Page 4 THE VILLADOM TIMES II • June 15, 2011 Ridgewood PSE&G to reduce number of solar panels to 180 by John Koster Ridgewood Mayor Keith Killion and Deputy Mayor Thomas Riche recently told interested residents that they had negotiated the village’s mandatory solar panel quota down from a stipulated 500 to 180 panels. After initially saying the installation of solar panels couldn’t be stopped on the local government level, Riche admitted that the impact had actually been reduced because Ridgewood was one of only three towns in New Jersey, he said, to register concerted resistance to the statelevel plan. “We got more of an audience than I think any other community got,” Riche said. Originally, since Ridgewood has about 5,000 freestanding utility poles, the plan had been to install 500 solar panels on the company-owned poles within the village. In response to questions from resident Boyd Loving, Riche admitted that the practical quota for Ridgewood had been reduced, and that the utility had agreed that none of the solar panels would be located in a historic district or on a decorated municipal pole. The original plans by Public Service Gas & Electric called for installing 220,000 solar panels around the State of New Jersey on company-owned utility poles under a program approved by the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities. According to PSE&G, the solar panels will produce 40 megawatts of power. Each solar panel, Killion noted, generates enough power to illuminate a 60-watt light bulb. “The towns in New Jersey had absolutely no say as to whether this was going to access their towns,” Deputy Mayor Riche told resident Al Plage, who found that PSE&G had installed two solar panels on utility poles near his front door. “A thought occurred to me that these are rather unsightly,” Plage told the council. Riche and Killion agreed that the rectangular panels are not aesthetically pleasing. Killion said he has a panel visible from his porch and that his wife put up a hanging plant to screen it from sight, but the locations could not be blocked without litigation that faced almost certain failure. They also noted that Ridgewood has no power to select which poles receive the panels; the criterion for panel installation is constant exposure to sunlight. They had no answer for why, as yet, no panels have been installed on poles on the parking lot along Cottage Place between the board of education office and the backs of stores on North Maple Avenue and Ridgewood Avenue, but said these might appear shortly “The rate-payers are already paying for the panels on these poles, and it is what it is,” Riche said. “We’re just going to have to live with it.” The Ridgewood municipal budget was adopted last week and will increase the municipal-purpose tax on the average village house by $255 per year. This figure does not include taxes for the local schools or for Bergen County. The average house valued at $797,000 will experience a total increase of $417 when the school taxes are added to taxes for municipal government, police, and the paid fire department, parks and roads, and the library. The figures for Bergen County have not been finalized, but the anticipated increase should bring the total tax to about $463 for the average Ridgewood house. Mayor Keith Killion and members of the Ridgewood Village Council said after the meeting that they would continue to look for ways to reduce taxes even after last week’s adoption. The budget carried out the mayor’s last-minute promise to restore $35,000 in library funds, which brought the total Council gives 2011 budget final approval municipal budget to $44,467.008. The amount to be raised by local taxation is $29,903,086. Miscellaneous revenues total $8,841.536, with an anticipated surplus of $2,670,000, and $890,000 as a reserve for uncollected taxes. The minimum library tax was established as $2,162,386. In 2010, Ridgewood took measures including staff layoffs, reduction of part-time jobs, reduction of fill-time jobs to part-time jobs, and the establishment of fees for library space use for private business and for computer access to people who are not Ridgewood residents. The jobs of the two most recently hired police officers were saved when fellow officers accepted one-day-a-month unpaid furloughs. The subject of furloughs had been broached a few years earlier, but no layoffs were carried out until last year, when virtually every department was affected. About 34 people were ultimately either laid off or elected to pursue early retirement.