>THE VILLAGE OF RIDGEWOOD AND THE PLANNING BOARD HAVE NO AUTHORITY OVER THE RIDGEWOOD BOE.
It has been said many times and I guess it has to be repeated again; THE VILLAGE OF RIDGEWOOD AND THE PLANNING BOARD HAVE NO AUTHORITY OVER THE RIDGEWOOD BOE. (I’m not talking about defeated school budgets.) Ask the Mayor, ask the Village Mgr, ask the Village Attorney, ask the BOE Attorney, ask the Chairman of the Planning Board, ask anyone who knows what they are talking about, the Village can not force the BOE to do something nor can they stop them from doing something. The BOE “reports” to the NJ Dept.of Education. It might not seem “right” but that is the law in NJ. With that in mind; Why would the BOE go back to the Planning Board? Why would the Planning Board want them back? Why would either one of them want to waste the time when they both have a lot of other things to worry about and absolutely nothing could come from it. It would serve no purpose at all. There is a reason the first two times the BOE appeared before the Planning Board the meetings were called “Courtesy Hearings.” They were just that, a “courtesy” to the Village to outline what was going to happen. The Village had no authority to change anything the BOE was planning to do and the BOE didn’t have to appear but they did.
The BOE and the neighbors need to keep an ongoing dialogue and try and figure out a way to make the upgraded fields work. There was supposed to be a meeting earlier this week that was going to open the dialogue and hopefully move the two sides closer. The turf is in and the lights are in. I doubt either of those is going anywhere. As loud as the neighbors are complaining (and they have some legitimate complaints) the sound of the hundreds of kids and their parents who will complain will be infinitely louder should access to those fields be impaired in a meaningful way.
There has to be some middle ground and I would hope in a town like Ridgewood that ground can be found sooner rather then later so all this back and forth can stop and we can concentrate on the real important issues in town like when is the 2011 Village Calendar going to arrive so I can figure out the new garbage and recycleable schedule?
