file photo by Boyd Loving
January 21,2016
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, It is remarkable how rude Gwenn, Albert, and Paul are. Not just this week, not just this month, not just any current issue. This has been going on for as long as they have been in office. They were wildly inappropriate to Tom Riche, to Bernadette Walsh, to Ken Gabbert, to John Ward, to Susan Knudsen, to Mike Sedon, to Heather Mailander…..and these are just the elected officials and employees to whom their wrath has been directed. Then we have citizens who come to meetings that they lash out at, and indeed THREATEN. What the heck? How in the world do they get away with this?
And then there are the more subtle (well, less subtle than yelling, but still clearly wrong) incivilities, such as:
1. not allowing anyone to ask a question – or staring mutely while questions are asked, promising to answer them at the end, and then never answering them.
2. telling a nervous first-time citizen YOU ONLY HAVE FIVE MINUTES TO SPEAK AND DON’T ASK ANY QUESTIONS, thus making the person feel like they have already done something wrong before they even get to the podium.
3. allowing some residents to speak well after the buzzer goes off, but stopping others in mid-sentence when the 5 minutes is up.
4. talking among themselves when a resident that they do not like is speaking. (such private side-bar conversations, by the way, are a VIOLATION of the open public meetings act)
5. leaving the dais to talk to someone in the audience or in the hallway, thereby indicating to whatever member of the public who is at the podium that their words are not worth listening to.
6. not bothering to reply to the emails of certain residents
7. interrupting speakers they do not like, thus getting the speaker off base and thus cutting into the speaker’s allotted time.
8. texting while on the dais, yes, we see you doing this, thereby breaking their own rules and at the same time indicating that whoever is speaking is not worth listening to.
9. loudly popping open soda cans and eating during meetings. Really? You are up there chewing and slurping when a meeting is going on. Come on, no one on the dais is starving. Hold off on your dining until you are home. Can’t do without food for a few hours? Really
Add to the list #10: Consistently mischaracterizing comments made by those who do have the courage to speak out. E.g., when Ms. Sonenfeld said that a resident had accused her of bullying her subordinates when he said nothing of the kind.
They beat Tom Riche to a pulp one year, then award his firm a contract 2 years later. Proving that their entire beef with him was all politically motivated bullshit in the first place.
And to accuse Bernie Walsh of trying to get a parking ticket fixed? Come on now Paulie; you can do better than that.
The three stooges what would you expect.
More like The Three Horsemen of the Apocalypse
Roberta is right up there with the three of them, or should I say right down there with the three of them, at the lowest level of absolute incivility. Horrible
Do as I command (er, I mean, as I say)…