Ridgewood NJ, The Ridgewood Village Council approved changes to the planned parking garage on Hudson Street by a 3-2 vote Wednesday night.
In the “newest version” of the Hudson Street Parking Garage ,residents were told the reduced size garage would provide close to 325 parking spots and will be 43 feet tall. The foot print of controversial structure will now be no more than 5 feet over the property line with Hudson Street will be slightly reduced in width but will stay at lest 25 feet wide so it will be able to maintain the three lanes, two for traffic and one for parking. The mystery of coarse is that no actual garage drawings were shown.
The encroachment onto Hudson street has become one of the most divisive issues surrounding the garage causing concern from Our Lady of Mount Carmel parishioners and many residents who voiced concerns over traffic congestion, fire safety as well the feeling the encroachment seemed very well concealed from referendum voters.
I think Boyd Loving summed it up best when he recounted the story of how he met his wife – His best friend from grammar school through high school came to him 41 years ago and said he’d met a girl that Boyd would probably want to marry someday. Boyd’s first question to his friend was “Well, what does she look like?” In short, it is insane to expect the public, especially property owners near Hudson Street, to wholeheartedly embrace the “revised” garage plan without first seeing what the hell it looks like.
Many felt that ,”To have the council vote on a design that doesn’t exist and to have our village manager justify the benefits of going to County is within the realm of farce.” , “Spin, subterfuge and slander are what I witnessed last night.”
It seemed that most resident questioned the amount of the change orders for the new plan. They also wanted to see the new design which was not available. Susan and Mike wanted some time to digest the new plan and speak to neighbors. So did most residents but the Council Majority were in a rush.
How the Chief Finance Officer replies to a resident who understands some numbers : https://www.tubechop.com/watch/7641044
Legit or not residents remained very skeptical with the BCIA funding . The biggest issue was going through BCIA (besides not seeing the actual garage drawings)…even if the Council assumptions on rate savings are correct and the bond through BCIA vs bonding ourselves is a wash we create 2 problems by doing this:
1) give up additional revenue by not being about to charge out of town commuters more
2) create more out of town commuter traffic to the lot that actually takes away parking spaces for residents
Just seems stupid , the BCIA gets hundreds of thousands in fees (great deal for them), and we get more commuter traffic that we don’t get to charge a premium for.
The Deputy Mayor who previously lost his temper and made threats at a previous council meeting now has a problem in recording the public meetings. Councilmen Mike Sedon stated that the NJ Law allows one party consent for recording, and Matt Rogers stated that as per the case laws, courts have allowed anyone to record a public meeting . Deputy Mayor pushed his dissent and stated that he is going to introduce an ordinance to limit it.
Here is the link – fast forward to 4h9m54s