Tag: parking

Ridgewood NJ, For years now we’ve heard the Aronsohn administration’s head cheerleader, Village Manager Roberta Sonenfeld, go on at nauseam about the importance of improving parking opportunities in the Village.  We’ve listened to Ms. Sonenfeld, Mayor Paul Aronsohn and current Ridgewood Chamber of Commerce Presidnet Paul Vagianos proclaim at meeting after meeting why the availability of downtown parking is so crutial to the existence of RIdgewood’s business community.  Nothing, they say, is more important to keeping existing Ridgewood businesses alive, and attracting new businesses to the Village, than maximizing parking opportunities.  All of us have been led to believe that unless more parking opportunities are created, downtown Ridgewood will eventually become a ghost town.

So I ask, if the availability of parking is indeed so critical to the success of business in Ridgewood, why wasn’t snow cleared from every available parking space in the Central Business District prior to the start of business on Monday?  The snow stopped falling at approximately 8 PM on Saturday – Portions of several municipal lots were still snow covered as of 3 PM on Tuesday.  Metered parking spaces on Godwin Avenue and on Franklin Avenue were still inaccessible as of 6 PM on Monday.  Metered parking spaces on Oak Street were still being cleared on Tuesday morning.

It is certainly understandable that the Village’s first priority was to clear traveled roadways, especially those near schools and medical facilities, and to ensure the safe egress of emergency vehicles in and out of their garages/headquarters locations.  I also understand that there are a limited number of Village employees and limited pieces of Village owned snow removal equipment.  But why where there no contractors called in to work exclusively on the removal of snow to facilitate downtown business operations, with a target of getting everything cleared out prior to the start of Monday morning business operations?  And why weren’t contractor resources directed to remove snow from the Route 17 Park & Ride?  Governor Chrisie encouraged commuters to leave their vehicles at home and take mass transit – that’s not easily accomplished if you can’t park your vehicle at a mass transit departure point.

Clearly, someone dropped the ball here.  Contractors should have been placed on standby in the event the snowfall was too much for our own employees to handle.  And I hope that Ms. Sonenfeld doesn’t use the lame excuse that contractors cost money – we’re prepared to spend over $12 million to improve parking opportunities, but won’t spend peanuts to remove snow from parking places?  Give me a break!

I strongly encourage Village officials to be prepared for the next “big one.”  Their lack of attention with respect to clearing snow from existing parking spaces suggests to me that all the talk about needing more parking is nothing more than a bunch of rhetoric.