BY JOHN SNYDER
OF PASCACK PRESS
WESTWOOD, N.J.—Over a sunny breakfast buffet at the Iron Horse Restaurant on Jan. 23, seven Pascack Valley mayors and one councilwoman reflected on their communities’ challenges and opportunities heading into the new year.
According to co-host Skip Kelley, Greater Pascack Valley Chamber of Commerce vice president, the chamber’s annual mayors breakfast is in approximately its 45th year.
For their audience of business folks and a few residents, the leaders, including Oradell Mayor Dianne C. Didio, spoke for up to five minutes each on everything from affordable housing to capital projects to fighting hate in partnership with the schools. Here are the highlights:
Westwood has eye on festivities
Mayor John Birkner Jr. spoke of the borough’s recent conveyance of a plot to Habitat for Humanity of Bergen County, where veteran housing is planned, fulfilling the municipality’s quota for new affordable housing into 2025.
The recent transformation of the former Ford property into luxury apartments and a storage center meant Westwood is fully built out, Birkner said, meaning officials could now focus more on municipal infrastructure (paving, sewer lines and such) and the social infrastructure (LGBTQ community inclusion and expanding senior services).
“For seniors, the number one issue is transportation, and number two is taxes. I always tell them I’ll get working on transportation right away,” Birkner riffed.
Birkner also spoke enthusiastically of Westwood’s 125th anniversary this year, which brings milestone celebrations for the borough, the library, and several other institutions.
He predicted “a very minimal tax increase, if at all,” and noted the borough had filled out its Police Department table of organization.
Woodcliff Lake as ever in transition
Woodcliff Lake Councilwoman Nancy Gross reported that the borough soon would demolish the former Galaxy Gardens site and seek bids for remediation.
Focus then will shift to remodeling, with grant funds, the Westervelt–Lydecker House, which will be used for public events.
Gross touched on the borough’s settlement on affordable housing, saying construction was pending on the first 16 units it’s committed to.
She reported the borough said “farewell for now” to “our beloved [Police] Chief [Anthony] Jannicelli, who had been with the department 41 years—18 as as chief.
Retiring Dec. 31, 2018, he was replaced by Police Chief John Burns.
Gross also said she was pleased with progress toward Unity in the Valley, an effort of the four towns of the Pascack Valley Regional High School District against hate and discrimination.
A new approach in Hillsdale
Hillsdale Mayor John Ruocco praised his council’s resolution to reach out to Waste Management for cooperation in its bid to redevelop its industrial zone, pointedly without recourse to eminent domain.
“Hopefully that will allow WM to extract value out of its property in our town without reliance on a permit, so we’ll see where that goes,” he said.
Hillsdale’s affordable housing settlement is due for court approval in the next couple of months. “We don’t expect to have material development in our town,” the mayor said.
Ruocco reported with cheer that the Demarest Farms parking issue is solved.
“By next year Demarest Farms will not allow their patrons to park on residential streets. It’s been successful in getting offsite parking for its customers,” he said.
Ruocco said the borough faces the need for capital investment: roads, DPW equipment, police, and fire. There’s an additional challenge of perhaps upgrading the athletic fields. Officials are assessing the situation.
Ruocco also said he was disappointed that his council opted to spend $318,000 to replace the police dispatch desk rather than save money in the long term by shifting to a shared service to meet the need. He said more work remained in countering “fear of change” and local home rule.
He predicted “a difficult time with our budget this year,” particularly exacerbated by the police budget after the state 2 percent interest arbitration cap expired.
Smoother sailing in the Township of Washington
Township of Washington Mayor Peter Calamari noted that the Township is fully built out. Although there are two properties with affordable housing overlay zones, “We don’t anticipate them changing hands in the near future, and our impact will be minimal.”
He said driving through “the infamous Pascack/Washington intersection” will get easier after the county moves forward with a fix, which he said might be funded this year.
