the staff of The Ridgewood Blog
Ridgewood NJ, Ridgewood Village Manager Keith Kazmark had a rather tactless suggestion for a West Saddle River Road resident whose water supply comes from a privately owned well.
Concerned about the health of herself & her family, the unnamed resident had spoken out publicly during a recent meeting of the Ridgewood Village Council in opposition to the planned installation of an artificial turf field at Schedler Park.
She expressed concern that chemicals from the plastic field might enter into nearby privately owned wells, hers being one of them. In response to her comments, Mr. Kazmark publicly suggested that the resident connect to Ridgewood Water, which, according to him, will be PFAS free in 2026.
In case you don’t get it, the Village Manager was in no uncertain terms suggesting that the resident stop complaining publicly, and connect (AT HER EXPENSE) to Ridgewood Water if she was so concerned about her well being contaminated by chemicals leeching from the planned artificial turf field.
What arrogance! Regardless of what Perron, Vagianos, Weitz and Winograd say, THEY JUST DON”T CARE! Damn the neighborhood residents, full speed ahead!
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PFAS free by 2026? How can he be so sure?
They probably have to toe the line with some date. Does anyone actually believe them. How much bottled water will you have to buy between now and 2026 so that you don’t ingest toxic chemicals that you are actually paying for.
I watched this exchange between Keith and Cynthia and thought same thing. His message was clearly: “Just shut the F up and connect to Ridgewood Water bitch.” How crass!
His True Colors will come out, just wait and see, they are already emerging
If they can connect to Ridgewood water than they should.
Stop complaining
At your expense, maybe. At their expense, doesn’t seem like a fair deal.
Come again? I wouldn’t do it. What is in ot gor them except a vollosal headache. What is Ridgewood doing for these residents. They didn’t ask for this. It’s bullsh*t.
It is a personal decision that no resident should be forced to make for a GD field. Get over yourself.
Good word!
CRASS [kras] n-adjective
lacking sensitivity, refinement, or intelligence
A completely uncalled for comment from Kazmark.
An apology is in order to the resident who spoke out.
Sell the property to a developer
The manager, mayor council, and a few others all sleeping in the same bed, it’s either yarn board, or they will send you packing, you have no right of freedom of speech, I’m so glad I have no thumb on my head.
At least two of them were sleeping
Post of the day !
He is a puppet of Paul Vagianos.
What else do you expect from him?
Remember Paul owns multiple properties under pseudo names and this is all a business for him!
and his cousin is the attorney for the planning board and was the lawyer who represented him during his whistleblower court case.
This guy owes his job to Paul Vagianos.
Paul Vagianos makes money when out of town visitors visit Ridgewood.
Go connect the dots.
This should be illegal!! We do not need all this development. Why don’t they put a real park there with real grass and real trees. It honestly blows my mind that the mayor is allowing this.. stupid bitch!!
Mayor Paul Vagianos is not only allowing this, he is one of the main driving forces to turf a giant field and cut down several hundred trees so that it will be a sports complex. Winograd, the Shade Tree liaison is also leading the charge for turf and they believe that it isn’t toxic despite being warned by professionals that all turf contains PFAS chemicals. Question is, are any of them liable if pfas does seep into the wells? If someone gets sick, I would assume that it is a direct result of these poor decisions that will directly affect residents. Appears to be gross negligence.
Stop calling it a sports complex. It will be a field like all the others. You will get acclimated to it.
Sell your home. The new owner would probably like living near a field. Being on Route 17 is not appealing
Yes like all the others. You hit the nail on the head there, buddy! A field like the other 17 fields in Ridgewood that are available. Ridgewood doesn’t need another one. Boom!
to “Stop calling it a sports complex. It will be a field like all the others. You will get acclimated to it and sell your home”
It will be a sports complex once these idiots get their hooks into it. On another note, you probably already know that you are an assh*le, so I don’t have to tell you that. I hope you don’t have children that you are poisoning with your insight. Why don’t you move, we don’t need people like you here in our fair village. Bye!
Leave the guy alone. He is doing a good job.
I think you really meant to say: “Leave the guy alone. He is busy doing Paul’s bidding and photo ops and does not have time to focus on the health ans safety of residents”
No, I’m saying leave the guy alone. He is professional and doing a good job.
Oh, and how many “private wells” are there in Ridgewood? Not many. Stop the click bait.
What do you mean ‘leave him alone?’ Part of doing his job is being answerable to the people his job is supposed to benefit.
It doesn’t matter if there’s only one private well left in the solar system, the village doesn’t have the right to potentially poison it. If KK wasn’t a belligerent jackoff, instead of a more calculating jackoff, he could have given the resident a more boilerplate answer and it wouldn’t have been much of an issue. “Thank you for your question. We definitely acknowledge your concerns in this matter but unfortunately it’s not something I can speak to at the moment.”
