the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Twp. of Washington NJ, the Township is moving forward with the DPW contaminated soil clean up and remediation, the antiquated facility has to demolished and replaced.
In a message on Facebook Mayor Peter Calamari explained the situation in detail:
The Council will be voting tomorrow night (4/19/21) on a lease for outdoor parking lot space at Our Lady of Good Council Church. This is for temporary placement of DPW equipment while the DPW facility is demolished and the soil underneath it is remediated. I would like to inform the Town residents and clear up some potential confusion as to how we got here.
Decades ago, the current DPW site was found to have contaminated soil beneath it from in-ground fuel tanks on the site. The DEP mandated a cleanup and remediation and placed a deadline for when it had to be competed. Previous administrations were well aware of the problem and did nothing about it. When I became Mayor, I immediately began investigating potential alternate sites in town to house the DPW. Discussions took place with the Council at Council meetings regarding the topic and were also part of my monthly reports read at the meetings. Also, upon becoming Mayor, I was confronted with a DPW that was woefully under equipped to do its job. They not only did not have enough equipment, but what they had was obsolete, antiquated and in disrepair.
I am happy to report that, working with the Council in agreeing to fund the necessary items, the DPW now has the equipment they need to do their job more effectively and efficiently than ever before. And I cannot say enough good things about the DPW employees themselves. They are a hard-working group, and they get the job done! But the equipment does take up space and it does need to be stored somewhere.
The first step in the remediation process was to find a temporary location for the DPW to store their equipment and operate from. We explored many town owned sites and again none were found to be acceptable. We explored and requested help from our neighboring municipalities of Westwood, Hillsdale, Woodcliff Lake, and a County facility in Paramus. I made a request at a mayors meeting for assistance from EVERY OTHER town in the Pascack Valley. None had the space to assist. We explored and inquired about leasing space from many private entities such as the Bethany Church, the old TD Bank, the old Charlie Browns, a private lot in Hillsdale, and numerous office building parking lots in Paramus. In all cases, the property owners simply could not accommodate our needs. Each dead end we were met with meant starting all over again. So, the decision was made to construct a temporary two bay garage in the current town hall parking lot and to store some of the vehicles and equipment off site. In addition to Valley Bank, OLGC was the only facility that was willing to accommodate our requirements. The lease was negotiated by the Archdiocese and the Township Attorney. I nor any member of the Council were involved. A few residents have expressed issues with the town renting from a church and citing church and state separation conflicts. But I would like to point out that the town has been renting space and facilities from the Bethany Church for the Summer Rec program and the gymnasium for basketball. I think all would agree it has resulted in a significant increase in the quality of the program and greatly expanded the number of children we are able to accommodate. Additionally, the Westwood Regional School District, a tax- dollars funded operation, rented classroom space from OLGC years ago without objection. Churches are nonprofit organizations and there is a long history of government working with nonprofits for the benefit of the public.
Some of the lease terms are as follows:
– The lease terms reference hours of operation because the Archdiocese has a standard lease they use for leasing indoor or outdoor space.
– The hours listed there are the approximate hours of the DPW operations, not the hours the equipment will occupy the space.
– The equipment will be there 24 x 7.
– The Town is responsible to remove snow and ice only from the part of the property that the lease covers, not the entire facility.
According to the DEP, we are now out of time to remediate the DPW space. The potential fines levied to the Town could be far more than the rental space will cost.
This is just another issue that had been kicked down the road by previous Administrations. Had this and many other issues been dealt with as the needs arose, and if the previous Administrations showed some foresight, we would not have to spend the money to fix them all at once. But these projects are critical. The Fire House / Ambulance buildings were long past their serviceable lives due to their age and the space requirements of the newer equipment. The same with the two new Fire apparatuses. Those necessary expenses alone account for about eight million dollars that could no longer wait. The same is true about the DPW facility. The intersection at Washington Avenue and Pascack Road is commonly agreed on as being dangerous and inefficient and has long needed to be addressed. The work is well under way on that also, and County tax money will be paying for most of the improvements.
I do not enjoy spending these amounts of money. But the residents almost universally agree they are critical and long overdue and have to be addressed, and I believe in the commitment I made to address them and get them done.
Finally, I think it is worth mentioning that we are borrowing the money for these projects at historically low interest rates and most of them are bonded over a long period to spread the financial impact to the taxpayer out over many years.
The strength and quality of this town and community has always been YOU, the residents. You are what matters. And you are who these projects are for. I believe the residents of Washington Township deserve infrastructure, facilities and services that are up to the same quality and standards as the people they service and the people who use them. This is not something that happens overnight, the process can be tedious and often times frustrating, however I am committed to making our Township a place we can all be proud of.
Thank you,
Mayor Peter Calamari
April 18, 2021
