The Ridgewood Blog Brings a Free Market Laissez-faire Point of View to Local, New Jersey State and National Issues.
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, the National Weather Service has issued a Winter Weather Advisory from 10 PM Monday to 7 PM Tuesday , snow and mixed precipitation. Slow down and use caution while traveling!
UPDATE: Due to the inclement weather, Village Offices will have a DELAYED OPENING today, Tuesday, January 16, 2024 at 10:00 am. Please be safe.
photos by Boyd Loving
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, At this time, the final leaf placement date of December 26, 2019 has passed, so no additional leaves may be placed along the curbline. Leaf collection should be completed by January 10, 2020, weather permitting.
Can we get the landscaper fees reimbursed when the town does not come close to meeting their own published schedules? Weather events happen, build some contingency in the schedule or a recovery plan. This is not rocket science.
The town missing dates is ignored, if a resident does it they get a hefty fine. Town missing dates requires added resident efforts and or landscaper costs. It also creates a driving hazard for extended periods of time
For us, this is our last winter, Ridgewood has beat us at every level from leaves to parking fees, to obscene school costs, and just amateurs running the programs that are supposed to serve the residents. Too bad
Ridgewood NJ, Its that time of the year again , “Yard Waste” season will start on April 11th in Area A. Please do not place any yard waste (branches or twigs) at the curb until your date for yard waste collection begins. The schedule is printed in the 2016 Village Calendar. The Village is divided into four areas and collection takes place at the curb following that schedule. The Recycling Center on E. Glen Avenue will take yard waste now if you want to drop it off. For further questions, please call 201/670-5585.
Dear Resident,
For those of you who have watched the 2016 budget work sessions, one of the highlights (or actually lowlights) that was discussed is the state of recycling in Ridgewood today. This is by no means a problem unique to Ridgewood.
Our curbside recycling program began in 1991. We ask our residents to separate their recycling into different streams and to use the beige recycling barrels that we provide to you. We sell our recycling products to processors and in the past have collected enough fees to significantly help in offsetting the expense of running this program. The level of fees is under siege and has actually decreased 18% over the last 3 years from $332,552 to $266,232; a further decline is anticipated in 2016.
This is not a Ridgewood-specific challenge. Based on global issues, predominantly the China crackdown dubbed Green Fence, recycling processors are finding it increasingly difficult to supply China, a major global recycling processing center, with recycling products. China is rejecting containers of waste it deems are contaminated or are not sorted appropriately.
Which brings us back to our challenge in Ridgewood……
Our recycling processor has, with little notice, tightened their standards for the product that we provide to them. We therefore must provide the recycling processor with the most pristine product that we can – this means that it is so very important that we improve the quality of our recyclables.
One particular problem is the inclusion of plastic bags with your recycling – this is not allowed. When mixed in with other recycling, plastic bags get caught in the machinery at the recycling plant at times causing the facility to shut down their sorting equipment to manually remove entangled bags. When the processor has to manually separate this material from our stream, the Village loses revenue and pays for the disposal of the material as garbage. Not intermixing plastic bags with your recycling has always been a rule since the inception of our recycling program but has not been strictly enforced because the market was accepting the product without question. Plastic bags must be placed in your trash or recycled at Stop & Shop, Whole Foods Market and Acme.
Besides not intermixing plastic bags with your recycling, you can help us even more by following good recycling practice which you can find either in the 2016 Green Guide that was mailed to your home earlier this year or on our Recycling Website or by calling us at 201-670-3373.
I have touched on the Ridgewood economic challenges above……but a crucial point is that recycling is good for our world…..this should be reason enough for us to try to do better as a community. We have also challenged our recycling team to come up with new and different ways to enhance our program. As usual, we would love to hear your ideas on this – I know that we have many residents who are passionate about this issue.
We look forward to working with you on this effort.
Best,
Roberta Sonenfeld
Village Manager
201-670-5500, ext. 203
file photo by Boyd Loving
November 23 – E Notice – Leaves by the Numbers
Dear Neighbor,
I just wanted to provide you with a status of where we are with leaves at this point in the season. As of last Friday, we collected 20,295 yards or 58% of the total yardage typically collected for the entire season. Compared to last year at this time, we have collected 6,300 yards or 18% more. This is directly related to the heavy dropping of leaves we had about 1 ½ weeks ago after the rain storm.
