July 18,2017
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, What is most troubling to people is the amount of money that is being spent on the buying of the Elks to house the water dept. Why wouldn’t the village move the dept. to the Gatehouse at Habernickle Park? The village already owns the gatehouse and since we as taxpayers just spend $20,000 for new steps and handicap ramp why not use it to better our own village departments?
Instead we rent it to a business for $3,700 a month plus included in that rent is free garbage pick up, 12 parking spots, a plot of land for a garden (which would cost a resident $10,00 a year in taxes) free advertising on village parks and rec site, video cameras that feed to police and village hall, parks and rec continually at her beck and call and police needed to monitor the park for Healthbarn. All of which is added costs and taking away village employees to monitor a help a business that doesn’t not benefit the residents at all. Having it at a park only adds more cars to this area and makes it harder or spots team to park for events.
This is a FOR PROFIT business which is only taking business from our own programs offered through Parks and Rec. Why does the village continue to advertise for Healthbarn on the the village site? The Village offers most of the same programs as Healthbarn so it’s only hurting Parks and rec bottom line ultimately effecting the tax payers of Ridgewood. It’s crazy to think the Village is that stupid to allow tax dollars to be spent so carelessly on a business that doesn’t share it’s profits with the village.
So why is the Village when it’s said and done going to be spending upwards of $3MILLION dollars to move the water dept to the old VFW? It would be cheaper to remove Healthbarn and have the Water dept or another village sponsored program use the Gatehouse. Let’s try to save tax dollars and not continue to burden the residents by raising the taxes for things like this.
