June 12, 2013 THE VILLADOM TIMES II • Page 3 Ridgewood Council majority urged to drop Riche issue by John Koster A Ridgewood resident urged the three-member majority bloc of the Ridgewood Village Council to either drop the pretense that Councilman Thomas Riche had defrauded Ridgewood with telephone work -- or resign. “Why make this volume over something you yourself voted on?” asked resident Ron Forenza. “The extra $8,000 order amount is not Riche’s fault. Why don’t you all get your heads together, or just all leave?” The comments drew applause from several members of the audience. The crowd also applauded a speech by former councilman Jacques Harlow, who said he believed Riche is an honorable man. Conversely, long-time resident Dan Johnson thanked the council for exposing the fact that Riche, an elected official, had been doing business with Ridgewood for many years and supposedly nobody knew about it. His statement brought laughter and the chant “They knew” from the audience. At the June 5 meeting and previously, the Ridgewood Village Council admitted once again to voting to approve a $24,000 contract for Riche’s company, Extel of North Haledon, to work on aspects of Ridgewood’s communications system. Riche had recused himself as required by law. Village Attorney Matt Rogers asserted that the $24,000 vote was legal even before Johnson spoke, was quoted in print, and repeated the statement June 5. An unidentified man called for an investigation not only of Riche but of the entire Ridgewood administration. Mayor Paul Aronsohn deftly halted the man in mid-speech. Taking umbrage at a newspaper headline, Deputy Mayor Albert Pucciarelli asserted, “I did not defame Mr. Riche.” He defended the principle that elected officials or employees should not contract work with the village, but Pucciarelli concurred with the ruling of Village Attorney Rogers that the $24,000 approval did not violate the ordinance. Then Riche’s defenders rallied, speaking to the council majority in general. (Bernadette Walsh, who defended Riche at the original May 22 meeting, was apparently exempted.) “What you did was to defame Mr. Riche in a very terrible way,” said Harlow. “You have done it with innuendo and misrepresentation. What you have done is gone on a witch hunt while you defamed his name and possibly damaged his business...Your actions have been despicable.” Several speakers tried to blame the press. However, residents who saw the TV broadcast of the entire meeting or listened to the CD from the meeting acknowledged that the media coverage of the issue was substantially accurate. “I saw the tape. I wasn’t here. I thought it was disgraceful,” resident Lorraine Reynolds said of the council’s criticism of Riche’s emergency rewiring of the Ridgewood Fire Department telephone system at the urgent request of the fire department. This led to an additional bill of $8,000 from Riche to Ridgewood once the project was completed. Fire Chief James Van Goor, called from the audience as much by the public as the council, confirmed that Riche had gotten the Ridgewood Fire Department phones working first on an emergency basis, later with a full renovation. Without contradicting the council, Chief Van Goor essentially confirmed Riche’s account of what had happened. “Once he had the temporary phones working, there was no big rush,” Van Goor said, explaining why the dates seemed confused. (Riche said away from the meeting that he had used shelf-stock phones for the emergency and had not billed Ridgewood for them.) Reynolds then asked Councilwoman Gwen Hauck, also seen as part of the perceived three-member council bloc, if she intended to recuse herself, as Pucciarelli already said he would, if and when a proposed zoning change for Valley Hospital comes before the council from the Ridgewood Planning Board. Hauck said she is not financially involved with Valley Hospital, but Reynolds read the text of the ordinance, which refers to personal involvement in addition to financial involvement. Reynolds told the councilwoman that, if she thought she could vote objectively on any matter concerning Valley Hospital after 25 years of volunteer support, Hauck was “lying to herself.” Linda McNamara, an activist with the League of Women Voters, said the council, not Riche, had made the mistake. “I don’t understand why this was handled in public,” McNamara said. “Nothing illegal happened...it was an (continued on page 16)