Mass Email Blast in Support of New Village Manager Raises Eyebrows
From: Nancy Johansen
Date: March 6, 2014, 5:24:39 PM EST
Subject: Ridgewood’s New Village Manager
Reply-To: nancy.johansen@optimalpartners.com
Good evening! You may hear through the grapevine that Ridgewood has offered Roberta Sonenfeld the position of Village Manager. Here’s a link to a Bergen Record story on her upcoming appointment:
https://bit.ly/1hR4MbJ.
This is a bold pick for Ridgewood and one that may get some discussion in the coming days. I have gotten to know Roberta well and I wanted to share some facts about her so you can make up your own minds.
Roberta has incredibly deep professional experience improving organizations by focusing on customer service and streamlining operations. At one point in her financial services career she had a team in excess of 2,000 people reporting to her. She has managed budgets five times greater than the budget of the village. Often during her career she was asked to take on new challenges and always excelled.
Success in that career has given her the flexibility to apply those skills in public service.
If you volunteer your time in Ridgewood chances are you know Roberta too. She is Vice President of both the Ridgewood Education Foundation and the Volunteer Center of Bergen County. She is also on the Board of the Ridgewood Historical Society. She participated in Bergen LEADS a premier civic leadership program for adults who live and work in Bergen County and as a result has a broad network throughout the county. I have worked closely with her on the Financial Advisory Committee where she has served as the vice chair. She is engaged in our community in a way that demonstrates her commitment to keeping Ridgewood great.
Finally, Roberta is one of our neighbors. She and her family have lived in the village for 17 years, she pays taxes in the village and her daughter graduated from Ridgewood schools.
These are challenging times for towns in New Jersey that will require strong leadership and creativity. We need someone who can improve services while staying focused on the budget, someone with an open mind without preconceived notions on solutions, someone that knows the village and the people that live here. Roberta is the right person at the right time for Ridgewood village manager.
Feel free to pass this email to anyone that you think would like this information and please let me know if you have any questions.
Best,
Nancy
It’s certainly no surprise that Ms. Sonenfeld is a faithful Democrat. She happily took a pound of flesh out of Lonegan this past August:
__________________________________________________________
Forget color, Lonegan is just out of touch
Regarding “Lonegan defiant on race tweet” (Page A-3, Aug. 11):
The Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, Steve Lonegan, has refused to apologize for a campaign aide’s racist tweet (although he did order it to be removed) depicting a map of Newark replaced with African, Middle Eastern and South American countries indicating that this was Cory Booker’s “foreign policy debate prep.”
But almost as disturbing is his comment, “I have a handicap you know. I am a white guy running in the state of New Jersey.”
Has he failed to notice the overwhelming number of whites in political positions in the state, beginning with the governor? This combined with his anti-choice, anti-sane gun-control, anti-Sandy relief and anti-global-warming views places Lonegan in the extreme right wing of the American political scene.
He even questioned whether his Republican primary opponent, Alieta Eck, belonged in the Republican Party. Lonegan will lose to Democrat Cory Booker in October by a landslide. Not because he is white, but because he is out of touch with a vast number of New Jerseyans, including moderate Republicans.
Roberta Sonenfeld
Ridgewood, Aug. 13
– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/opinions/219723491_The_Record__Letters__Thursday__Aug__15.html#sthash.pA0LWs3G.dpuf
_______________________________________
Sounds like she was dead on with the Lonegan letter.
Except Lonegan got more votes than Romney, was 100% right on Obamacare , lost by a very small margin to a very well financed Booker with all the out of state money , and on top of that Senator in Hiding Booker has been a complete zero for New Jersey , but what else is new
“This combined with his anti-choice, anti-sane gun-control, anti-Sandy relief and anti-global-warming views places Lonegan in the extreme right wing of the American political scene.”
“Anti-choice”: Ms. Sonenberg plainly considers pro-life individuals to be extremists. Does she intend to give local Catholics in Ridgewood a firm come-uppance when she gets the chance? There are a lot of us…
“anti-sane gun-control”: Does Ms. Sonenberg favors violating the Second Amendment so long as the law is otherwise “sane?”
“anti-Sandy relief”: Does Ms. Sonenberg favors bloated, pork-filled bills as long as they are at least nominally related to helping storm victims?
….AND….
“anti-global warming”: Will Ms. Sonenberg be among those who proudly and fearlessly man the parapets at the environmentalists’ version of the Alamo when it eventually becomes clear to truly reasonable individuals that “Anthropogenic Global Warming” caused by carbon dioxide emissions represents one of the biggest and most expensive scientific hoaxes in all of human history?
