We have a five-person council who are all independent thinkers, are polite, considerate, and they don’t interrupt each other at meetings. They are actually prepared for meetings (well, Susan and Mike always were, but now they are joined by three more who are equally informed and have done their homework). Now more nonsense like we used to have with Albert pontificating about anything and everything just to hear himself speak, and Gwenn reading from her ipad something that someone else wrote, and Paul furiously texting with Paul Vaggianos (yes, we witnessed this many times) during meetings and then giving us the doe-in-the-headlights look while saying “transparency, transparency, transparency.”
This new Council has been in place just since July 1, but so far they have accomplished volumes including that they:
1. are going to lengthen the time for public comments.
2. are respectful of members of the public who come to speak
3. overturned the much-hated Ordinance 3066
4. stopped the ridiculous Van Neste proposal
5. are going to prevent puppy-mill and kitten-mill animals from being sold in Ridgewood
6. are looking at many (and reasonable) ways to improve and increase the parking
7. are saving the Schedler House
8. will be putting grant money (hopefully) towards remediating Kings Pond
9. will be repealing the illegal ordinance that tried to prevent people from videotaping public meetings (put in place because hot-headed Aronsohn got caught getting nasty at an HPC meeting)
10. have hired a new Planning Board attorney (ok, so the VC didn’t do this, but it is yet another wonderful new development)
11. will be lowering the overkill lighting at Habernickel Park to be consistent with other parks and in response to the neighbors’ legitimate concerns about this ridiculous flood lighting
12. discovered that the extraordinarily cumbersome and confusing leaf collection process that Roberta put in place was based, in part, on a 7-day rule that has not been effective for a couple of years. So now they are putting a smooth and simple leaf collection schedule up and we can stop hearing about “no leaf left behind.”
13. will be revising the prohibition of parking on Pomander Walk, which is discriminatory and was put in place to serve Gwenn’s friends on that street.
well put. finally a mayor and council that actually does what they were elected to do which is represent the people of Ridgewood.
Why must we continue with pictures of the three stooges they are gone?
Yes, yes, and YES! Things are finally getting done. And they are getting done in public. And with civility. No pre-,setting meetings at which the tthe amigos would decide their majority vote in advance of any discussion.
Well how much did you LOVE it last night when Jeff Voigt made a joke about Dana being a terrorist. Gwenn, did you hear that? Do you possibly realize what an iidiot you sounded like that night???
There is now civility and transparency simply because we have good people on the dais. Aronsohn talked about civility and transparency until he was drooling, but he was the antithesis of both. And we have pleasant humor too. All in all, meetings are great and things are being accomplished. Way to go.
And grants will be applied for correctly, legally, with public hearings, and without a shady village manager signing off on things that are untrue and did not happen. Roberta was the worst, I tell you, the worst.
11:39: Gabbert did it also. New manager must be warned off any such shenanigans. Fricke must be removed so that new person is not led astray.
Puppy mills? Really that is one of the important accomplishments?
Yeah Brian, that one jumped out to this commenter too. Sounds a little “crunchy”, but hey, we can’t spend all our time jousting about the fine points of municipal bonds and architectural surveys, now can we? OTOH, we do need to watch out for stuff like that green bike lane that got foisted on us. That crunchy idea flew through the council when Bernie was on it the last time. If memory serves she went along with the idea. So our municipal public servants can go wobbly and need to be watched pretty carefully most all of the time. Even with this murderer’s row of fine Village Councilors we have voted in, the VC is bound to play a wrong note now and again. They need and deserve regular feedback from ordinary residents and healthy doses of unvarnished public opinion to stay on track.
I watch the meeting.
It was a long, boring meeting covering dry dull topics of local municipal interest.
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In a word, it was PERFECT.
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12:59 while your at it why don’t you bring up Bush and what he did. It seem that when people try to defend Roberta there are some that bring up Gabbert to deflect from the current problem. He’s been gone .
Two thing could be added to the above list.
1 Change the name of Habernickel Park to something else. Residents pay good tax dollars to Irene . She did not donate it.
2 Check the legality of all planters in the CBD.
Left off this list was limiting political signs. It seems like they are trying to actually solve that question and come up with a policy that is allowed by the courts and which limits the crazy number of signs we saw recently. lets see what they come up with…
Wasn’t 3066 repealed last night? Should be on top of that list.
6:20 it is in there
Something that I thought was so telling about the Roberta / Aronson apologists at last night’s meeting was their praise for Roberta – – their central theme was that we were so luck to have her because she was not a drunk or an out of towner like past Village Managers.
The main issue with political signs is the business district displays. Not sure about this, but enforcement of the sign ordinance seemed to depend on whether the sign in question was a blandishment for an issue or candidate near and dear to Comrade Aronsohn’s heart.
7:45–Thats not actually true. All signs were allowed. That was the problem. Too many signs. And the ordinance they are considering Mike Sedon implied would prevent homeowners from placing signs within the “public right of way in their own front yard.” Not sure what he meant. Bottom line, it is a tricky issue and I am very happy that the council is considering it thoroughly instead of just reacting to the problem and creating more problems down the road.
What’s really concerning is that these supporters of Roberta, et al is their acceptance of government that proclaims transparency yet goes to great lengths to lie and trick residents. Regardless if you really want a garage or high density apartments, tolerating the lies, deception and trickery makes you compliant. Actually, many of these supporters went to great lengths to assist Roberta, Paul, etc. because they wanted to ‘win’ the garage issue, etc. These supporters are no better, and their display of loyalty to the dishonest, lack of integrity regime that is gone is pretty pathetic. Thank goodness the majority of people are not like these supporters. Good prevails.
So if the only two good things you can say about Roberta is that she was not a drunk and that she lived in town, well, that pretty much says it all. She sucked at the job.