McPherson in fight to stay as Rutherford Mayor

In southern Bergen County, Republicans are focusing much of their energy on one town: Rutherford.

Democratic Mayor Bernadette P. McPherson, who is also a Bergen County Freeholder, is up for re-election along on a slate with Democratic Councilmen Ray Frazier and Richard Reyes.  Currently, the balance of power on the council is 5-1 Democratic.  The Republicans have fielded attorney John Hipp for mayor, along with Rose Inguanti and John Sasso in an attempt to tie council. 

But more is at stake that just the leadership of this town of 18,000.  The election is one of the first offensive moves by new Bergen County Republican Chairman Robert Ortiz, who’s trying to slowly claw the Republicans back to power town by town.  And it just so happens that this was one of the first towns that Bergen County Chairman Joseph Ferriero turned over to Democrats, with McPherson’s election in 1999 and winning a council majority the year before that.

“We think it’s vitally important to win back control of Rutherford,” said Ortiz.  “We plan on making it easy for Bernadette McPherson to drop one of her two publicly funded positions, and we’ll discuss freeholder next year.” 

The race has focused almost exclusively on two issues: a 33 percent hike in property taxes over the last two years and the controversial EnCap development, which is under investigation by the state and the Department of Environmental Protection – a political hot potato in this part of Bergen County.

Hipp, who was a Democrat until 2005, is a long time critic of EnCap.  He said that, investigations notwithstanding, anyone should have been able to tell that the idea behind the development was a bad one to begin with. 

“The permission to build high rise housing units on top of a contaminated landfill that sits on top of a marsh land,” said Hipp.  “Because of my experience in environmental law as well as some of the engineering impacts, it didn’t take me more than 4 seconds to think that’s just crazy.”

But Hipp said the town is equally upset about property taxes – even if much of the change was hike was due to a recent revaluation.  He said he would save the town money by cutting back on what it pays its lawyers, accountants and engineers, and seeking out more shared services with neighboring towns.

“A lot of this, in our opinion, is due to the bad EnCap deal, but also pay-to-play and other forms of mismanagement.”

McPherson said that, even if the EnCap development hasn’t been great for the state or other towns involved, it hasn’t hurt Rutherford.  She noted that EnCap gave the town $6.5 million in negotiated payments – money that belongs to the town no matter what happens to the development.  And by occupying a former landfill, EnCap saved the town millions of dollars and a big headache by footing the bill for its closure said McPherson.

“When I first came into office as the borough’s council member in 1999, it was not uncommon during the warmer months for our volunteer firefighters to be in the landfills out there, because the garbage was catching on fire.” 

McPherson said that the property tax increases were largely due to the revaluation, and that the salaries of borough employees had nothing to do with it.

“What they’re proposing is less for Rutherford – less services,” said McPherson.