[ back ]
COMMON GROUND - 11/30/2008
(by Anita Yarossi - OpEd Columnist - December 02, 2008)
No real solution
You may have heard a buzz about town in Ringwood that the current Borough Council has found a solution for Upper Ringwood residents displaced from their homes by dangerous sinkholes. In the municipal newsletter, Mayor Walter Davison Jr. stated that the borough has applied for an additional Small Cities grant to bring “closure” to these residents.
But in fact, no permanent housing solutions have been offered to the residents. What the borough has proposed to do is demolish their homes and install safety fencing around the unstable ground, calling it “open space.” For the loss of their homes, residents would receive $15,000 to $20,000. This “closure” the mayor is talking about has very little to do with a solution for the residents. Rather the borough gets the opportunity to close the door in their faces.
Also included in the grant application is a “solution” for Roger DeGroat’s sinkhole. The borough proposes to subdivide DeGroat’s land and fill in the huge void without doing proper remediation. So while DeGroat would no longer own the land, he would still have a sinkhole attached to it with all the safety issues that continue to threaten the neighborhood. DeGroat has never agreed to this.
The state awarded Ringwood $238,000 to fix DeGroat’s sinkhole to alleviate a dangerous safety issue affecting the community. The state also awarded Ringwood $800,000 in Extraordinary Aid because former Mayor Joanne Atlas cited the dire issues in Upper Ringwood, including sinkholes and rent payments for the residents the borough had displaced. With all the money that the state has provided for Upper Ringwood, the sinkhole has not been fixed and the displaced residents’ needs continue to be ignored by the municipality.
When I go to the Borough Council meetings, I am still amazed at the defensiveness of the present council when specific details are queried. Council members Donna Anderson, William Marsala and Linda Schaefer, who appointed Atlas as mayor, formed the majority that controlled the council for two years and supported her actions. Atlas purposefully delayed action on the Small Cities Grant and ignored state money being offered for housing costs for the displaced residents in order to apply for Extraordinary Aid.
Over and over at many council meetings, I witnessed the frustration on the part of DeGroat and former Councilwoman Wenke Taule as the state grant money was not being used to alleviate the danger in DeGroat’s yard. Promises were made by Mayor Atlas and former Borough Manager Ken Hetrick to DeGroat, but nothing was done. Because of this, two resolutions were passed to help DeGroat – one in May of 2007 to prioritize the sinkhole and one in November of 2007 to put into place more funding for the sinkhole. These were ultimately ignored by Mayor Atlas.
It is only now after reviewing the entire state Department of Community Affairs (DCA) file on this grant that the tactics of delay and miscommunication have been revealed. Certainly, Hetrick was not taking direction from anyone but Atlas behind closed doors. The adversarial relationships between Atlas and the rest of the Democrats, who shared the dais at that time, made it impossible for much of this information to come to light until now. Members of the current Borough Council may want to place blame on the Democrats, but the facts are just not on their side.
[ back ]
