WESTWOOD—Two incumbents were sworn in Jan. 6 at the local community center after winning a contested race for their two open seats, narrowly beating back two Democratic challengers.
During the borough’s 131st reorg meeting, incumbent Republican councilors Cheryl L Hodges and Anthony Greco were sworn in before a large crowd, with families and friends nearby. During the election, Hodges and Greco polled 26.87% and 25.9%, respectively, of the electorate to Bontemps’ 23.83% and Rasmussen’s 23.38%.
Robert Bicocchi was elected council president.
The meeting featured council committee assignments, liaison appointments, and hiring/rehiring of borough professionals including borough attorney Levi J. Cool; borough engineer Kevin Boswell; and other borough professionals exempt from public bidding. These included everything from borough auditor (Lerch, Viinci & Bliss) and Residential Appraiser (Associated Appraisal Group) to Historic Consultant (Tim Adriance Historic Restoration) and Financial Consultant (Phoenix Advisors).
During the reorg meeting, Mayor Ray Arroyo spoke about progress in 2024 and issues remaining for 2025. He noted new basketball courts at Voorhees Park, a walkway at Gritman Park. improved senior services, completed remediation of lead soil at the old pistol range; new windows at the library; A/C in the ambulance bay, and a new sewer jet vacuum and pumper truck for keeping sanitary water and stormwater flowing.
As he enters year two of his four-year second term, Arroyo said the 2025 municipal budget is under review, noting they will craft a responsible budget “that balances the borough’s needs and wants against the tax impact on the average assessed home.”
He noted public safety, parking and land use as key local priorities. He said in the decade between 2014 to 2023, 6,000 more vehicles come daily into Westwood via Westwood Avenue and Broadway than the prior decade.
“That’s an average of 30,000 more vehicle trips during the work week. This is a blessing for our businesses — a $200,000,000 tax ratable which collectively depends upon a consumer market that is within a 15-minute drive from our downtown — but a curse for the impact on local roads and pedestrian safety,” said the mayor. He said he reconvened the pedestrian safety task force to work with the DPW to improve roadway signage, striping and lighting.
He said the borough was working to acquire new properties to meet downtown businesses’ and restaurants’ parking demand.
He said he continues to meet with mayors from four towns who’ve conducted drone studies of area brooks and streams (Hillsdale, River Vale, and Washington Township) to strategize how best to secure grant funding for a project estimated to cost up to $8 million. In addition, he is working with a lobbying firm and Fifth District Congressman Josh Gottheimer’s office on grant funds.
On affordable housing, Arroyo said the borough is not opposed to such housing though it has joined Montvale’s 28-town lawsuit against the fourth round obligation numbers released by the state DCA in October. Westwood’s fourth round obligation was 235 units.
“To be clear: Westwood is not opposed to additional ‘inclusive’ housing, located in our fully developed town, where the planning professionals at Burgis Associates along with the Westwood Planning Board determine it can best be accommodated. And in densities that reflect the scale, context and physical limitations of our infrastructure,” said the mayor.
He said during Round 3, Westwood built six units of affordable housing when it was required to build one unit. He said that Westwood “has always complied” with its obligations. “We have concerns about the implementation of Round 4 and the ways in which a series of initiatives incubating in Trenton threaten to upend years of thoughtful, inclusive, and demonstrably successful planning and zoning that has been the key to Westwood’s ongoing success.”
He said he would create a Planning Board subcommittee to work with borough planner Burgis Associates. He said the state’s exclusion of 47 so-called “urban aid” towns — previously there were 62 exempt towns — from affordable obligations “is no longer operable and can no longer be justified. Fair share means just that. Every town must share, fairly, in providing a realistic opportunity for meeting its realistic development potential.”