But he had to rub his brazen contempt for her, and by extension all of you, in her face.
to: “I’m saying leave the guy alone. He is professional and doing a good job.
Oh, and how many “private wells” are there in Ridgewood? Not many. Stop the click bait”
You seriously need your head examined if you actually think that what Keith did was okay putting a resident on the spot. There has never been a question and answer unless the village wants an answer. It is unbelievable that you think that this is okay on any level and to expect someone to join Ridgewood water with the PFAS and give up their wells. You are clearly living on a different planet and must be in support of the field-that much is obvious.
Since when do we have discussions and Q&A between the dais and residents. This is why the comment and question by the mayor and village manager were out of line.
Sell to a developer. Build high density townhouses. Access to Route 17 will be a selling point. Use our low income housing requirements. Win/Win
That ship has sailed. It is now a registered historic property that Ridgewood bought because they wanted to have a park for the east side residents. Not a giant ball field. This council is all about bigger is better so they are taking a chance to see if their proposal will fly with their lies and deceitful tactics.
The same six people complain constantly. Have they noticed that when they post on Facebook the same people respond? The rest of the town just ignores them.
Except for you who chose to comment!
You missed my point. The same people complain constantly on facebook. They respond to each other’s comments and have little chats. The rest of Ridgewood read their posts and just ignore them. The field is coming, let’s get it done
Actually I got your point loud and clear and again if you don’t like free speech, social media or public comments, especially when someone’s health is going to be directly compromised as is this case were a resident should not be forced into something to benefit a special interest group, then so be it. This could go in an entirely differemt direction. Time will tell and we shall see.
That’s what NJ dem leaders assumed and now they lost control. That’s called arrogance. Lets do elections today and Paul will lose! Only a handful of sports people will come of to support him, rest of them are worried about their kid’s health!
Get used to disappointment.
The same six people who have money to gain support this plan!
There were over 500 petitions AGAINST the plan. How many petitions do you have in support of the plan?
To keep 7.4Million dollars aside for shedler – they have kept increasing base tax rate, as they know that schedler specific bond will be challenged by referrendum and will fail. For this pet project, which will help two council members financially, they are increased the BASE tax rate for EVERY resident forever.
You can thank Paul Vagianos, Siobahn Whinograd and Evan Weitz and Pam Perron for this debacle. One can only hope that this pet project of our favorite majority block gets tied up in litigation forever.
That probably isn’t even the half of it. There will be more bonding to create the sports complex, just you wait and see.
It is nice to see residents coming together to support those neighbors. It shouldn’t matter if there is one private well that could be poisoned. Sports people only want their field and their turf, with no care or concern for anyone else. How is that for sportsmanship. Win/win, right Brian D?
Please don’t blame ‘sports people’. It’s a handful of people from the sports community who support this idea. Rest are just quiet because they are worried of being excluded, but they don’t have any preference for turf.
Worried of being excluded? What grade are you in? This sounds like utter nonsense. It is winning through intimidation and you being excluded is exactly how these groups try to remain powerul and suppress people and their individual voices. So essentially you are an adult but cannot be bold enough to take a stand for the sake of your own children’s health and well being. Go ahead, stay silent. I am sure it will serve you well if your kid gets sick from some related PFAS related disease or orthopedic injury all because you didn’t want to be excluded.
Like him or hate him, I think what he did was not right by basically asking a resident in a public setting what her position was when there are a myriad of unanswered questions about the Schedler park plan and it has basically been a production of the magical mystery tour staring the majority block council especially Vag and Whino. For Keith, It really took an incredible amount of assertiveness and maybe even his borderline aggression for this topic reared its ugly head and was showing as he gets agitated when problems linger or get in the way of the agenda of this municipal government and those in power. While he may be trying to solve a problem, he may actually be creating another one and doing so in such a public forum is just plain wrong.
This mayor and council are seriously dellusional when they talk about transparency because it only relates to what they want you to know. Just ask anyone you know in Ridgewood if they actually know about the status of this PFAS remediation. Why should anyone have confidence in this team. The fact that Keith stated it will be out of the water by 2026 is quite a declaritive statement that residents should hold him to this. It is costing everyone a lot of money. Everyone is paying extra for a PFAS charge and are most likely buying bottled water. What happened with the lawsuit? Transparent, right.
Seems that section of Ridgewood east of rt 17 is just a bunch of problems. Ridgewood should swap that section with Hohokus for the current Hohokus area west of rt 17 and north of the current border. Might even work out where Ridgewood would get a ball field that is right along rt 17..
Agree, not a good look for the VM. There is an immediate need to scrap this Schedler plan and utilize planning and thought to properly schedule sports teams. Too many times, these fields are idle. No one needs a new Schedler field. Wants vs. needs. Something we teach our kids.