Reader says Ordinance 3066 must be Repealed
This is all about possible law suits brought forth by Valley against our PB and Council. Everyone, including the PB is afraid of Valley and their lawyers who will most certainly sue the village of Ridgewood, if proper procedure is not followed. This procedure (laid out in ordinance 3066) that Ridgewood’s Council put in place, will be the procedure that is the undoing of our town! Ms Price is trying to protect the PB and will probably advise them all to just pass this through to the council to avoid the threat of legal action against the PB members (brought on by Valley).
The “ordinance” that allows such applicants this kind of power needs to be overturned….Ordinance 3066,was approved on a Wednesday night, July 17, 2007. The night of this meeting attendance was low and no one in the audience or on the council (save for Dave Pfund) fully understood the long term consequences of this seemingly benign (at the time) ordinance. Dave Pfund, acting mayor at the time, moved for this ordinance to be adopted and as quickly as it was enacted in to law, Valley and it’s legal team swooped in with their application. Basically, the back door had been opened. The ordinance was presumably put in place to allow the Planning Board to be self supporting and to set up an official procedure for applicants seeking Master Plan changes. Before this ordinance was passed, our Planning Board and Council could deny any application that did not fit into the Village of Ridgewood’s Master Plan.
As a result, unfortunately, our planning board is anything but self supporting! Our PB is under the constant fear of lawsuits brought on by angry applicants who indirectly pay for (into an escrow account) the legal services and experts that advise our planning board. This ordinance has set our village up for complete failure. It is a twisted tale that will someday be told by all who have witnessed the Big Takeover of Ridgewood. What a lovely town it used to be…