to stupid.
Wait until the literal and figurative dust settles on this issue and we’ll see who ends up with schmutz on their schnoz. You might be surprised (but I wont).
Does anyone know if Habernickel is a real concern?
Vagianos has no comment in recent articles. I wonder why doesn’t he usually have a lot to say? Now all of a sudden mums the word? This is going to get very interesting. This bunch will have a lot more to worry about and one can only hope that they won’t be so smug going forward. They were aware of the fact that contaminated soil might have been present and none of them did anything but try to get the project moved forward as fast as they could. For that alone, they should all be removed from their positions as they did nothing to safeguard residents and children who would have been playing on the field.
Litigation is coming. Would be very foolish to say a word from here on in, save for the tried and true pablum.
The theatrics as last week’s council meeting were a pathetic attempt to try and establish safe distance from the follies.
Get ready for a big helping of…
“I was unaware.”
“I do not recall.”
“We must get to the bottom of this.”
“That was not in our purview.”