>This was in the Record as an editorial.
As the institution that provides parking for events at George Washington Middle School in Ridgewood, the West Side Presbyterian Church is used to large events there. The recent Planning Board meeting at George Washington was peculiar and seemed, to the church management, to be set up for confrontation and anger.
Why was the meeting suddenly (from our perspective) moved from the larger venue with parking to the smaller venue without parking? Since it would be providing parking, why wasn’t the church informed? We read about it in the paper on Monday morning, then scrambled to make as much parking as possible available. Two events were scheduled at the church that night, so we could not have accommodated the overflow from George Washington.
We asked the village for police help to direct traffic, which would have maximized our parking and assured safety. Our request was refused. For a meeting of this sort, would not police support just be a given? It should have been in the plan from the beginning to have village police there, without having to call in police from other agencies in such a dramatic fashion.
We have never before seen a crowd not allowed into the George Washington School. There are massive meetings at George Washington requiring use of the entire parking lot and the field below our Youth Barn in addition to neighborhood parking.
For the June 21 meeting, was it not possible to televise the meeting in the dining hall so people could be inside? Any attempt at accommodation could have worked wonders in defusing an ugly situation. Creating a crowd outside, as happened June 21, invited a riot.
From the church’s perspective across the street, the whole thing seemed to be designed to be confrontational. This is probably not the case, but we are curious why this was so different from every other large event.
Kent Smith
Ridgewood, June 28
The writer is a pastor at the West Side Presbyterian Church in Ridgewood.
