November 20,2017
the staff of the Ridgewood Blog
Ridgewood NJ, Months after Thomas Rica (while employed by the Village of Ridgewood his supervisor was Village Engineer Christopher Rutishauser) plead guilty to stealing almost 1/2 million dollars in coins from the Village of Ridgewood over a two (2) year period, employees of the Village’s Signal Division (under the leadership of the same Christoper Rutishauser) were observed collecting coins from parking meters in empty, unsecured pickle buckets.
When asked during an open public meeting of the Village Council why no state of the art security measures had been added to the coin collection & storage processes, particularly in light of Mr. Rica’s actions, Village CFO Robert G. Rooney said that such security measures would be “too expensive.” Furthermore, all attempts made in recent years by Village Council members to replace coin operated parking meters with multi-payment method kiosks have been met with strong opposition from Mr. Rutishauser and his organization(s).
Now, is it just me, or doesn’t this all strike you as a bit odd?
1) Almost 1/2 million in coins goes missing because of an “inside job,” but it’s too expensive to install state of the art security measures? WTF? Are you for real Mr. Rooney? Frankly, I’m surprised the Village’s insurance company didn’t mandate stronger security measures after paying out over 3/4 million dollars to settle the claim. Absolutely unbelievable. And if that isn’t a joke in and of itself,
2) The leader of the department responsible for collecting cash from parking meters and placing it in storage strongly opposes any attempts on the part of elected officials to cut the number of meters and introduce kiosks that accept alternate forms of payment (credit and debit cards)? Hmm. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Is someone trying to prevent the end of a gravy train?