As a result of the above, it has been taking us a little longer (about two extra days) to finish up in an area and begin the next area. In previous communications, I have mentioned that we have had some operational issues with the new contractor we are using in Area B – although we are still monitoring him closely, he has picked up double the amount at this point in the season than last year’s contractor. Another interesting factoid is that Area B is responsible for about 35% of the total leaves that have been picked up this season.
Net-net this makes collection more cumbersome for the present time, but bodes well for the remainder of the season as the bulk of the leaves are down or have been collected; therefore the last weeks of collection should be easier. Please bear with us, as we do our best to clean up as much volume as possible before the Thanksgiving holiday. As a reminder, we will be doing a last go through after your final collection date, weather permitting. For residents who like to bag their leaves, free bags are still available for pick up at the Recycling Center.
On to another topic: violations of the leaf collection policy. As you know, we listened to you last year when you reported that your biggest issue was neighbors placing leaves out on the street outside of the permitted schedule. This is just not a safety issue and a violation of our ordinance but it is also a violation of NJ State regulations that mandate leaves cannot be put out more than 7 days prior to the scheduled collection date.
As a result, this season we started active compliance monitoring of the various areas. I think I mentioned in an earlier E-Notice that we saw a large number of violations the first weeks of the season supporting the views that you have been sharing with me. On my own block, I witnessed leaves being placed in the street two days after the collection period! We made a decision not to write summonses at that point but to issue warnings. This was also due to the fact that this violation required an in court appearance, a burden we did not want to place on our residents.
Now that we are almost through the second cycle of leaf collection, we are issuing summonses and there will unfortunately be many of them. The only fortunate news is that the Court Administrator successfully petitioned to remove the requirement for an in-court appearance.
Ridgewood is a very leafy town – we collect between 32,000-35,000 yards of leaves across 95 miles of roads – a real challenge when coupled with the vagaries of weather. I would like to continue to hear your input on enforcement as well as any other suggestions that you may have for better service. Some of you may have seen our new claw which we just introduced and which seems to be working very well – we plan on adding a second one for next leaf season. Also next season, we will also be getting a new leaf vacuum that is significantly better than the ones we are using. We did a post mortem of last season and we will do one this season – we do bring your suggestions and thoughts to those forums.
Have a happy and healthy Thanksgiving,
Roberta
Photo credit: Boyd A. Loving
Spotted on Hope Street, Ridgewood, NJ – Monday, July 20, 2015.
We all realize that the wheels of municipal government move slowly, but this is ridiculous.
Reader says the town recycled these Christmas trees and make into mulch?
Christmas Tree pick-ups.
I thought the town recycled these trees and make into mulch? We have our own giant mulcher.
So, if these trees actually went to the dump, we have to pay more “tipping” fees to the dump.
Roberta….. what’s going on?? Is this a new rule?
Reader says Tough times indeed. To make things worse, the leadership in Ridgewood has failed us miserably
Tough times indeed. To make things worse, the leadership in Ridgewood has failed us miserably. We have a trio of individuals that banded together to seek office to advance their personal agendas. Our Mayor seeks higher political office, our Deputy Mayor wants to build up the central business district and their third wheel ran to cast her vote for the Valley expansion. As a majority, they have publicly stumbled their way to ousting political adversaries. The Richie matter was embarrassing at best and their handling of the Village Manager firing was even worse. They’ve been caught having secret meetings with developers in violation of the Sunshine laws and accepting $1,000 fundraiser tickets in violation of their own gift ordinances. All they while they have failed to provide even the most basic services. They are likely learning a difficult lesson at our expense right now. We have garbage piled on top of old Christmas trees in unplowed snow banks. We have municipal workers that have never been forced to do more with less like anyone who’s worked in the private sector since 2008. We have mounting expenses being funded by tax payers that are at their breaking point. Hopefully the residents will see these 3 for what they are – individuals pursuing their personal agendas – individuals that are not at all equipped to deal with the difficult task in front of them.
