Page 8 THE VILLADOM TIMES II • October 31, 2012 Ridgewood Leaf ordinance defeated after latest objections by John Koster The Ridgewood Village Council defeated the proposed leaf ordinance after the third round of residents’ objections, and reached a consensus to wait a year before introducing new regulations. Village Manager Ken Gabbert and Village Engineer Christopher Rutishauser parried some of the objections from residents who argued that the seven-day maximum for leaving raked leaves in place was arbitrary, and the court appearance and summons service -- requiring court appearance and fines of $200 to $1,000 for mixing branches with leaves -- was draconian. Ridgewood officials said that mixing branches with leaves could choke the leaf vacuums and disrupt the collection schedules, and noted that not mixing branches with leaves is a long-standing Ridgewood policy. Gabbert said that bagged leaves would be picked up wherever they were if they did not block roads or sidewalks, but that they should not be placed outside more than seven days before the scheduled pickup. “If leaves are allowed to get too high, they become a traffic hazard,” Rutishauser said. “He admitted, however, that the requirement for pickup within seven days, once mandatory by state environmental law, had been rescinded. “The state has eliminated that,” Rutishauser said, confirming a statement by Boyd Loving, a resident who frequently speaks at council meetings. “The issue of the seven day pickup schedule is still an issue,” said resident George Williams. “It’s an absurdity and creates all kinds of problems.” “I feel it’s education that is needed,” said John Capurso, another resident. He said the only purpose he could see in the ordinance was to raise money with extreme fines, and suggested that leaving leaf piles that contain branches untouched would serve the purpose of notifying residents that branches cannot be mixed with leaves. “You can’t commingle your branches with your leaves,” Mayor Paul Aronsohn said as a reminder to the audience. “That’s always been in the Ridgewood ordinance. Adopting this doesn’t change anything.” “I, for one, would put it before the people not to put branches (in the leaves) and see where we go with that,” said Deputy Mayor Albert Puccarelli. “I think we’ve had a lot of sturm und drang on this to very little purpose.” (Sturm und drang is German for “storm and stress” and refers to violent and melodramatic literary works of the early Romantic era, notably those of Friedrich Schiller.) “I, for one, am not convinced that we need a policy change at this point,” said Mayor Aronsohn. “It just seems that we’re adopting an ordinance to adopt an ordinance.” Mayor Aronsohn suggested that the ordinance be defeated and that the council wait one year to see if existing regulations -- similar to the proposal, but without the court appearance after a summons and the high fines - prevented any problems like those that occurred after the October 2011 snowstorm. Besides dropping trees and large branches on power lines and depriving large parts of Ridgewood and Glen Rock of electrical power and telephone communication for up to five days, that early storm led to huge accumulations of leaves in the street and on lawns while workers struggled to relieve the damage to the electrical grid. The council briefly pondered the best way to drop the ordinance, and Village Clerk Heather Mailander suggested that an outright defeat would be the most conclusive way to handle it. The council took Mailander’s advice and voted 5-0 to defeat the ordinance. The governing body subsequently adopted another ordinance after some questions. Scott McCann, a long-time resident, asked the council and administration if shared services had been considered before the decision to purchase a replacement hydraulic left at vehicle fleet headquarters. “The older things get, the more maintenance they need. I’m living proof,” McCann said dryly. He asked if the hydraulic lift was really worth replacing, or if services could not be contracted out elsewhere to save Ridgewood some money. Gabbert replied that the hydraulic lift in question was about 30 years old, and had long since exceeded its expected service life. Gabbert said that sending vehicles in need of the services of the lift would consume many man-hours in road time that no savings for shared services was likely. The council concurred and adopted an ordinance to provide $40,000 for the purchase, which will cost a total of $76,000. The balance of the money will come from capital funds. A third vote authorized the execution of a grant agreement to accept partial funding for a ramp into Graydon Pool -- after some more pointed objections from the audience. Residents Sean McCooe and Marcia Ringel urged that no concrete ramp intrude into the pool as it now exists. McCooe said that no ramps were built into the sea on the Jersey Shore and that Ridgewood should investigate how the needs of the handicapped are covered without ramps. “They do not have concrete ramps going down to the ocean,” McCooe said. Ringel, who headed a coalition to head off a complex of rectangular pools at the Graydon site a few years ago, accused the advocates of the ramp of “disinformation” and said that ADA regulations do not mandate a concrete ramp (continued on page 15)