Say what you will of Lonegan’s style, his substance is solid, and his thinking was and remains sound. He absolutely eviscerated Booker on the subject of abortion at the debates, saving his big ammo for the second and final debate at which he characterized partial birth abortion as “barbaric” and allowed viewers to conclude for themselves what to think of Booker, who fully supports such procedures.
Newark is in shambles and the only credit I give Booker is for good timing in hightailing it out of town before being indicted. Readers of the Ridgewood Blog who are hazy about Booker’s record should read the New York Times’ recent kiss-off of Booker, provided in a news article authored on March 4 by Michael Powell (Thanks for nothing Michael! Could have used it before the October election!):
https://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2014/03/04/NYT-Tears-Absentee-Landlord-Cory-Booker-Apart-For-Embarrassing-Newark-Record
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/04/nyregion/leaders-words-dont-tell-the-real-story.html?_r=1
This blog has seen its share of commenters whose entire reason for being seems to be to posit that there is some sort of “lunatic fringe” in Ridgewood and that it is populated by math moms, conservatives, or anybody else who gets in the way of what the Board of Education, the Village Council, and their statist sycophants feel like doing to transform our way of life from the top down. Ridgewood residents should do whatever they need to do to reveal the baseless, corrosive nature of that frame of mind, ignore attacks designed to tamp down debate and foster mind-numbed support for power-hungy elected and appointed government ‘leaders’, and proudly assert themselves by exercising their small share of the sovereignty that was clearly retained by We the People of the United States when we adopted our current form of government.
So Nancy–how’s that for a Tea Party rant?
That having been said, I wish her luck and I’m sure she’ll do just fine as Village Manager. Really–I do, and I am! I figured the three amigos would try to haul someone in from out-of-town whose partisan progressive credentials were impeccable and would shamelessly do their bidding, but I suppose it will be hard for them to force a long-time village resident with a background of business success to embarrass herself on their behalf.
you realize you just turned her into a political hack ,offering nothing of any value to Ridgewood , as a Village Manager residents are interested in her money management and budgeting abilities ,none of this other nonsense means anything to property tax payers
Sounds like we have a great Village Manager – best wishes !
Who gives a crap about Lonegan or what she had to say about him, it has nothing to do with her new position.
James, either she is a political hack, or she isn’t. Nothing I can say will cause her to change her stripes.
From what I’ve seen of Ms. Sonenfeld’s background, she may have a left-of-center political perspective, which I regret, but she’s solid in other areas. I might say that people should be more moderate, or at least more thoughtful, in their statements, though, particularly if they are in a position to be asked to take a non-partisan position that obliges them to serve people of all kinds, faithfully and without bias or prejudice. But in the heat of a political campaign, things get said, both in letters-to-the-editor (Sonenfeld) AND in response to a reporter’s question (Lonegan) that could be phrased better and that don’t necessarily prove that the person has a ‘dark heart.’
She looks like nobody’s fool. I like the fact that she lives in Ridgewood. The last VM had split municipal loyalties (which caused problems during the aftermath of a big storm), and a regional political reputation to cultivate that had nothing to do with Ridgewood. I say this even though I might have had more in common with the earlier VM politically.
She will become the best Village Mgr. in years.
so be fair and stop your belly aching.
Dom your nose is getting brown
yes “News Watcher” how the kool aid ?
People are criticizing her and she hasn’t even started. Give her a chance and do not prejudge.
Lonegan is a fringe politician. He does. Ot matter at all in Ridgewood.
we all will see. as long as no one screws with my services. right.
Bring in the flat tax increase and increase services to the residential taxpayers and she can run for governor.
The bigger issue is that this candidate seems to be not qualified to run a large town like Ridgewood. She has no experience as a Boro Manager and zero experience in government. Its clear she is just someones friend. While she may have lots of friends, that is not the best reason to hire anyone. How about qualifications? What about all of the nearly 100 other resumes that were sent it. Does she have a B.A. or CFO liscense? What does the state of NJ require all the certifications, when the town hires a well known volunteer. Being a Officer at Deutsche Bank is not a true qualification. Also what is her current paid position. There seems to be more qualified people out there. Why the sudden rush?
Please let’s all just give our new VM a chance. Who cares whether she does not have Municipal experience. What we need is a strong professional manager who has managed large numbers of people and large budgets. Roberta has done both…..and from what I hear she has done both very successfully. With her Wall St background she knows how to push and push hard to bring much needed fiscal reform to the Village. As a strong executive in my hunch is she will do what all senior exec’s do in the private sector……..namely she will want to build her own management team. In the not too distant future I predict you will see a wave of “retirements” among current Village Department Heads. You can’t have change until you change those who are resistant to change.
high sal
the flat tax is not the way to go.