December 15, 2010 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • Page 25 Allendale vows help to complete Chestnut Street by John Koster Residents of Chestnut Street in Allendale should expect to see some action to complete the repaving and striping of their street. The project has lagged since mid-October, causing concern among a number of Allendale residents and borough neighbors. Allendale Councilwoman Liz White, seconded by Deputy Mayor Robert Schoepflin, said that if the hired contractor had not responded to demands that he finish the project by this week, a backup contractor who has done satisfactory work for Allendale in the past would be called in to see that the road is finally completed and opened to the general public. “Residents are driving on it,” said Allendale resident Jeff Dugal. “If residents are driving on it, why can’t I drive on it? If you want, I’ll pay somebody to paint the lines.” Dugal said he sympathized with the two Allendale policemen who had to man the barriers and turn away motorists who don’t reside on Chestnut Street so they do not use the roadway as a through street into Waldwick. But Dugal also said that using two Allendale policemen to turn traffic away is a waste of time and taxpayers’ money. He added that people from his Waldwick Plastics warehouse who used to drive to Allendale for lunch no longer did so, because the six-mile detour around Chestnut Street wastes a half-hour of their time (15 minutes each way). The detour, Dugal asserted, wastes gasoline, pollutes the air, and takes hundreds of drivers past four schools, endangering children. He apologized for becoming emotional, saying that a number of people share his frustration. Councilwoman White said she has become frustrated Rate hike (continued from page 3) as 15 percent, and finally introduced a five percent increase in the form of the ordinance adopted last week. “There’s been no explanation as to why there’s been a fluctuation,” Landell said. “There is insufficient financial documentation to justify the rate increase...I would ask you to refrain from adopting the ordinance or just put the vote aside until you have the proper information for the decision.” Landell said the Ridgewood Water Company paperwork over the past several years indicated $2,805,000 for “indirect expenses” and questioned whether water customers in Glen Rock, Midland Park, and Wyckoff should be defraying expenses for items other than the delivery and monitoring of the water system. “You need to indicate what expenses are being funded through the water department,” Landell said. “Many of the costs bear no relation to the operation of the water operation,” Higgins said. Higgins said the Ridgewood Water Department had 37 employees, including administrators, engineers, clerks, and meter readers, and should be substantially autonomous, yet was billing for outside services that should have been conducted in-house. He questioned why a department whose purpose was to provide and monitor water should have spent $177,000 in the 2010 budget for the police force, $50,000 for the paid fire department, $64,000 for the police and fire pensions, $20,000 of the council, $78,000 for the village manager, $63,000 for clerical work outside the water department, and $84,000 for the engineers outside the water department. Displaying two large charts, Higgins said that if these nonwater expenses were deleted, the water company could roll back to the water fees of 2009. “There’s no need for a five percent increase on top of a 21 percent increase,” Higgins asserted. He said Ridgewood police and firefighters didn’t serve any need of residents of the three neighboring towns and implied that billing Glen Rock, Midland Park, and Wyckoff residents for Ridgewood police and firefighters was unfair. Glen Rock Mayor John van Keuren, Borough Administrator Lenora Benjamin, and most of the Glen Rock Council joined Midland Park Mayor Monahan and Wyckoff Township Committeemen Christopher DePhillips, Thomas Madigan, Kevin Rooney, and Brian Scanlan and Township Administrator Robert Shannon in the audience. Mayor van Keuren said he opposed the rate increase. “I think that a better option would be a teeter approach to put more of the burden on the customers who use the water excessively and less of those who use it sparingly,” he commented. Glen Rock Councilman Pazan said that Ridgewood Water tastes bad, and the lead content is barely acceptable. He added that some of the tanks show exterior mold, and he could not imagine what they look like inside. Pazan also said the summer sprinkler restrictions are annoying, and that Ridgewood should find new ways to meet demands instead of raising prices. Wyckoff Mayor Rudy Boonstra, unable to attend the Ridgewood meeting due to a late Wyckoff Planning Board meeting, learned of the Ridgewood vote the morning after: “I think it’s unfortunate,” he said. Ridgewood’s official position is that the increase is necessary to cover expenses of delivering water to all four towns. The Ridgewood Water Company, while responsible exclusively to the Ridgewood Village Council, has a testing center in Midland Park, a treatment plant on land Ridgewood owns within the borders of Glen Rock, and a large number of wells in Wyckoff. with the project. “We’re sitting here with a real debacle,” said White. “There’s nothing else to say.” White said, however, that the council had already informed AJM Contracting of Clifton that if the contractor had not wrapped up a project scheduled for completion on Oct. 12 by the end of this week, they could expect to be replaced. “The contractor has been unresponsive and we have notified him that he has been unresponsive,” White said. She added, to balance the picture, that a Verizon pole found in the road had slowed construction for reasons that were understandable. Past work by the same contractor, she said, had been acceptable, and AJM was the lowest responsible bidder for the Chestnut Street project. However, White and her peers on the council agreed with Dugal that completion had been delayed far too long. White also reported that a pending Public Service Electric & Gas project intended to augment the national power grid could be expected to intermittently block portions of Franklin Turnpike in Allendale and neighboring Ramsey starting some time in February. How many households will your advertising message reach? 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