Ridgewood NJ, It was a long night and long agenda at last night council meeting. Yes , some readers suspect the Honeymoon is over. It also seems that after spending in excess of six hundred thousand dollars on plans, study and test for the Hudson Street garage some council members seem to want to build it somewhere else. Perhaps the Walnut St lot and the Town Garage property. We wonder if the expense of purchasing the Town Garage and the environmental clean up of that property will cost the Village tax payers.
However we can not blame the new council for trying to clean up the mess of the former council after all the “3 amigos” were voted in by residents so the residents are in essence cleaning up the mess they created .And this mess is a very big mess !
The Board of Trustees of the Library are back with force. We now have council members talking about a performing arts center next to the library. What will be the cost to the taxpayers to build, staff and maintenance for this building. Maybe this new council should complete on thing before moving on to other projects and they should remember that they have a fiduciary responsible to ALL residence .
As NJPAC’s total expenses grew, so did its state funding. The annual grant from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts increased from $750,000 in 1999 to a peak of $1.7 million in 2005, before falling back to $1.1 million this year.In contrast, NJPAC’s expenses for artistic programming have remained flat. In 1999, the arts center spent $10.6 million on concerts and other events, and according to its tax returns it recently spent $10.9 million..
Ridgewood NJ Just a few points about the March 2nd Village meeting:
1. Albert sent an email to a resident during the meeting. This is strictly forbidden according to a resolution that he himself penned, as follows:
Resolution 13-87 (April 24, 2013), item #4 reads as follows:
Telephonic or electronic communication between or among Councilmembers or between a Councilmember and a member of the public during public meetings is prohibited.
As soon as he realized his gaffe, Albert made a big point of saying that this is THE FIRST TIME EVER that he has sent an email during a meeting to a “member of the public” other than his family. Evidently colleagues on the dais and members of his family are not considered to be members of the public. Or, maybe the Deputy Mayor considers himself to be above his own rules.
2. The Deputy Mayor got nasty with a member of the public who questioned the accuracy of one of the renditions of the new garage plan. The resident had not only questioned the depiction, but had also questioned whether this misrepresentation might have been intentional. Mr. Pucciarelli referred to the resident’s email as STUPID and announced that he deleted it immediately. Instead of actually looking at the resident’s suggestions, he just discarded it and then was insulting about it.
3. They voted 5-0 to go forward with bonding in-town, which will be a final hearing on the 23. They voted 2 in favor (Susan and Michael) and 3 opposed to killing the ordinance to bond with the BCIA. Aronsohn made it abundantly clear that he will barrel ahead with the BCIA if the in-town bonding does not go through. So the terrible three are keeping “parallel” tracks open so they can get the garage one way or another.
