Ridgewood Planning Board holds contentious meeting about Valley Hospital
JUNE 10, 2014, 6:40 AM LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY, JUNE 10, 2014, 2:25 PM
BY BARBARA WILLIAMS
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD
The Valley Hospital has been aggressively seeking approval from the Planning Board to double in size and on Monday night it took its most vigorous stand yet, presenting information that some board members said they found selective, confusing and disingenuous.
Valley Hospital in Ridgewood and the surrounding neighborhood homes.
The board will vote next week on whether Valley should be given the master plan amendment it is seeking to undertake an expansion project that will nearly double the size of the hospital.
Monday’s meeting was to be a time for the board to hear summations from the attorneys representing Valley and residents opposing the project. But first Valley’s planner, Joseph Burgis, made a 45-minute presentation he characterized as clarifications that the village planner had requested. Instead, Burgis addressed some of the complaints and questions raised by residents over the last 15 months of hearings.
Burgis acknowledged that the construction is a detriment, but added that air monitoring will be done during the duration. He said that the school board issued a statement saying it is not concerned about the construction affecting students attending Benjamin Franklin Middle School, which is located next to the hospital.
“As far as construction, there’s no getting around the timetable,” Burgis said. “I don’t mean to minimize the 6-year time frame, it’s a long period of time but it’s necessary to make this happen.”
He said that traffic will decrease by 430 trips per day because Valley will be moving outpatient services off-site. It wasn’t until the end of his presentation, however, that it became clear that the predicted decrease was not based on current traffic but instead was a comparison between this plan and previous expansion plan Valley had before the board in 2010.
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Mr. Drill, we hate you. Please take your gigantic fee and go home!
And please take Audrey and the others who seek to tear our town apart with you.
Did the school board really issuse a statement saying that they were not concerned about air quality? Did they have any reservations?
Funny how eerily silent the previously vocal Valley supporters have been of late. Have they actually listened to their attorney speak at the hearings? Do they understand the deep contempt that Valley has for Ridgewood and its residents? We’re way beyond contempt for those that live on Linwood Ave. Time to run Valley out of town.
Based on the statement made by the Board of Ed. president at one of the meetings, you really have to wonder where her( and the board’s) head is at. If I had a child in BF, and this goes thru, I would be looking to transfer.
The Board of Ed accepted a check for $500,000 from Valley. The silence has been deafening.
Board of Ed sold out, plain and simple.
And to think people move here for the schools !
Many Valley supporters have become embarrassed by the VH tactics. Not embarrased enough to speak out publicly, but a few families I have spoken to now wish the whole thing would go away quietly and are not as enthused as they were a few years ago with Valley adminstration.
Any child with an IEP and a good doctor will not attend BF. These children have rights.
How can you admire ANY administration that will not compromise when it is not only logical, but unquestionably, the right thing to do for all involved.
Why do resident keep voting in the Board of Ed representative?
Between the half-mil with which Valley cheaply bought the BOE and the glaring conflict of interest represented by the Superintendent’s physician-wife’s relationship with the hospital, the Board would have done better to “recuse itself” than to force its president to make appallingly inaccurate statements (“no problem! bring it on!”) so destructive to children and so exciting to Valley that Valley’s legal team quoted her in its final (thank goodness), unexpected greatest-hits slide show on Monday night. This was the definition of sellout.
If the BOE can be so ignorant in saying this and doing this about BF. What about the Planning Board and Council? Does anyone in power have any sense? More importantly will this town be saved from Valley? We
have to believe that this absurd 2X over expansion will not happen? Then what more years of 1 3/4, 1 5/8, or 1 1/2 expansion plans? God save us?