Letters:

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 2 been doing with their budgets for the last 10 years. The annual budget does not require voter approval.So how did budgets directed and approved by the BOE allow the deterioration of the building and its systems? If properly managed, these systems and conditions could have easily been corrected with tax dollars each budget cycle.

The majority of the homes on the street where I live, including my own, were built in 1924. These houses have all been maintained, upgraded when needed, and they are in good condition. Architecturally they are of the period and reflect the fact that Hillsdale is a town with provenance and history. George White School is a stately building, fitting with the age of the town. I do not want it torn down.

The BOE and their consultants are asking the taxpayers to take on an extraordinary debt and taxes for an all new building at the same time that our Borough Council is on a spending spree. There are many school buildings in Bergen County that are similar in age as White and they retain a classical look as well as meeting the needs of the students. All it takes is imagination and dedication. The White school building is beautiful, with high ceilings and wide corridors. Replacing it is typical of the American lack of respect for our history Education costs have grown much faster than the economy in the past decades.

It is not just the military/industrial complex we need to watch with our tax dollars.

I support a crash program to fix the conditions that have been allowed to deteriorate, and to upgrade and maintain the building where it is. The school population will succeed with great teachers. They donʼt require all new buildings. I will be voting no on the single choice they have given us on the March 14 referendum.

Doug Frank Hillsdale

Mayors seek bigger team vs.flooding

To the editor: A LETTERFROM the Pascack Valley Mayors Association outlines a comprehensive plan that begins to address recurring, area flooding [see story, page 6]. This problem cannot be solved by individual towns independently competing for grant funds and implementing hyper-local remediation methods. A coordinated, system-wide federally funded program is needed.

The plan, as outlined in the letter, has several advantages to recommend it. It will identify the problematic areas along the brooksʼtravel through each town, prioritizing them for DEP approved remediation techniques that will improve flow.

Each town will know what it can do, within its own borders, to redistribute silt and stabilize the stream banks, thereby mitigating the constant erosion that narrows and shallows the channels — contributing to systemic flooding.

Each town will then have a cost estimate for the various sugg ested remediations within its borders. The mayors will ask their respective councils to share the cost of a grant writer, to seek joint funding for the planʼs aggregate costs.

This is a more realistic, and doable, inter-municipal initiative than resulted from the last basin w ide study, conducted by the Army Corps of Engineers almost 50 years ago.

The PVMA reached out to Veolia, to see if it might help defray some of the initial mapping costs. The water company has an interest in preserving more of its product for delivery to consumers. Improved flow between reservoirs will ensure less of it is wasted when breaching the stream banks, percolating into back yards or flooding basements.

This problem isnʼt going away, but neither are the people and businesses adversely impacted,in part, by the longstanding neglect of these conduits.

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