Valley should take ‘expansion plans off the table’
Friday, July 26, 2013
The Ridgewood News
Valley should take ‘expansion plans off the table’
To the Editor:
For too many meetings and too many years Valley Hospital has tried to make a case to expand the hospital located at Van Dien and Linwood avenues in the middle of a lovely eastside neighborhood. Valley’s expansion needs will never end; I suggested more satellite locations in a previous letter the first time around, which I am now happy to read in your papers are being acquired for expansion needs.
Our village of 25,000 people does not need a city hospital on the 15 acres. Residents were told when they purchased their homes that Valley would never be allowed by our master plan to expand.
The writer lives over I mile from the hospital.
The typical NIMBY view on the Valley expansion and improvement.
It’s self centered one without knowledge of today’s needs and the modern hospital’s effort to improve those services.
It’s a shame that Valley has persisted for so long on this particular plan. It’s been too big and too much from the first day and they have not served the needs of their patients by taking this long to modernize. Its supporters cry NIMBY without being able to come up with a single reason why an expansion of this size and scope is good for Ridgewood.
Far from it. They can do it without going crazy, which, by the way, is exactly what they are trying to do on a site that can’t handle it.
Since you obviously have not figured out the difference between “expansion” and”improvement,” you might want to check with one of the students at BF, you know, the school next to the proposed construction site.
In his recent presentation, Valley’s paid expert Joseph Burgis made much of the route hundreds of trucks will take to the construction site and back. He failed to mention that the truck route scales nearly the entire circumference of Benjamin Franklin Middle School and playing fields. This information did not appear in his power point or in his glossy hand-out. Parents! For those of you who have already experienced drop-off and pick-up times, just imagine adding hundreds of diesel-fueled trucks into the mix while you wait for your child on Van Dien! Then, try imagine adding a little rain…If you live on the East side, your young children stand to spend their entire school careers walking around and living with a construction site, breathing diesel exhaust. Remember, those school years are also the years they will be spending with you, before they grow up and leave. Do you want this environment for your children? I, for one, would request a transfer for my daughter to GW without a second thought….
Why would any responsible parent not ask for a transfer ?