10/31/99 Record Article

RINGWOOD CAMPAIGN FLIER HAS ACTIVISTS CRYING FOUL

October 31, 1999
The Record JAN BARRY, Staff Writer
Prominent local environmentalists say they are being libeled by Republican campaign literature that states they are responsible for a controversial quarry operation coming to town. Jeff Tittel, Tom Sergi, and Barbara Walsh are Republicans, but the GOP's council incumbents have tried to link them unfavorably to a Democratic council campaign that stresses environmental protection.
Tittel co-founded Skylands CLEAN, the local activist environmental group, and is now director of the state's Sierra Club. Two of the four Democratic candidates are Skylands CLEAN members.
The GOP campaign asserts that if the Democrats win, they and Skylands CLEAN would bring a reign of misrule. It is an example they give - a depiction of how a quarry came to town - that has the three crying foul.
This year, the council heeded residents' complaints and refused to renew the operating license of the Van Orden Sand and Gravel quarry off West Brook Road. Republicans take credit for this in their campaign literature.
The Democrats also take credit, along with Skylands CLEAN, for pressuring the official action. Democratic campaign fliers blame Republicans for having allowed the quarry to open in the early Nineties.
In response, GOP literature asserts that the quarry's owner, Braen Stone Industries, would not have bought the property "if the Planning Board at the time - headed by a strident group of CLEAN sympathizers - had not denied Bert Van Orden's application" to put three homes on the roughly 90-acre tract.
Tittel, Sergi, and Walsh are named as the Planning Board ringleaders.
Sergi and Walsh, both former Planning Board members, deny being on the board at the time. Tittel said he was an alternate member who voted in a straw poll to review the subdivision favorably if it met state wetlands laws. Minutes of a March 13, 1989, meeting, at which the application was discussed, show Tittel voted yes, along with seven colleagues, none of whom was Sergi or Walsh.
Tittel told council incumbents at a recent public meeting that the depiction was wrong and libelous. Walsh, an Office of State Planning official, said she was doubly offended because she had been an officer in the local Republican club.

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