January 15, 2014 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • Page 5 Wyckoff McMansion ban, revitalized Zabriskie House eyed by John Koster Wyckoff’s new mayor, Doug Christie, spoke at his inauguration on Jan. 1 to announce plans for an ordinance to control the proliferation of McMansions -- oversized houses on undersized lots -- and the revitalization of the historic Zabriskie House as a local history resource for K-8 students in Wyckoff’s schools. Christie, a contractor, life-time Wyckoff resident, and long-term volunteer firefighter, spoke without reading from notes. He had consulted some highlights on a card in his breast pocket before the speech, and his eloquence in the largely off-the-cuff speech drew applause from the packed audience at the reorganization meeting. Brian Scanlan, the committee’s lone Democrat and the designated hitter to bring the venerable Zabriskie House back into the mainstream, voted with the Republican major- ity at the first meeting of the year. Christie had praised Scanlan, along with Kevin Rooney, this year’s deputy mayor, for their critical work in bringing the Russell Farms property into Wyckoff’s system of municipal parks a few weeks before. The McMansion ordinances, which Christie promised for the first quarter of 2014, would create side-yard set- back requirements so developers cannot buy older homes, demolish them, and construct incongruous houses in resi- dential neighborhoods. Young families, Christie said, would be able to buy houses they could afford in Wyckoff, but if they wanted bigger Wyckoff homes for growing families they would have to shift their addresses rather than file for variances for lateral expansions. After the meeting, Scanlan said he is already working to help make residents aware of the role Wyckoff and Frank- lin Lakes had played in the American Civil War. He and Rooney, son of a U.S. Marine Corps general, will pursue grants and loans to make the expansion of Zabriskie house hours and operation painless to taxpayers while Wyckoff Township Committeeman Haakon Jepson, the liaison to the Wyckoff K-8 schools, works with the schools to enable stu- dents to use the 18 th century Zabriskie House as a resource for local history studies. “I don’t need a written speech,” Mayor Christie said. “I didn’t need to write anything down. Wyckoff is an abso- lutely wonderful town...What makes Wyckoff so special is the people. We don’t treat each other as citizens; we treat each other as neighbors.” (continued on page 24)