Ridgewood residents scold, praise council over handling of councilman’s work in village
Wednesday June 5, 2013, 10:02 PM
BY CHRIS HARRIS
STAFF WRITER
The Record
RIDGEWOOD — There were two types of resident opinions at Wednesday night’s Village Council work session: those disgusted by Councilman Thomas Riche’s recently revealed and longstanding business relationship with Ridgewood, and those disgusted with the council’s handling of the matter at a previous meeting.
“It was disgraceful,” said Lorraine Reynolds, referencing the council’s May 22 discussion, which focused on Riche’s North Haledon-based Extel Communications and the 14 years of work it has performed for the village.
Since the 1970s, Ridgewood’s code has barred village officers or employees, “elected or appointed, paid or unpaid,” from being “interested, directly or indirectly, in any contract with the village for work done or for materials or supplies furnished.” Yet, Extel Communications, which provides telecommunications equipment and service, has been performing work for the village since “before Floyd,” according to Riche, referring to the 1999 tropical storm.
Riche was first elected to the council in 1998 and served until 2002. He was reelected in 2010 after several years on the Planning Board.
If a councilman was a vendor to the village there was a problem or dissatisfaction with the product it would be very intimidating for the employee to complain about it when the vendor votes on your promotions and pay raises, this occurs whether or not the councilman votes on the contract award. This is where the real conflict of interest arises , that’s why council people should not be vendors
I think pretty much everyone agrees with #1.
The main issue here is that this has been a PUBLIC inquisition in which all the documents were not available up front and the clear purpose was to malign Mr. Riche rather than to solve the problem. Our Mayor, Deputy Mayor, and Councilwoman Hauck have shown themselves to be nasty and bullying and therin lies the huge problem with our Council. The innuendos and outright accusations coming from the three of them are beyond inappropriate. They have absolutely no business running our town and representing our interests. I think they are trying to intimidate Mr. Riche into resigning his position so they can have even more control, especially with the Valley issue coming up.
The large array of citizens who spoke against their horrible behavior on Wednesday night was really impressive. It was not one or two naysayers, but a long line of people. Some spoke more eloquently than others, but all of them used very harsh adjectives like despicable, disgusting, shameful, and more. Contrary to any reports, there were only two who spoke against Mr. Riche, the rest were bashing the Council for their mismanagement of this situation. Hauck even suggested that people in the audience were being hurtful to her with their statements, seriously, this is not about hurt feelings but about publicly maligning a man when it should have been handled in private. Between Hauck’s fragile composure on the verge of tears and Pucciarelli’s big fat ego trying to save face and Aronsohn’s bulldog tactics to press forward at all costs, it amounted to a colossal mess.
The people of Ridgewood are sick of Aronsohn, Pucciarelli, and Hauck.