Those who attended the hearings could easily reach the opinion that Arohnson sold the Village out to the developers. He pushed for a a formula where the Village allowed land speculators and developers to build 85 regular market units for every 15 coah compliant units. Do the math – – under the Aronson Plan, if the Village was ordered by the Courts to build 150 units, then the developers would be allowed to build 1000 apartments in town. And because the Village may need to build as many as 500 coah units (or even 1,000 according to some attorneys) then under the Arohnson formula, the town would have to let the developers build 5,000 to 10,000 units in total. Think about it, that’s 5,000 to 10,000 new families moving into town. The developers were licking their chops over the stupidity of the Aronson formula and the opportunity to start to apply it to properties throughout the town.
The new council quickly moved to kill some of the enabling legislation behind the Aronson plan. But, frankly, its not clear they have done enough to prevent developers from continuing to buy up property and make the argument that they need to build, build, build in order to enable Ridgewood to meet its coah requirements. Our Council needs to take bold action to meet coah requirements while not allowing developers to re-make the Village.
A lot needs to be done and the process needs to be started quickly. The Council cannot ignore this issue. They need to starting acting now.
