July 2018

164 165 GLEN RIDGE BOROUGH down, a private company purchased it and, accord- ing to Borough Administrator Michael Rohal,“turned it around.”Renamed the HackensackMeridian UMC Mountainside Hospital, it has become Glen Ridge’s largest taxpayer. Rohal adds that the hospital grounds will also be home to a major redevelopment project in town –a 45,000-sq.-ft.medical office building, for which plans were recently approved.“One of the surveys that the hospital performed showed there was a lack of family practitioners and internists in the area,”he explains.“The hospital will employ approx- imately 20 internists/family practitioners to work in the facility. Currently the site has an obsolete school of nursing–that’s going to be razed and construc- tion will start in July and be completed by Novem- ber 2019.” A second redevelopment project on the town’s agenda is a proposed apartment complex.“The developer was able to acquire five single-family homes and is projecting a hundred-plus unit devel- opment on that site,”Rohal adds.“It’s located about a thousand feet from both the train station and Mountainside Hospital.”Yet another upcoming proj- ect concerns the town’s educational system.Years ago,when the school population was dropping, Glen Ridge sold its central school to a bank. Just recently, it reacquired the building through eminent domain, and is now planning to re-purpose it again to house its primary-grade students. Because of its small size and lack of any other major commercial entities, Glen Ridge relies on two distinct dynamics to maintain its services and its high quality of life–consolidation and volunteerism. “Our tax dollars go about 21-22 percent to the borough; 62 percent to the schools; and 16-17percent to the county,” says Patrick.“Yet we provide a tremendous array of services without additional costs or hidden taxes to the residents.We do that by having one of the big- gest lists of interlocal agreements. These interlocals save us about two million dollars a year in a 12-13 million dollar budget.That’s very substantial.” For example, Glen Ridge and Montclair have shared fire suppres- sion duties since 1990.“It’s a benefit to both communities,” says Rohal. “Besides the cost savings to the borough, it increased the efficien- cy of our fire departments. Being a small town,we didn’t have the resources that Montclair had.”Glen Ridge has also joined a consortium with five other towns -Milburn, Maplewood, South Orange,Vero- na, and Montclair–to save money on power generation supplied by PSE&G (Public Service Electric and Gas Co.) Regarding its volunteerism, Patrick reports that there are over 100 volunteers serving on various town commissions, boards, and agencies.“We probably have an- other 20 organizations in town that are all volunteer,with close to 300 people on those various community