“I’m sure it affects a lot of your residents who drive through that intersection. We’d love to see it get improved so you don’t have to spend 10 minutes just getting through the traffic light,” he said.
The township is embarking on a new firehouse and ambulance building, and will have to replace fire apparatus and the DMF building. He said much would be paid out of “a decent surplus.”
Montvale is doing brisk business
Montvale Mayor Michael Ghassali started out saying, “So 2018, I’m happy to say, it’s over.”
He touched on affordable housing, the eruv settlement, the new firehouse, and a $4 million sports area.
“In the last week of the year we lost two residents: one very young, 16, to suicide, and one 77, to fire,” Ghassali said somberly.
“They’re both very personal because I think we could have avoided it if we were more involved, and that’s my message: We were so busy doing all these things, very important things, but it took us away from paying attention tot he residents and what’s happening in the community,” he said.
Saying he looked forward to 2019, he explained his message to his council “and I think to my fellow mayors and to the region here is we have to be more flexible to businesses that are looking to move into our towns.”
He said Montvale had lost a prospective global tenant over the color of their sign.
“Give them red, give them pink, give them whatever they want. Why are we so rigid?” he said.
He said he has asked the Planning Board to reassess the Master Plan to include light manufacturing. “We lost a major company that was willing to do light manufacturing to take up a whole building, 200 to 300 employees, to come to town. They went somewhere else,” he said
Since 2016, he said 110 business moved to Montvale.
Montvale made gains on affordable hosing last year, with major projects taking shape at the A&P, the former Sony site, and the former Mercedes site.
He lauded his colleagues on the borough council.
“My mission for this year, which is what I love to do, is go to more businesses, talk to the businesses, and work with the young and the seniors,” he said.
Emerson scaling back
Emerson’s new mayor, Danielle DiPaola, made her first appearance at the breakfast, where she appealed for help “from anyone in the room” during this time of transition, including the search for a new borough administrator.
She said affordable housing and redevelopment were the big ticket items she is carrying over but said she wanted to renew outreach to senior citizens “and dealing with our community members and making sure that we really do represent our motto, The Family Town.”
She added, “I think we’ve gotten a little bit lost on trying to do big projects. We’re going to continue with all of the drainage projects that we’ve started and we have a lot of grants for those.”
Downtown redevelopment is in the process of acquiring properties, she said.
In the meantime, she said, “We’re trying to scale this back and make it more of a reasonable development that is friendlier to our small downtown.”
She lauded the Emerson Chamber of Commerce and said assessing Borough Hall, police station, and municipal court needs would continue.
Park Ridge fights on
Park Ridge Mayor Keith Misciagna said Park Ridge continues to object in court to housing density it’s been asked to absorb.
“Park Ridge wants affordable housing—I’m probably going to need it in a few years myself—but we just don’t want to be Hudson County, and that’s what the residents of Park Ridge elected me to do and we are doing that,” he said.
He spoke to siting a large development downtown, 240 units, as “a nice center point for our downtown. I personally like it because it replaces a garbage waste transfer site that I grew up smelling—it was a disgusting thing to have in the center of town and I’m happy to see that go,” he said.
He added,”The project’s a little larger than we would have chosen but with having this litigation hanging over our head we had to make compromises.”
He commended the Park Ridge Animal Hospital project, where bricks are going up.
“People were upset when that went up—it’s not that large a project, it looked big when it was going up—but it looks like a nice addition to our downtown.”
He noted that the borough was always more industrial than suburban—its motto was By Industry We Flourish—and said, “We’re reinventing ourselves.”
Park Ridge, as well, is celebrating 125 years this year, and activities are taking shape.
Also in the works: a downtown community center, paid for in large part with downtown redevelopment funds.
Misciagna also was pleased with its partnerships toward the reservoir pathway project, which he said “feels like it’s going to happen this year.” He said it would be “like Central Park in the Pascack Valley—the jewel of the Pascack Valley.”