>Final hearing on Valley plan tonight
Monday, June 7, 2010
BY MARY JO LAYTON
The Record
STAFF WRITER
https://www.northjersey.com/news/95749004_Final_hearing_on_Valley_plan_tonight.html
Ridgewood parents fearful of The Valley Hospital’s plan to double in size have collected hundreds of signatures in a petition requesting an environmental and health impact study before the Planning Board votes on changes to the master plan that would permit the $750 million project.
Canvassing at schools and sports fields, parents are making a last-minute push in advance of tonight’s Planning Board meeting, the final public hearing before what many say will be the board’s most consequential vote.
The petitions, circulated at all six elementary schools, will be presented to Superintendent Daniel Fishbein today, resident Lorraine Reynolds said. The superintendent, principals and the school board are being asked to request the study.
“The main part of their job besides education is to protect the kids,” said Reynolds, a mother of three who has a child at Benjamin Franklin Middle School, which borders the hospital.
As more parents have come to understand the scope of the project, they have become more concerned, parents who were circulating the petitions said. Reynolds said some parents were so happy to sign her petition when she approached them after school and at her son’s lacrosse game that they gave her hugs and kisses.
With construction expected to last more than six years for Phase One of the project, parents are concerned about the impact on Benjamin Franklin, which nearly half of the village’s students attend at some point. One building, which could reach 94 feet high with the rooftop mechanicals, would be constructed 40 feet from the middle school property. The parents worry that years of construction, increased traffic, dust and noise will affect their children’s learning as well as their health.
Despite increasing pressure from the community, neither the superintendent nor the Board of Education has taken a position on the proposed project. “It’s not our call to make,” Fishbein said. “It’s the Planning Board’s call to make.”
full article:
https://www.northjersey.com/news/95749004_Final_hearing_on_Valley_plan_tonight.html
