“Same old tune. We don’t get leaders in BOE or Village Council. We get ‘nice’ folks with mediocre experience and certainly not people who will drive change or rock the boat. Ask yourselves, have ever been in a room when a real leader who is innovative and problem solver speaks and takes control of the situation, deliverers what they say, confronts obstacles, and keeps moving forward. Do you get that when Kaufman speaks? Sedon? Fishbein? Gorman? Knudson? All nice folks who can not lead, drive change, or provide solutions. Imagine any of them entering a board room and trying to influence a $110M budget in a corporate environment. They would not last 5 minutes. let alone years of continued weak non existent leadership.
Wake up folks”
Don’t really agree with you. Some of the people we get are definitely NOT nice. Witness Pucciarelli, Hauck, Aronsohn, Voigt.
This is really a useless discussion. Very few people step up to the plate on anything. If you speak out publicly you are rare, if you run for a Board of Ed or Council position you are rare. If you are a game changer you are the rarest of all. I have seen arrogant people in many of these positions who are there for their own personal gain, real or imagined. I’ll take “ nice folks” any day and do what I can to participate whenever possible.
The former council members who pushed and got extensive apts and changed master plan to allow for more than 25 units per acre were game changers all right. Same council people paved the way literally for the coming parking garage that will change the character and destroy the charm of the Village forever. There should be statues of the three of them to commemorate their revolutionary achievements. The smaller garage passed by the currant council is not the original accomplishment/ innovation. It is a mere follow-up.
Def don’t agree. A lot of very nasty people. How about Bigos, Rutishauser, Voight, Fricke. The list can go on and on.
Mediocre to horrible. That’s what we get in Ridgewood
The raised concrete garage is going to tip us over the edge into some rediculous transit village where everyone flying in or out and get the hell out of my way as they have a date with an expensive bottle of wine SO MOVE IT ON OVER
A COMPLETE SELL OUT
SLUM GARAGE WILL BE HALF
EMPTY ALL DAY..A BEACON TO STUPIDITY.
If you’re making a list of nasties don’t forget EF Hutton….
These people run a budget worth $50 million. Ridgewood Water is another $35 million. The BOE runs a budget worth $110 million. Add in all of the hundreds of millions on total debt and were talking a big corporate balance sheet. And yet what do we get? Nepotism, incompetence, and declining schools and Village services including potholes, sidewalks, roads, leaf pickup, etc. These thugs couldn’t run a lemonade stand without screwing it up.
“Self-serving people there for personal gain” defines our Councils of the past decade or more. Riche with his no bid telecoms contracts with the Village, the definition of conflict of interest. Whatever the hell Ahronson, Pooch and Gwen wanted, none of it seemingly any good for the rest of us. Knudsen getting her boys on the RPD and RFD with some nifty maneuvering around the hiring requirements, and protecting the dilapidated Schedler above all other interests because it’s across the street from her dad’s house… the list goes on and on.
The problem is that we have too many short term residents. People are able to get elected because they have friends and contacts they make due to their young children in school . Where else could a short term resident like aronson or zuzsy get elected?
Many towns with a more stable population (instead of NYC people who live here for a 10 year term) would never elect some new resident to an important position. I am surprised that a long term resident such as hauck would go along with the apartment deals, but I guess she was close enough to aronson that he could literally whisper in her ear to convince her to go along with making this “east Montclair ”
I can tell you that as a life long resident who has the best interests of the village at heart, I would never get elected because the new residents are a larger voting block. Hence the decline of what we expect for the character of our village.
And if elected I doubt I could sit up there and put up with the general public or nasty anonymous online comments.
A real solution with be for all property taxes to reflect the purchase price of the home . This is done in florida. It protects the long time residents From tax increases that benefit the new people who push their agenda. Let them pay for their own schools and parking garages
why Would anyone worthwhile volunteer for this position while people like you exist
We have lots of intelligent residents who lead and operate successful businesses. The problem is, we have to wait for them to retire so they could take a volunteer or paid position with Ridgewood. In the meantime people who have no experience and no knowledge of anything rush to see their names and faces in print. Some, like Knudsen, have been unable to realize she is no longer Mayor and keeps sending out “important announcements” before our current Mayor. Maybe this is requested help, and then I apologize. But her notices always preceded his by only a few minutes.
Riche, however did an excellent job. He had a “no bid” because no one else could supply what the Village wanted at that time. And when the Village equipment went down, he stayed on the job until it was repaired. And with him, we had no unneeded garages, useless handicapped ramp at Graydon, massive apartment building, a library that was built to be useful, not fancy with a bridal staircase. We had no waste and very little arguments.
I really feel sorry for all the the newer people in the last 6-10 years. They fall for the press and the realtors both painting brilliant pictures of Ridgewood as a town with great schools and many lovely amenities. It doesn’t take very long before they notice the rotting spell of greed and personal ambition, but by then, they are stuck. The only exception is the hundreds of families “who look on a computer to see what school district ratings on services for children with special needs are the best.” and then move here. (Quote directly from a new resident in our neighborhood who came from Atlanta.) We have a relatively small neighborhood and we have at least 5 families with children with autism and another building a house now, and they all moved here for the special schooling.
He was there to work and not to just figure out how to find ways to spend the town’s money.
When we moved here the taxes were at least 4 times less if not more. I love the idea of taxing on the purchase price of the house but there too many long term residents for that to ever happen.
I volunteered on the Planning Board and then ran for VC years back with the VERY naive notion that I was contributing to the community in which I lived and was raising my family. Seriously – I really believed that… Reading the vitriol about the “caliber” of volunteers makes it very clear why it’s getting harder to get regular residents to try and be involved in their community. If you aren’t willing to get involved yourself, you should count to ten before you start insulting those who do.