'Unexpected' Crowd Forces Postponement of Valley Hearing

A scheduled hearing before the Ridgewood Planning Board on a proposal by Valley Hospital to expand its floor space by nearly a million square feet was cut short Tuesday night after fire officials determined that public attendance exceeded capacity at Village Hall’s Sydney Stoldt Court Room.

The meeting’s agenda featured the first presentation by the attorney for Concerned Residents of Ridgewood (CRR), a group opposing the expansion. According to the group, its members number 150 residents; the court room’s posted standing room capacity is 100 occupants.

The second proposal for a Valley expansion, submitted to the board in February, modestly scales down a 1.17 million square feet expansion voted down by the council in 2011 to a 910,000 square feet expansion, maintaining the bed count from the original proposal at 454.

CRR had planned to present documents submitted by Valley during its suit to block the opening of a Hackensack University Medical Center branch in Westwood, at the former Pascack Valley site.

The grounds for Valley’s suit was that the 128-bed hospital would exceed the area’s needs and ultimately hurt the local healthcare market.

Jonathan Drill, an attorney for Valley, raised objections to what he called "cherry picking of certain documents," arguing that their introduction, as well as the appointment of attorney Michael Kates, late in the process and after testimony on behalf of Valley was a "strategic decision" intended to "drag out the process."

CRR President Pete McKenna said that the legal costs, funded by donations from residents, prohibited the group from hiring counsel earlier.

In any case, the process will see a delay after the adjournment of the Tuesday night hearing.

After learning that the public attendance exceeded the room’s capacity, the board held discussions with attorneys in an attempt to find a solution that would allow the hearing to continue, such as piping audio into the corridor or closing the door to latecomers.

Drill suggested that the meeting be adjourned to avoid the potential for closing the meeting to public participation to be used as an appeal of the board’s eventual decision on the proposal.

Previous meetings have been held in alternate venues with greater capacity, but board attorney Katie Razin told the public that attendance had been much lower at prior meetings and that the high attendance Tuesday night was “unexpected.”

“There’s no way to accommodate everyone in this room,” Razin said. “We want to make sure that the public is able to participate.”

The adjournment will push the next special hearing on the issue back to September. According to a February Superior Court order, dismissing a suit filed by CRR against Valley and the planning board, the board must hold two hearings per month.

Board chairman Charles Nalbantian said that the board may have to schedule additional hearings in October to comply with the requirement.

McKenna said after the meeting that while the postponement was not ideal, he was encouraged by the attendance for the group’s presentation.

“I wouldn’t want to deny people the right to hear what we say,” he said.

The hearing is tentatively scheduled for Sept. 30, at an alternate location yet to be decided.