Ridgewood councilwoman Gwenn Hauck won’t recuse herself from Valley Hospital hearings
Thursday June 13, 2013, 4:16 PM
BY DARIUS AMOS
STAFF WRITER
The Ridgewood News
At least one village resident believes the appearance of impropriety is enough for Ridgewood Councilwoman Gwenn Hauck to recuse herself from a master plan vote that could potentially pave the way to a large-scale expansion of The Valley Hospital.
The hospital has applied for an amendment to the Ridgewood master plan that, if approved, would fundamentally allow the facility to expand beyond 1 million square feet, including parking structures, on its 15-acre lot. The public hearing for Valley’s request is currently under way at the Planning Board.
Hauck, who was elected to the council last May, served as vice president of the Valley Hospital Auxiliary from 2008 to 2012. She is also a two-time chairperson of The Valley Ball, according to her campaign literature distributed last year.
The auxiliary is one of the hospital’s main fundraising arms, generating more than $15 million in donations over the past six decades. Donations are used to support hospital programs and services.
According to the hospital’s website, the organization has recently pledged to raise $1.5 million to help fund the expansion of the breast surgery program at the Luckow Pavilion, among other initiatives.
Despite her prior ties to the healthcare facility, all of which were performed on a volunteer basis, Hauck indicated at last week’s council meeting that she intends to sit through the expansion plan’s public hearing and vote on the matter, if it indeed reaches the council level
There is no question that she cannot be impartial, but besides that, it just looks improper. The fact that she took a campaign contribution from Megan Fraser (vice president and an officer of Valley hospital) is reason enough to recuse herself. Hauck took money from someone that would now benefit from a positive vote from Hauck. Why doesn’t she see the impropriety in that? We want honest and open government. This is anything but.
Received the below. Thought I would share.
Dear Friend and CRR supporter,
CRR has asked for the opportunity to make a presentation before the Planning Board. While the negatives of Valley Hospital’s plan seem so obvious to you and me, this case cannot be made or won on emotion or common sense. This is a Municipal Land Use issue and we must stick to the facts if we are to stop this over-expansion.
We have sought out the advice of both Municipal Land Use attorneys and the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, concluding that we must hire and pay for an urban planner to provide our Planning Board with the sound land use arguments to be able to reject the current Valley Hospital proposal.
We need to hire and pay for this planner by this Friday or the Planning Board will not allow us to make a presentation!
To that end, we have engaged the most highly qualified urban planner in our area – THE guy for representing residents facing overdevelopment in their community. However, THE guy, comes with a price – an estimated $10,000 for his professional services to research, create a presentation and address the Planning Board. We have already received a $1000 donation pledge, so we are looking to raise another $9000 before Friday afternoon.
So please, if there was ever a time for you to make a difference with your donation, it is now. If we do not raise this money in the next 48 hours, we will lose the opportunity to present our case before the Planning Board.
You can drop a check in my mailbox at 449 Beverly Rd, call me to pick up your donation or logon to http://www.stopvalley.com and make a paypal donation NOW!
Thank you! ~ marla
P.S. Please pass this message along to anyone you know who supports our efforts to stop the overdevelopment of Valley Hospital.
You can yawn all you want but this isn’t going away.
yawn again
just skip the ugly signs this time that make this place look like southern bergen county
well yawner you will feel right at home Ridgewood is the next Hackensack
No worries Jamil. That will never happen. Its a simple expansion of square footage to accomodate single rooms as legislated by the state.
Who is Jamil? Not a council member.
I am sure that someone, maybe it will have to be Dad, will tell her that she needs to bow out. The hospital plan needs to be looked at objectively and she has become a MAJOR distraction.
She will be responsible for an expensive and protracted lawsuit. She is shockingly unaware of the impact of her decision.
Ms. Hauck drank the kool-aid and turned into one of the Audrey clones.
Does the PB believe that Valley can add 1000 parking spaces without increasing traffic, can double in size without taxing the infrastructure, pursue 2 decades of construction without polluting the air, drain millions of gallons of water from our aquifer without an impact on our water supply and do all of this without negatively impacting quality of life of a single resident. Perhaps the PB should ask Ms Meyer if she can walk on water and change water into wine.
Well summarized.
#6 is right. This is like amateur hour.
The more you dummies complain the higher the likelihood that valley will get what it wants. So it looks like valley will get everything. Good for them.
Amazing logic.
Valley supporters – where ignorance meets arrogance.
The state did not “legislate” that Valley expand. The state did not legislate the parking lot expansion.
If Hauck won’t recuse, we need to remember why she is in that seat. #1 because Paul Aronsohn let her ride his coat tails, #2 because about a dozen residents failed to vote in the last council election and allowed her to take what should have been Killion’s seat. Both share the responsibility for this, but if Paul doesn’t strongly encourage his minion to step aside on this issue, the “stank” is on him completely. It is the cost of what he did to become mayor.
It’s certainly unfortunate for those that oppose the expansion that she is in the position she is in, but that is really “water over the dam.” At least at this point the bigger issue seems to be what the PB members think rather than what everyone else in Ridgewood already knows what Mrs. Hauck thinks. I’m not saying she should not recuse herself,that would certainly be the ethical thing to do, but the focus should really be on making the case that this expansion is not in the best interests of the majority of residents, primarily because it is not.
The bottom line is that the request is far to large for the property it is on. My bet is that the folks on the PB see that and act on it before Mrs. Hauck can have anything to say about it.
The larger issue here is not just the Hospital but all of the other development that this Council will weigh in on. In addition to Mrs. Hauck’s well documented affiliation with Valley, we’ve already had the Mayor and Mr. Pucciarelli caught meeting privately with developers to discuss apartment complexes and parking facilities in the CBD. The Aronsohn/Pucciarelli/Hacuk ticket seems to have an arrangement of reciprocal support on each of their own pet projects. Unless the people organize to demand objective consideration to what’s best for Village, these 3 will get their way. People should be going to as many meetings on each of these issues as possible to make their opinion known.
Gwenn Hauck would add tremendously to her support and “cred” if she stated by the end of June that she had seen the error of her previous decision and announced that she would stand down and remain absent when the council begins to consider the Planning Board’s recommendation on the Valley expansion.
The potential legal ramifications if she fails to see the wisdom of taking this essential step are awesome, and not in a good way.
Does anyone know if the pb members were screened for connections to valley? It seems the public should look there first because that is the first group to make a decision. ? just aski