HILLSDALE—The Borough Council Special Temporary Steering Committee on the Community Center and Fields has focused on the West Parking Lot in the center of town and the east parking lot at Stonybrook Swim Club, adjacent to the pump house, as candidate sites for a multimillion-dollar community center.
It asked DMR Architects to begin estimating and pricing out what could be built on the two locations — and settled on Centennial Field as the focus of any field enhancements.
That’s according to Mayor John Ruocco, who said the council committee on Oct. 29, its first meeting, made its decision without consulting the Citizens Advisory Committee he empanelled on the work.
“They took off the table as potential sites Centennial Field, Memorial Field, and Beechwood Park,” he told Pascack Press on Nov. 1.
He said, “From the briefing I received from the borough administrator, they did not even ask DMR to look at four other options that our engineer had identified over a year ago.”
It matters, Ruocco said, because “As DMR suggested initially several months ago, when they first made a presentation in the summer, it is a best practice to survey the views of residents before you run down a particular path too far.”
He dinged the council’s decision to hire DMR for the feasibility study “without using the fair and open process of getting bids, or even the non-fair and -open process whereby a formal bid process would be supplanted by the borough administrator instead inviting a number of firms to provide an estimate of doing a feasibility study.”
Ruocco alleged the administrator, Christopher Tietjen, “did not do either because the council, over my objections, told him just to ask DMR. As we used to say in business, Is this any way to run an airline?”
The Council Steering Committee, consisting of council members Anthony DeRosa, Council President Abby Lundy, and Zoltán Horváth, with Tietjen and recreation director Patty Hughes, met with DMR on Oct. 29.
Their next meeting is expected Nov. 29, at which Ruocco said he understood that the role of the Citizens Advisory Committee would be discussed.
That body’s members are given as Ruta Fiorino of Access for All, Meredith Kates of the Environmental Commission, Carol Schepker of the library board, Sara Armstrong of the Recreation Committee, Ann Janet Cron and John Corring of the Recreation Committee, Rob Stigliano of the Stonybrook Pool Commission, Louisa Toledo of the Board of Health, and Marie Hanlon of the 50-plus Club.
“Right now, the advisory committee is doing nothing. That must be discouraging for them,” Ruocco said.
He added, “I had an agreement with councilmember Lundy and the BA when I met with them after the Oct. 12 council meeting that the steering committee would first figure out how they wanted to use the Citizens Advisory Committee before giving feedback to DMR.”
Ruocco said, “I guess they don’t see it as necessary to consult the advisory committee until after the steering committee has narrowed down the options as to what they think is the right path.”
Ruocco, who has often locked horns with the council — recently seeing his limited veto on redevelopment overridden — said “This does not show respect for the views of the residents, does not exhibit sound business planning, and is certainly not smart politics.”
Ruocco predicted, “This approach will backfire if and when the proposal goes before the voters in a referendum. While I can appreciate the fact that members of this council feel defensive about having already started to tax the residents for the this capital project without having first made some crucial decisions on site and requirements, and without explaining how they came up with a $10 million spending threshold, it only makes matters worse to continue not taking the pulse of the residents.”
Ruocco told Pascack Press he’d suggested creating a council steering committee and a Citizens Advisory Committee “to instill some order and framework for the decision-making process, much as I would if I were still working at the Federal Reserve or in the private sector.”
He said, “Power politics seems to be at play here, with some of the council members wanting to show that they made their mark. The problem is that in doing so, they are spending other people’s money without proceeding prudently.”
Ruocco said, “Recall that the idea of a community center was being solely advocated by the seniors in town. All they wanted was a simple building, comparable to what Old Tappan and River Vale have, to meet in and share with other organizations. But when some members of council decided they wanted a state-of-the-art recreational center, the political dynamics changed and the planning process and expected costs vastly increased. The stakes went up, and I think this council has not yet convincingly demonstrated by its actions (or lack thereof) that it is up to the challenge.”
Ruocco wrote the Citizens Advisory Committee Oct. 29, saying in part, “Based on what the [administrator] related to me, DMR was told to provide for various specific athletic and community facilities and amenities in designing the community center.”
He added that although he was “encouraged by any progress being made in respect of these two large capital projects” he also was “disappointed in the significant action that the steering committee took today without first considering the views of the Citizens Advisory Committee.”
Ruocco said the citizens group was to advise the steering committee, “thereby allowing the steering committee to come before the full governing body with recommendations by December.”
According to Ruocco, neither of these committees needed the advice and consent of council before being established. “However, it is customary for the mayor in such cases to put forward the names for a motion to record so that the minutes record the creation, purpose, and the members.”
The mayor said a motion to record was made by Horváth but there were no seconds for either committee and no explanations were offered.
“This caught me by surprise as the idea for the committees had been agreed to by the borough administrator and the council president several days earlier. Nevertheless, the borough attorney informed us during the meeting that, despite the lack of a second, both committees were validly created according to the council’s bylaws,” he said.
He added, “This unexpected development leads me to believe that a majority of the council members may be having second thoughts about relying on the structural approach I proposed or have concerns with the members I appointed to one or both committees.”
Ruocco said, “Hopefully, this will be resolved by the governing body in the near future, as residents have already incurred a 5.3% increase in property taxes in 2021 to fund a down payment for these capital expenditures, and we have contracted with an outside consultant to perform a feasibility study.”
Tietjen responds
We reached out to Tietjen and Lundy for comment. Tietjen called Pascack Press from vacation to respond, first on the decision to bring on DMR.
“Architecture and planning fall under what New Jersey calls the professional services… It’s not required that you do that [go out for bid],” he said.
He said “DMR was already on the redevelopment that we’re doing; I’ve worked with them before and I know their work product. What they did for us on redevelopment was good — I was satisfied with them, and I think the Borough Council was satisfied with them, which is why they went ahead and did that.”
Of the mayor’s critique of the steering committee’s work so far, Tietjen said, “It was my understanding that there would be a role for the subcommittee that the mayor formed should the steering committee have felt it was necessary to bring them on. I don’t think there was ever any formal agreement between myself, the council president, and the mayor to include them in any step of the process.”
He added, “I think certainly they would be included but there was no checklist for when to include them. This was our first meeting. I don’t know what we were supposed to do in the interim.”
Winnowing the list
DMR on Oct. 5 presented pros and cons of five potential sites for a new community center and a new artificial turf field — estimated at $10 million.
Architect Kurt Vierheilig revealed the five sites then under consideration: the municipal lot, Memorial Field, Beechwood Park, Stonybrook Swim Club, and Centennial Field.
The Borough Council earlier set aside $500,000 in this year’s budget for a possible down payment for future bonding for both projects.
Officials said the estimated $10 million covered soft costs at $2 million for professional fees, engineering and equipment; $1.7 million for a new artificial turf field and related field needs; and $6.3 million for a new community center of approximately 18,000 square feet.
The community center is eyed as including regulation basketball courts, two smaller recreational courts, retractable bleachers, a 1,200-square-foot activity room, a recreational office, snack room, restrooms, storage room, and equipment room.
Francis Reiner of DMR told members that they should form an advisory or steering committee, hold a public discussion, and then try to winnow the choices to two or three.
— With background reporting by Michael Olohan