the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, Village Manager Keith Kazmark addresses Village budget concerns in an email calling social media posts “disinformation”:
I’m writing to you today to address the disinformation that has appeared on social media regarding the 2025 Village of Ridgewood Budget.
Here are the facts.
- This year’s municipal tax increase is slightly over 3%.
- The Village added more than $200 million in new property assessments this year over last. The majority of the increase is due to The Valley Hospital property being added to the tax rolls.
- Prior to its move to Paramus in 2024, The Valley Hospital, as a nonprofit hospital, was exempt from property taxes. Since the move, the former hospital, located on Linwood Avenue, is now subject to property tax.
It has been suggested in certain social media posts that, as a result of the added assessments of $200 million, the increase in property taxes far exceeds 3.14% This is simply not true.
I understand that, as taxpayers, you are looking at the bottom line.
Here it is: In 2024, municipal taxes on the average home of $710,168 were $4,760.84. This year, they will be $4,910.47 – a difference of $149.63 – just over 3%.
These are the facts and the math surrounding the 2025 Village of Ridgewood Budget. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to my office.
Keith Kazmark
Village Manager
201-670-5500, ext. 2202
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“I understand that, as taxpayers, you are looking at the bottom line.” This is rich coming from a guy who can’t seem to talk to residents but rather performs for an audience. Why, Keith. What is the real ideology here. Are you really doing the job of village manager for residents that you are supposed to serve? Or is this a puppet show staged by the master puppeteer, Vagianos. Many do not trust him anymore even if they voted for him, once or possibly twice. Things just aren’t adding up.
How much did it cost to print the ridiculously thick packet of 2024 accomplishments to get people’s attention away from the proposed budget. How many new vehicles that Ridgewood doesn’t need. Is Healthbarn getting any new gifts? Any more big raises and stipends that no one understands and are they warranted? Have you scrutinized this at all to see what value it brings. Yes, Keith, there is a lot of information that residents want to be made aware of.
Why does the mayor, park dept head and our village manager do so many favors and freebies for the Healthbarn? Does anyone know what really is going on with that?
Healtjbarn is using tax payers money. Our tax dollars maintain that park they over use, our tax dollars pay for the excess of a businesses trash our tax dollars pay for the parking lot, garden area, picnic tables and the pavilion. Why so many favors?
He can keep saying it, but it won’t make it true.
The key issue is that 88% of the $208 million in new assessments touted by Mr. Kazmark is a single Valley Hospital property located at 223 North Van Dien Avenue. The annual tax bill for that single property is $5.2 million. The Village Finance Department built the 2025 budget to include that $5.2 million in revenue and that money is not going to be collected because Valley doesn’t want to pay any taxes and is challenging it in court. So the budget this coming year is $5.2 million short out of the starting gate.
100%
The real increase ex Valley is 6+%
No chance Valley with pay their new tax bill. This will be in the courts for mths/yrs with no chance of a tax sale on part of the village.
Don’t believe a word he says. 6.6% is the accurate increase.
(total current year municipal tax total) divided by (total prior year municipal tax total) equals percentage increase.
42,256,311
39,658,267
1.0655
6.55% increase
Village taxpayers wake up, pay attention don’t trust any of them from village hall. They have their own way of doing math.
You guys are doing this effort a disservice by trying to combine two different issues:
1) The increase to each individual homeowner is 3.1%
2) The reason they were able to keep that increase is because they assume another meaningful source of revenue – tax from the Valley property – that may not be real.
The 6.6% number – the assumed total increase in revenue – isn’t really meaningful because it doesn’t reflect the truth of what taxpayers will actually be billed this year, and by continuously leaning on that number you’re not helping advance your cause. Really you should focus on what you assume will be a major budget gap if the Valley tax revenue doesn’t come through.
sounds like you are stating the exact same thing but a different way. We all learned how to do long division, you are just doing short division. At the end of the day, Valley will go from Happy to crappy and they are probably not going to fork over any dough, capiche? So at the end of the day, you are saying look at it this way, when the end result will be bupkis!
For the record, Mr. Kazmark is now driving a Village owned vehicle to and from work.
Who pays the gas? This is ridiculous
Well heck if Healthbarn can have a whole property plus a washer and dryer to clean up after their private events and parties, then why can’t Kaz shark have a fully paid vehicle on Ridgewood’s dime. After all isn’t he very busy calling balls and strikes?
What??? Why??? Who approved???
A sign of desperation:
From Village Council meeting agenda Wednesday, April 23
Closed Session:
Legal – Potential Litigation – Valley Hospital Tax Appeal/Expedited Tax Sale
Tax sale? Many political careers will come to a crashing end if they play that card. Hospitals have a HUGE number of supporters.
Let us just pray that the political careers that will crash will be:
Vagianos (#recallpaul)
Perron (#canpam)
Weitz (#bonditsfree)
Winograd (#welcome2expensive)
Mortimer (#completemoron)
Kazmark (#umporchump)
But more importantly based on all of the comments, who will buy Healthbarn the laundry soap for the washing machine?
Someone is paying for everything!!! That’s for sure
Omg, we are giving him a car too. On top of his paycheck. Wow. 💋
Freebies for everyone. Look into Habernickel people. What is going on over there
For decades the VOR collected no taxes and did just fine. Now we desperately need the money? What gives?
Yes to offset those damn planters
I’ll believe it when I see it if they receive more money from Valley. If I was family, I would tell Ridgewood take a walk. We’ll see you in court in a few years. They turned the blame game now, just like they did with the Covid money, scam, artist, go borrow some money from the water company.
Sell the water utility, pocket the money, and REDUCE our taxes.
The water utility should be sold in the story, if not, it should be run completely separate from the village. Why is the water utility have the villager Ridgewood plates on their vehicles. And why are all these employees under the Village Of Ridgewood? They work for the water utility it’s a separate entity, they have a separate budget. It should be like a business. We would love to see where all the money is going from the Woody utility, I definitely know from the past that some of them funds from the water utility were funding employees in the police department. now is that still going on while I don’t know. But we can find out and the director of water should have nothing to do with the Village Of Ridgewood. He’s the director of the water utility just stay over in your own building and worry about water employees. Stop worrying about all the other employees throughout the town trying to be Eye in the Sky, if you’re watching that obviously you have too much time on your hands as a director. Oh my God, a village vehicle one out of town two blocks to get a cup of coffee oh my oh my, get a life.
That’s something that still keeps on coming up, what is the what are utility worth in dollars. They keep that real quiet how much they down they sell their water company a few years ago for. Big money. every time we bring this up, they grind their teeth. That’s because that’s their big piggy bank. Cash flow, I think it’s worth a 40 million maybe more, because they sure spent a lot of money in the past few years. We wonder if they just threw that out there to see what kind of numbers would come in from major water utility companies throughout the area what they would offer just for shit and giggles. Can you imagine that come back and say oh the water quality will go down, guess what the war quality did go down it’s not the same as it was years ago so what the hell is the difference. Take 50 million and run you don’t need to deal with the bullshit anymore. Can you imagine investing that into government tax-free investments think think think how about dairy farms cows tax-free
Clean out the waste in “school administration “. Could save a bundle in taxes
Mr manager we would love to see the village sweep the streets over rt 17 more then 2 times a year.
Thanks
The compost site smells, rotten wood.