Tag: Ridgewood’s Mayor

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Councilman Voigt’s accusations against Ridgewood’s Mayor made after the Mayor was already cleared

Jeff Voigt Ridgewood Council

file photo by Boyd Loving

COUNCILMAN VOIGT’S ACCUSATIONS AGAINST MAYOR WERE FALSE!!!

December 28,2016

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

In regards to Councilman Voigt’s accusation against Mayor Knudsen, “Based on the facts and circumstances presented, there was no violation of the law/Faulkner Act.”

During closed sessions, in November, Mayor was cleared of all wrong doing. In December, Councilman Voigt publicly accused Mayor Knudsen of breaking the law.  At the time he made this accusation he knew it was untrue. With malice and intent he stated it loudly, clearly, and rudely during a public meeting. A week later, in a room full of firefighters waiting to be promoted, he blew his top again. This time, Councilman Voigt had a message for residents about his ruthless attacks, “I can’t and won’t apologize. I don’t intend to and I just want to make sure people know that.” As if that wasn’t enough, he then turned to social media to expand his smear campaign and started a movement to talk about Mayor Knudsen, behind closed doors, with residents.

We now have documentation that Mayor Knudsen did not break the law. What we do not have is any sort of explanation, apology, motivation, or contrition from Councilman Voigt regarding this malicious character assassination. Why is he so loud when lying, and so silent when faced with the truth?

The question now is, why did Councilman Voigt lie and stoop to such levels; slander, libel, defamation and intentional malice? Why is Mayor Knudsen his target?

Document posted to Facebook, on “It Takes a Ridgewood Village” group, December 28.

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Ridgewood’s Mayor Plans A Major End-Run Around the Local Bond Law !

Paul_Aronsohn_theridgewood blog
file photo of Mayor Paul Aronsohn 
December 5,2015

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Readers say Record Article Paints and Inaccurate Picture of Hudson Parking Garage Meeting

Ridgewood NJ, the question was asked “Could you say more about what is inaccurate in the article? I wasn’t able to attend the meeting and only saw about 15 minutes of the video stream. I believe of the three public comments I saw, two were in favor of Option C/No Garage, and one was in favor Option A.”Inaccurate –

1. one sentence about public comment at the very end of the article, when the public spoke for hours.
2. indicates that most favor plan A, when many public members spoke about related issues and not about which plan they favor. No discussion of related concerns.
3. completely omitted that Mayor Aronsohn intends to disregard the STATE law and do an end-run around the requirement that FOUR council members must vote for a bond. In the event that two decide not to vote for the bond, Aronsohn will go directly to the county to get them to issue the bond. He has already met with them and already has this in place with them just waiting for his call. This is despicable. Gwenn and Albert are going right along with this. Even though it is LEGAL to do this, it is completely disrespectful to our local government and flies in the face of the spirit of good governance.

Local Bond Law N.J.S.A. 40A:2-1 et seq. November, 2009 Page 1 Local Bond Law N.J.S.A. 40A:2
A bond ordinance shall be finally adopted by the recorded affirmative votes of at least 2/3 of the full membership of the governing body. In a local unit in which the approval of any officer is required to make an ordinance or resolution effective, such bond ordinance shall be so approved, or passed over veto before it shall be published after final adoption.

This law, above, is a state law and requires 2/3 majority to issue a bond. Three out of five is only a 60% majority. Here goes out elected officials all set up to break the law.

The public comments were certainly not “binary”, and the council’s opinion wasn’t really the focus of the time.
Would Ridgewood be “legally on the hook” for any bond the county issued? I agree that seems like a major end-run around the law!

The actual council session is available here online: https://www.ustream.tv/channel/village-of-ridgewood-public-access