file photo by Boyd Loving
I don’t think that the police department touches the lives of residents the same way that our teachers and administrators do. A regional board of ed could lead to our children traveling further to school, no more local control and less parental input.
I do not feel the same about RPD. the officer patrolling does not know me and I do not know him/her. It really does not matter. When I visit other towns and cities their school system does not matter to me. They have police departments protecting and serving. As in Ridgewood, I do not know the oficers and it does not matter when they do their job.
Regionalization would allow a more efficient use of police officers and less administration.would save money. New Jersey has hundreds of towns and police departments.
A regional school system would save money too. Education is personal, teachers touch the lives of every child. Once a successful merger of police departments is achieved we could look to see what practices could be applied to schools.
The regionalization of you local police force doesn’t save money (ask the county sheriff how his merger is doing), it adds to the response time of calls and believe it or not every ridgewood cop has lived in this town at one point or another. Knowing your work environment makes a significant difference in quality.
The schools argument is even more significant. Bad schools = less desirable place to live. Name me one large regional school district that performs in comparison to Ridgewood or Glen rock etc.
I have said this before but living here is not cheap and unfortunately if you can’t afford to live here you should not expect a cut in services to enable your continued residency. Living here is not for everyone and certainly not everyone can afford it. But those who can want what we have now. That includes rear yard garbage pickup.
If you want regional services. The Poconos are close by.
Whoa! How snobby can you be.
Yes, Bergen County is absolutely ridiculous. All 70 something towns in BC don’t each need there own 20 -40 man police force, each making 150k a year. It’s absurd. It’s a racket, and police are 40% of our property taxes.
Imagine. Pascack Valley Police, Northern BC Police,
Southern BC PD,
Paramus/Ridgewood PD
Heights/Lodi/WR/Moonachie PD FairLawn/Elmwood Park PD
And so on.
30 police agencies in BC would be more than enough. That’s 40 less chief salaries, 80 less captain salaries, 160 less LT salaries, and so on. Cheaper pension.
Police unions would fight it tooth and nail though.
Explain how elimination of duplicate administration does not save money? Using resources in a way that could cut overtime does not save money?
How does response time increase if the police are still patrolling in town?
This is not about cutting service. It is about saving money by decreasing administration and more efficient deployment of staff.
What does this have to do with rear yard garbage pickup? We can deal with town services too, but don’t jumble them. You do not want anything to change, change is scary. High taxes will not make this town more desirable. It would be great is this were a town that did not have housing turnover based on people leaving after kids are finished with the schools, too expensive for older residents to stay. That is not a village community it is just a residential transaction. When the contract is up people move to a place that they can afford to retire in.
This is not Shangri-La. How many of your neighbors are moving away because of high taxes? Does anyone care?
“Rear yard garbage pickup” is a dog whistle — perhaps it’s a police whistle — that is supposed to establish value of local police over some silly service like garbage pickup. “If you’re willing to pay for rear yard pickup, why not a few more cops” or “If you’re cutting things, why not start with something the rest of the world would say is silly.” Those of us that have been around the block know that an hour of policing has a lifetime value of probably 100x what the cost of an hour of rear yard pickup costs. It generally tells us more about the person making the argument (that they are at the trough) than changing the mind of someone actually footing the bill..
Look at Ridgewood Water. Residents did not want to merge with Suez because they somehow thought that we have control over the quality of our water and Suez would provide contaminated water.
The water department has mismanaged billing and service delivery. What else is left for them to do?
Now the village wants to buy the Elks building for their offices, as if being in Ridgewood will somehow make them better.
Home control is not looking so good.
Home rule has a price, especially when you have 500 plus municipalities. Cops per capita and classroom sizes are not outrageous or out of the ordinary. The administrative overlay is. How many chiefs of police compared to NYC which has a similar population to the garden state. School administration duplication is also over the top because of home rule. Unfortunately merging and regionalizing has been an ugly process here. Look at the games when Wallington and Carlstadt were discussing regionalizing with East Rutherford. It’s still about who is the king dog and who is willing to give up on some levers of power.
“I” seems to have all of the solutions. When will “I” run for office and get all of these things straightened out?
“Name me one large regional school district that performs in comparison to Ridgewood or Glen rock etc. ” That’s easy…. Northern Highlands, Ramapo, Indian Hills, River Dell, Pascack Valley, Pascack Hills – and that’s just Bergen County.
Yeah… L:ets regionalize so we (as the locality with the most money) can pay the most into the regional organization and then get reduced services.
.
I feel that spreading the wealth is the right thing to do. It will help normalize the greater neighborhood and bring Ridgewood into line, proving that it is not exceptional. Regionalizing the police and fire along with providing more affordable housing for those less lucky than we are is progress.
.
Now if we can convince the VC to declare Ridgewood a sanctuary city and modify the wonderful garage plans to include medicinal (and recreational) marijuana retail space on the first floor we would really be making progress.
.
Socialism Rocks!
.
6:45 said – “I have said this before but living here is not cheap and unfortunately if you can’t afford to live here you should not expect a cut in services to enable your continued residency. ”
Are you from CT by any chance? They also went down that rabbit hole – hiking taxes steadily to pay public unions and now all the ‘rich’ people have escaped and the state is broke.
1253, Ridgewood is already a non-declared sanctuary city. Too much bloat in education, uniformed services and the VC itself. The taxation and imposed caps will continue to pressure the village towards shared services. Pensions alone will break out bank.
11:35. You are so right! People still think that Ridgewood has the best schools. Northern Highlands is an excellent school serving three towns. Wake up! Look around you.
Ridgewood does not have the best schools in Bergen. We have a popular downtown. We pay a lot of taxes to,have a popular downtown for out-of-towners.
We don’t even have a popular downtown anymore.