Issues

Property Taxes
Taxes are issue number one for every resident in Woodland Park, Passaic County, and New Jersey. With Governor Christie’s cap on property taxes in place, we must run an efficient municipal government to sustain the services our residents expect. Every line of the budget will be reviewed and evaluated. We must make informed decisions about what is cut, and what remains. Nevertheless, everything is on the table in keeping our property taxes stable.

The process for crafting our budget will be transparent and accountable. The Mayor and Council majority will create advisory committees consisting of members of the community where we can hear feedback, listen to concerns and develop solutions. Public hearings will be scheduled so any resident can attend and raise their issues to the governing body. We are all in this together, and we plan to work with everyone in Woodland Park to come to a consensus on our budget and to keep our taxes stable.

McBride Avenue & Browertown Road Special Improvement District
The objective of the special improvement district (SID) for the McBride Avenue and Browerton Road corridor are threefold: promote economic vitality, enhance beautification, and create safe pedestrian walkways and parking areas. The SID will bring together all of the stakeholders in Woodland Park – residents, business owners, and government officials – to craft a long-term plan to map out of the future of this area.

In order to maximize economic productivity in this area we need to create an atmosphere driven by business owners, not by the government. By bringing everyone to the table, we will create a successful economic engine in our downtown area of our community that will help lower property taxes and make Woodland Park a shopping attraction for residents all over Passaic County.

Everyone has a role to play. New Jersey Transit, the Department of Transportation, businessholders, local government and planning experts will make sure we aren’t thinking about what McBride Avenue will look like in five years – but what it will look like in thirty years. We need to put together a comprehensive plan to make sure shoppers are visiting our local businesses and sustaining our local economy. The SID will help us accomplish this goal.

Recreation & Open Space
One of our top priorities has always been giving our children every opportunity to participate in recreational programs, ensuring there are safe parks and fields. As Chairman of the Recreation and Community Relations Committee, Mayor Kazmark worked to protect open space and revitalize our parks for our children. Through his work with the West Paterson Boys & Girls Club, we continue to give kids a safe place to play after school and participate in sports programs year round.

Partnering with the county, we were able to preserve and upgrade Dowling Gardens in the heart of our business district – making it an attraction for weddings and special events. This, along with many other upgrades throughout our community, are projects we need to continue to build upon. We will continue to work with our county government to bring open space money into Woodland Park to upgrade our facilities and maintain the high quality of our parks.

Study-after-study shows that open space and parks increase property values and make a community more attractive for residents and businesses. We must continue to build upon past successes to protect our open space and maintain our parks as some of the best in Passaic County.

Shared Services
As we move forward, sharing services needs to be a part of a long-term plan to keep our taxes stable. Consolidation, bulk purchasing of materials and energy, and collaborative efforts to solve common problems of the Passaic Valley region need to play a major role in our future. Home rule is still as important as ever – we need our own voice in determining the direction of Woodland Park. Nonetheless, we will work with neighboring communities to save tax dollars and enhance efficiencies.

We are already bearing the fruit of these collaborations as part of a countywide program to purchase electricity in bulk. By teaming with other communities in Passaic County, the electricity “co-op” is going to save local governments between 15% and 26% in savings a year. We need to emulate projects like this to get our best bang for our buck.

The Mayor and Council majority will continue to work with Passaic County and neighboring local governments to find areas where we can work together and save money through shared services agreements.

Green Initiatives
Protecting our quality of life starts at the local level, and we will spearhead a new green initiative to make Woodland Park an environmentally friendly community. Every municipal building needs to be weatherized to maximize efficiency. We will explore grandfathering electric vehicles into our fleet as we purchase new cars. And we’ll fight for county, State, and federal grants to install renewable energy sources like solar panels in our municipal buildings.

Everyone has a stake in protecting our environment – making sure our children are breathing clear air in our parks and fields. We will strive to make Woodland Park a leader in local policies to protect our environment and will aggressively push to bring our municipal buildings into 21st century standards.

Passaic & Peckman River Flooding
The Mayor and Council majority have always supported the establishment of the Woodland Park, Little Falls and Cedar Grove Regional Flood Board to jointly address flooding issues along the Peckman River in the Passaic Valley region. The thought process in creating such a board was that flooding along the Passaic and Peckman Rivers is not just one community’s problem, but everyone’s problem.

With that in mind, we were concerned with the recent article in the Herald News regarding possible development along the banks of the Peckman in Little Falls near Shop Rite and Passaic Valley High School. Any proposed new development along the Peckman must factor in the joint consequences for every community. Little Falls must not act unilaterally in developing the Rose Street property without considering how the destruction of natural wetlands and a significant wooded area would affect flooding down stream in Woodland Park.

Every community is feeling the pressure to live within the new 2 percent property tax cap and to create new ratables, but this does not mean permitting projects with the potential to cause serious long-term consequences to life and property both in Little Falls and Woodland Park.

We must continue to work together as one cohesive entity, like our towns did with regard to the proposed development on the Alfieri tract on Wilmore Road in Little Falls. With the help of Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. and the Passaic County Board of Freeholders, we responsibly prevented further flooding by preserving that land.

A “go-it-alone” attitude by any community will not yield the best results in handling collective flooding issues. I hope Little Falls officials will conduct a proper study of any proposed development in order to ensure they are not exacerbating an existing problem in Woodland Park. We must all continue to work together to make sure flooding along the Peckman River is mitigated and prevent any project that could potentially make the problem worse.