New York Times
September 16, 2006
By STEVE STRUNSKY
RINGWOOD, N.J.- The borough may need some extra help, but at least it’s not a laughingstock.
After some residents warned that cash-strapped Ringwood would be ridiculed by late-night television hosts if the borough turned down $500,000 in so-called extraordinary aid from the state, as had been proposed, the Borough Council voted 5 to 2 Tuesday night to take the money after all. It will be part of the $14.2 million municipal budget for 2006.
The split vote to adopt the budget, with the extraordinary aid included as a revenue line item, came nearly nine months into Ringwood’s fiscal year. A delay in the state budget was compounded by a local debate in which some Ringwood Council members opposed accepting the $500,000 one-time grant, which was announced by the State Department of Community Affairs on July 28.
Ringwood, a semirural suburb set in the Highlands region in northern Passaic County, sought and received extraordinary aid for the first time this year, after incurring engineering and legal fees related to the cleanup of a former federal Superfund site that had been used as a dump by the Ford Motor Company. Among the 106 municipalities to split $43 million in extraordinary aid, only Asbury Park ($750,000), Bound Brook ($700,000) and West Orange ($600,000) were given more.
Council members opposed to accepting the aid, led by Wenke Taule, argued that the borough should have tried to offset those costs with spending cuts. She said that relying on one-time revenue to balance the budget would only leave the borough with the same problem next year.
“We are not doing our job,” Ms. Taule said. She and Councilman Bill O’Hearn cast the two no votes.
A situation in which the borough must seek extraordinary state aid, Ms. Taule added, “is not where Ringwood should be.”
But a majority of the council, led by Mayor Joanne Atlas, agreed with residents who before the vote had urged them to take the money.
“I hope Jay Leno doesn’t hear about this, because we’re going be the laughingstock of the world,” one resident, Chuck Forbes, told the council. With logic that many of his three dozen neighbors at the meeting found unassailable, he added, “It’s better to have $500,000 in your pocket than not have it.”
The council did agree to make some spending cuts, totaling $100,000, though the budget raises the municipal property tax rate by 4.99 percent. That is an increase of about $69 for the average homeowner.
Beyond the numbers debate, a political battle was also being played out between Ms. Atlas and her predecessor and fellow Democrat, Ms. Taule. The two were elected together, along with Mr. O’Hearn and Tom MacAllen, in a Democratic sweep of the borough’s November 2003 council race, and the four then named Ms. Taule mayor in 2004 and again in 2005. During that time, Ms. Atlas said her independent voting record alienated her from the board’s three other Democrats, who held a slim 4-3 majority on the council.
So when the council reorganized in January, Ms. Atlas said, she formed an alliance with the three Republicans, whose support gave her the four votes needed to elect her mayor over Mr. O’Hearn, the choice of the other Democrats.
Ms. Atlas, Mr. O’Hearn and Ms. Taule all agreed that there had been bad blood ever since. But Mr. O’Hearn and Ms. Taule insisted that their opposition to the extraordinary aid had nothing to do with politics.
Still, the mayor was not so sure.
“I don’t like to attribute motives to others,” said Ms. Atlas, an environmental grant writer by trade. “However, I was the person who secured this grant.”