the staff of The Ridgewood Blog
Ridgewood NJ, Since taking office in January of this year, one of Ridgewood Mayor Paul Vagianos’ many official duties has been to preside over all open public meetings of the Ridgewood Village Council, including managing the public comment segments of those meetings.
Many members of our staff have observed of late that Mayor Vagianos introduces every public comment segment with a strongly worded statement in which he requests “respectful comments only.” We believe the Mayor’s repeated requests for “respectful comments only” are intimidating to many of those waiting to speak, and as such, constitute an indirect form of censorship.
Our readers may recall an incident from several weeks ago in which the mayor blatantly attempted to censor a resident’s comments, a clear violation of NJ’s Open Public Meetings Act, which was confirmed at the time by Village Attorney Mathew S. Rogers. Most recently, during an April 3rd meeting, the Mayor actually interrupted a resident’s public comments to request they be “respectful” in nature only, and prevented another resident from standing silently at the podium as a form of expression.
Frankly, The Ridgewood Blog understands the Mayor’s desire to prevent those at the podium from using profane language and/or becoming disruptive. However, there’s quite a difference between disruptive behavior and disrespectful comments. It’s one thing to incite a ruckus; quite another to calmly express you dissatisfaction with an issue by using appropriate words and/or appropriately worded signs.
Censorship does not deserve a home at Ridgewood Village Hall. Do you understand Mayor Vagianos?
Pee Wee !
This smacks of a former administration where any comments that disagreed with the Mayor were deemed to be disrespectful.
Paul keeps on trying to control the message. He has become a laughingstock
screw you buttmunch!!!
The look on his face is priceless.
The Mayor is very heavy-handed the way he starts each public comment session basically admonishing everyone for bad behavior when they have not even spoken a word yet. This is BULLYING, Paul. Plain and simple. You are trying to intimidate people How many times does the LAW have to be explained to a lapsed lawyer? People have a right to say what they want as long as not vulgar or threatening. They can say names and they can say what they like or dislike. Mostly it seems they dislike you, Mr. Mayor, and we are definitely understanding why.
He also forgets that people are on the phone lines at the end of the second public comments. He forgets every time and has to be reminded. how rude.
So he basically shuts down a resident a few weeks ago, illegally, for mentioning princess Winograd’s name. This resident, by the way, is largely responsible for Mr. Vagianos being on the dais, as she was the one who posted that horrible diatribe of unfounded antisemitic accusations about Vagianos’ opponent in the election, causing her to lose a bucket of votes. So Paul cannot even remember who the five remaining people are who supported him
When one upset resident went to the mic and remained silent, she was stopped. She said she was being silent because she hears NOTHING in response to all the concerns that citizens raise. She was trying to make a point, and she was doing so spectacularly. Apparently the mayor and the attorney thought this was disrespectful (?) or rude (?) or inappropriate (?) So even silence is no good. How far will this man go to control the message. I thought she was AWESOME.
Love it !
Seriously folks, what did you expect?
He’s a classic politician.
Town Council members that have the interest of the town in their hearts are rare.
Currently there seems to be only one.
I’m glad I bought more popcorn
The mayor behaves in a way that is a “do what I say and not as I do” manner. You cannot treat people like children an he has to realize that he is not a school teacher instructing his students. People are grown adults. On top of that, he has been very secretive to a fault and engage the consultant who he brought in to meet with the Manager and Village Engineer last year, so right there, how will anyone trust him to be honest and forthright himself. He sets a very bad example of a Village Councilperson let alone a Mayor. He wasn’t elected Mayor but he certainly acts like it. He has a duty to uphold to all of his constituents but instead he is playing a bad actor on the Paul Vagianos show.
A podium is what a conductor stands on. Public comments in the Village court room are made at a lectern.
“pod” = feet
“lect” = read
This A$$ Clown mayor of ours makes Paul Aronsohn look like a Choir Boy, some shady Sh$t going on here
Monday am time for the department tour. ?
Aronsohn liked to chasten residents about “civility.” Typical politician hypocrisy. These people are so predictable!
People let me tell you something I’m reading every article .you know what you have no f’in idea what is going on. Between lack of morale, lack of experience and upper management that is completely burnt out and overwhelmed, supervision doesn’t even care. the village is in one big spiral going down the drain. It shows in so many different areas. And they can’t even swallow there, pride to ask people that know , that’s because they think they know everything and they know zip. all time residents are sick of what’s going on, new residents that are moving into town have no idea what is even going on.
I have two words for “the mayor”: F— Y–
The mayor and council, we know the village received excess of $15 million in Covid relief fund, we all would like to know what was that money used for where did it all go while we spend a big money on brand new SUVs for supervisors to ride around in. why we paying stipends to certain employees, we still want to know who is receiving them, and why are they receiving them, and how much are they receiving. Why is this so hard to publicize. It’s tax dollars we would like to know. Why are there so many secrets in the village. Do we need to call channel 12 news, or seven on our side,