>Wednesday, August 6, 2008BY BOB GROVESSTAFF WRITERThe Ridgewood Planning Board is charging Valley Hospital and opponents of its expansion thousands of dollars for participating in special public meetings about the divisive issue.
A neighborhood group opposed to the plan has paid about $4,000 in fees. Valley’s final bill is still being tallied, said Barbara Carlton, board secretary.
The board initially charged Valley $5,000 and the neighborhood group $7,000 for six special meetings where the two groups presented their sides, Carlton said.
Those amounts had to be recalculated because of bookkeeping confusion over escrow accounts set up when Valley and the residents group applied to the planning board, Carlton said.
This is the first time the board has used an ordinance the Village Council passed in 2007 to charge applicants a $2,000 fee for each special meeting, Carlton said.
The fees pay for charges by the board attorney, engineer and other professionals, Carlton said.
Other expenses include the costs of a sound technician and space rental, if the meeting is held outside the village council chambers, she said. Planning board members are non-paid volunteers.
Valley is reviewing the fee assessment but feels it has been fair, said Megan Fraser, a spokeswoman for the hospital.
“We know that special meetings require additional resources,” Fraser said. “[We] believe that a special-meeting fee is a legitimate request when such a large application comes before the village.”
The residents, however, said they should have been charged less because their counterproposal to the planning board was much simpler than Valley’s and did not need as much discussion time, said Peter McKenna, a member of the group.
“Concerned Residents objected to the special-meeting fees because the meetings were really to discuss Valley’s proposal, and our proposal was barely mentioned,” McKenna said.
“If a citizen unrelated to Concerned Residents said they opposed [Valley’s proposal], the bill was getting charged to our escrow account,” he said.
The board’s reduction of the residents’ meeting fees included a $1,000 refund from board attorney Gail Price, “which was very nice,” McKenna said.
Many municipal boards in New Jersey have similar ordinances allowing them to charge for special meetings, Price said.
In general, the bill for a special meeting does not go to residents who are objecting to a proposal before a planning board, said William Neville, vice president of New Jersey Planning Officials, Inc. “The burden falls on the applicants,” Neville said.
The Planning Board has held several special meetings in the past year to consider Valley’s proposed $750 million plan, which would expand its size 67 percent by adding a parking deck and replace two older buildings with three new ones. Hospital officials say they need to build to survive.
Concerned Residents of Ridgewood, a grass-roots group of people who live near the hospital, opposes the plan for safety and aesthetic reasons. The group says the new buildings, which will be much higher and closer to the street, will be out of place in the middle of a residential neighborhood.
Valley’s request to change the village master plan involved extensive testimony that required the planning board to schedule the special meetings, which were open to the public.
The next planning board meeting to discuss Valley is 7:30 p.m. Aug. 19 at Benjamin Franklin Middle School in Ridgewood.
E-mail: groves@northjersey.com