Concerns about hospital proposal

To the editor:

At two recent Planning Board meetings, residents were invited to share their concerns about Valley Hospital’s expansion proposal. This letter roughly reiterates my statement on May 20.

A child says, “I want a pony.” The parent says, “How about a puppy — or a guppy?”

Child’s counteroffer: “How about a slightly smaller pony with setbacks and an above-ground parking lot?”

The family doesn’t spend eight years discussing where a horse could be stabled or what it would eat. Just: “No pony.”

Valley Hospital’s revised proposal is a slightly smaller pony.

In the past 42 years I have entered Valley as an inpatient, outpatient, parent and visitor. But Valley feels less caring to me now. Our community has been treated with contempt by our community hospital, marketing madly with millions saved in taxes on the backs of this community. What began as David and Goliath morphed into David and Godzilla.

I feel perplexed as my neighbors must repeatedly remind our elected and appointed officials that we love our village, begging them not to destroy it in the name of progress or for fear of litigation.

I feel alarmed that almost every year a new group of residents has felt compelled to band together to protest the handing over of our public lands and space.

I feel betrayed by our Board of Education, who wimped out when they should have spoken out.

I feel dismayed that this issue has overshadowed five council elections.

Ridgewood neighborhoods are adjacent to schools, fields, parks, shops and a hospital. We lived in harmony for many years. That delicate balance must return.

Several decades ago the late Barney Van Dyk told me that he wanted to include indoor seating in his ice cream store, nestled among homes on Ackerman Avenue. But he graciously accepted the zoning board’s refusal, understanding that zoning laws protect residents. Ice cream is still eaten in the parking lot.

We have no dearth of fine hospitals. Even New York is coming: Memorial Sloan-Kettering in Basking Ridge and in the fall, physicians’ offices in Paramus for the Hospital for Special Surgery.

Village Planner Blais Brancheau’s recent report said Phase 2 of the hospital expansion might not happen. Of course it would, as would Phase 3, causing decades of unstoppable derangement — a tax-exempt Juggernaut that no wall, buffer or traffic island could mitigate.

– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/opinion/opinion-letters-to-the-editor/letter-concerns-about-hospital-proposal-1.1030466#sthash.qhqYB8WM.dpuf