August 4,2017
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, it appears the council has heard the cries about the disrepair of the “Town Garage” property .
Mayor Susan Knudsen announced at the Village Council meeting on Wednesday night that she is in favor of the Village buying the town garage .
Deputy Mayor Mike Sedon and Councilmen Ramon Hache also spoke strongly in favor of the Village buying the garage and pointed out the Village could make up the lost tax revenue in 5 months with parking at the town garage .While Councilmen Voigt was concerned about remediation and thought the first priority to build a garage on Hudson Street .
The mayor continued to articulate a long term parking strategy for the Village of Ridgewood .Councilwomen Walsh felt strongly the Village should compel the current property owner to clean up the site . The village engineer gave an over view of the contamination , his estimate for the clean up was not forth coming ,however he stated the Village had $900,000 in its capital fund allocated for clean up.
I cannot believe that Ridgewood would buy that property without remediation by the present owners. They rushed in to buy it before Ridgewood could finalize their decision to buy. They knew they would make a large profit on it as they knew Ridgewood would eventually buy it from them. They knew massive amounts of remediation were necessary but bought it anyway. If we let them get by with that–and the names of the purchasers should show very familiar names–they have succeeded in proving that Ridgewood can be suckered as they originally believed. Wake up Council! Make them clean it up, or reduce the price by the cost of cleaning. That would probably leave them in the hole on the purchase. The buyers knew what they were doing. Does Ridgewood?
So in 5 months you make up for lost tax revenue.
How many months of parking revenue to make up for purchase cost?
How many months of parking revenue to make up for clean-up costs?
How many months of parking revenue to make up for engineering, improvements, legal?
How much would the tax revenue be if the lot wasn’t a vacant property?
“Buy.”
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Yeah, right. It’s that simple. The VOR will just “buy” the Village Garage lot.
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First things first. The town initially needs to lower the price of the property in question, and simultaneously eliminate the Village’s competition for buying it. This is done by declaring that portion of the VOR business district “blighted” which is defined either narrowly, i.e., by the very borders of the property in question, or a little more broadly, i.e., by the square block defined by Franklin Avenue, Walnut Street, Ridgewood Avenue, and Oak Street.
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/s (sarc off). Governments these days, be they federal, state, county, or municipal, don’t just wade into fights anymore. For a modern politician, there is no fight worth having unless it is fixed fight, meaning, safely fixed in advance. This is sadly probably true with respect to our current Village Council.
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How many times does this need to be repeated? Many years ago, Ridgewood borrowed some fifteen million dollars via a formal municipal bond, both to finance the purchase of this same Village Garage site AND to erect a municipal parking garage thereon. This maneuver being undertaken in the immediate aftermath of the US Supreme Court’s notorious “Kelo” decision (the noxious holding of which being that a Constitutionally acceptable public use is any use an elected official can dream up and get approved, however hare-brained the scheme), village residents were actually wise to this trick. They loudly objected to the use of the eminent domain power to deprive a fellow VOR property owner of his/her holdings at an artificially depressed price when the “public use” to which the property was to be put was of dubious future value to the public (in this case, a parking garage boondoggle). In light of this, the spooked Village Council dropped the plan before the parcel was even acquired. The bond money, rather than being used to pay off the bond, was promptly spent on other priorities. What a racket, right? We’re still paying off that debt!
Lets see. This council is buying the Els Club and now the Town Garage. Did anyone of them run on fiscal responsibility? Bond,bond,bond and we will pay later.
“So in 5 months you make up for lost tax revenue.” Its the Council’s lie they can tell it anyway they want.
Would someone with a finance background please instruct the Village Council on the proper methodology for evaluating capital projects? For example, ask the basic questions posed by @Rwd Taxpayer above, not whether it makes up “lost” gross tax revenue. Obstensibly, if someone owns the property now, there is no “lost tax revenue”. The other commenters have aptly covered the proper negotiating and/or condemnation strategies. I wasn’t there, but if the village “engineer’s” statement consisted solely of disclosing the funds allocated, but not the estimated cost of the clean-up, that’s frightening. I own property in Ridgewood and am contemplating a move back for family reasons, but perhaps in the face of this continued abuse of taxpayers and opening of the public trough to speculators, I might want to reconsider. Perhaps I can just sell my house to the village for an inflated sum so they can put parking on it. 🙂
earth to VOR. 12:48 has outed the issue with a boots on the ground expose on how our town government needs to get a grip on spending for shiny and new concepts…, and start fixing the old roads as we swerve and dodge the craters with our damaged Ridgewood taxpayers cars every day.ps no raised deck boondoggle parking garages either. .fix the existing surface lots..we have paid for their maintainance and more in Tolls but that money was diverted to other questionable projects,
Sorry Basic the FAC and its financial professionals are ignored precisely because this is the kind of boondoggle they would encourage the council to avoid.
is this meant as a joke?
With what? Our town is broke.
The village Ridgewood has plenty of money. They have millions of dollars in account that so many of us don’t even know about. Do not let them bullshit you or us. I like that latch on telephoned me something why do you got to come out here why are you are you when I’m not home playing you have your lies a The village of Ridgewood has plenty of money. They have millions of dollars in account that so many of us don’t even know about. Do not let them bullshit you or us. They are sick in the head. They keep on telling everyone that they have no money. That’s because they don’t want to give their employees any proper raise. It’s all bullshit scam. Any and they’re going to do whatever they want to they going to buy probably all around town.
Attention Ridgewood property owners. If you have property that is of no use to you just contact the Ridgewood Council they will pay top dollar.
You can’t sell your home with termites or asbestos but these owners can sell to Ridgewood without cleaning up hazardous waste. Sounds about right for this council.
So true
I guess I’m in the minority, but buying Town Garage and building the parking garage makes perfect sense and I support the council on taking steps to improve the downtown area, finally taking a financially prudent approach to building a smaller parking garage and working to build up our town using a smart approach, not just sitting back and watching stores close and the town deteriorating. And I think they meant the lot would take 5 months of revenue collection to make up for lost property tax revenue, not the bond. Enough talking, enough procrastinating, it is time to get things done as a collective effort with an in depth parking plan. If we sit back and do nothing our property values will drop and Ridgewood will lose its character as a great downtown. It should also be noted the town would be buying property, something that is of value.
Who/What Entity currently owns the property. They have to be held responsible for the environmental clean up if Ridgewood was to consider buying the property. I wonder if the current owners are not in violation right now of some environmental laws. Along with the environmental issues they are also slum lords and should be fined for keeping the place in disrepair.