The Village of Chestnut Ridge is a neighboring community of Upper Saddle River and if you have been there recently you can’t have missed the signs for the upcoming election (March 19, 2019) for Village Trustees. For the residents of Upper Saddle River and its neighbors, issues from across the border are barely heard, with few taking interest. However, change ripples through communities and residents might want to know about the issues and what is going on. So, what is it all about?
Here are what the candidates Steven “Jeff” Wasserman and Anthony Shaut have to say on the issues that have arisen in Chestnut Ridge.
The main issues that we are faced within Chestnut Ridge are a lack of transparency, lack of code enforcement, and a lack of community. These three issues are all comingled in some way and have driven our village to the point where we are today. Below we will touch upon how the process for the House of Worship (“HoW”) law highlighted each of these issues because you’ve communicated that this is what your neighbors have been most recently interested in. However, please understand that these issues also exist outside of the scope of the HoW Law.
Lack of transparency: In at least as early as August 2017 and possibly earlier, the Orthodox Jewish Coalition (“OJC”) approached our Village board to petition for a revised HoW law. Our zoning law at the time required a minimum of 5 acres for a house of worship. From August 2017 to February 2018, our Village Board, using taxpayer dollars, worked solely with the OJC and the Village Planner behind closed doors drafting a HoW law. The first time that any residents outside of the OJC became aware of this law was at a Village Board meeting in February 2018. The OJC had every right to petition for a HoW law, but the petition process should have been done in a public setting with input from all sides before a law was drafted. A similar lack of transparency was demonstrated when our Village Board circumvented the ruling of our Zoning Board and reissued a certificate of occupancy to a house of worship that was masquerading as a garage at 3 Springhill Terrace. By the time concerned residents realized what had happened, the statute of limitations to challenge the CO had expired.
Read more hereLack of code enforcement: The function of code enforcement is to ensure zoning laws are adhered to. The purpose of zoning laws are to ensure our village retains its beautiful character that drew all of the residents here in the first place. In many cases, code enforcement and our building department have either failed to cite properties for blatant violations or failed to apply zoning laws properly. The issue that we are currently faced with is that regardless of whether you support the old 5 acre zoning law or the new relaxed zoning law, applications for houses of worship are still required to come before our Planning Board. The function of our Planning Board is to work with applicants to minimize the impacts of development on the environment. If houses of worship continue to operate without approval from our Planning Board, and if code enforcement fails to issue citations to illegal houses of worship that are operating without that approval, what motivation do those houses have to go through the proper planning process required by the law to responsibly develop? If homeowners and developers are permitted to build however and whatever they want, low-density neighborhoods soon become saddled with overdevelopment.
Lack of community: When the OJC initially petitioned for a HoW law, our Village Board missed a golden opportunity to bring all residents together and provide education on both sides. Many residents may not fully understand the practices of the Orthodox religion and why certain things are needed. Had there been an open dialogue from the beginning, a better understanding of the Orthodox faith would have relieved some of the tension. Likewise, had there been an open dialogue from the beginning, the Orthodox members of our community would have understood that their neighbor’s concerns were mainly based upon the fear of intense land use rather than an objection to one’s religion. It’s possible, and even likely, that the religious members of the community would still have had disagreements with the non-religious members of our community with regards to what constitutes too intense of a land use. However, people can disagree and co-exist more peacefully when they are more educated on an issue. It’s also possible that the end result of these discussions may not have been substantially different from where the HoW law ended up in its final form, but the process by which that final form was reached, in open forums with interactive discussions between all members of this community, would have went a long way in healing the discord. On a bigger scale, residents, community groups, and our own Planning Board have advocated for a Comprehensive Plan, something that 70% of NY municipalities currently have and something that is universally considered to be a prudent means of planning. The current board’s unanimous refusal and failure to develop a Comprehensive Plan has, in large part, resulted in our current crisis. The process for enacting a Comprehensive Plan allows all members of the community to be heard and have a say in the parameters of the plan.
Our advice to our neighbors is to ensure your municipality has a government that is working to represent the needs of all members of the community, not just some members. This representation for all should occur in the eye of the public, rather than behind closed doors. And this representation should ensure that all members of the community are required to follow laws that were established to ensure that your neighborhood retained the character that drew you to it in the first place.
Steven “Jeff” Wasserman and Anthony Shaut are running for Village Trustees in the March 19th Election on a platform that focuses on these exact issues: Transparency, Code Enforcement, Community. Our opponents, who are the current trustees, are running on a similar platform. However, you would not be living next door to a divided village had our opponents actually worked to implement the platforms that we are running on.
Note:
Steven “Jeff” Wasserman and Anthony Shaut were contacted as their names, election signs and contact information were readily visible throughout Chestnut Ridge. As no other candidate signs were observed no other candidates have been contacted. If any of the other candidates would like to offer a post please contact us.