A Response to Mark Wall

Mr. Wall’s facts are incorrect on many crucial issues:

1. He asserts that “the original Radburn planners” intended that Radburn residents would never enjoy the right to govern themselves. Actually, as Daniel Schaffer notes in his authoritative Garden Cities for America: The Radburn Experience (on permanent reserve at the Fair Lawn Public Library), p. 181, it was always the expectation of Eleanor Roosevelt and the other social reformers who set up Radburn that “the residents would eventually assume political control over the Radburn Association.” The most that can be said was that the Radburn founders were naively optimistic to think that the Trustees would at some point voluntarily hand over political power to the whole Radburn community. Here we are, more than 75 years later, and Mr. Wall is still opposed to giving his neighbors the right to govern themselves. He still feels it is his right, for the rest of his life, to sit as a former Trustee collecting assessments from his neighbors and telling them what to do.

2. He raises the issue of whether we are a homeowners’ association. As anyone can see from reading the relevant statute, it applies to any planned community with parks and pools, regardless of who has legal title to the ownership of those parks and pools. You don’t have to be a homeowners’ association to be covered by the statute, and therefore the issue of whether we are a homeowners’ association is entirely irrelevant.

3. He raises the issue of allegedly “disenfranchising” renters. First, renters, like the rest of the community, currently have no right to vote for the two seats on the board that are filled each year by Mr. Wall and his fellow former Trustees. Any time former Trustees such as Mr. Wall want, they can vote to amend the Radburn By-laws so as to allow renters (and the rest of us) to vote for the two seats now controlled by Mr. Wall and the others. But Mr. Wall and the others have so far refused to allow the renters (and the rest of us) to vote for those two seats. Mr. Wall is the last person who should be complaining about “disenfranchising” renters, as he is part of a group that has actively disenfranchised renters, and the rest of us, from voting for those two seats for three-quarters of a century.

Second, Mr. Wall ignores the fact that, while renters can vote, under the current system they can only vote for candidates picked by incumbent Trustees. Such a vote is useless, since the Trustees only nominate people who agree with the incumbent Trustees. The Trustees are utterly unconcerned with allowing the renters the opportunity to vote for someone who might actually agree with the renters. The Trustees are ones “disenfranchising” the renters.

Third, the current system, as Mr. Wall admits, also “disenfranchises” people – namely, any adult who lives in a household with at least two other adults. Such a person is not allowed to vote at all.

Fourth, there is every possibility that the definition of a voter in a democratic Radburn will be more and not less inclusive. Let us all work together to make Radburn democratic, and to make the definition of voter as broad as is legally possible.

Fifth, whatever is legally possible, is what is legally possible. Radburn cannot simply ignore the law because it might possibly find some aspects of the law less than optimum. If the law needs to be improved, we need to lobby our elected representatives to improve it. That is the American way.

4. Mr. Wall compares Radburn to a “religious organization” or a “charity.” If I want to give money to a religious organization or a charity, that is my choice. If I stop paying my Radburn assessments, they can seize my house. That is the difference between the two situations.

5. In order to defend permanent rule by a minority clique in Radburn, Mr. Wall denigrates the democratic system of government in Fair Lawn. If Mr. Wall feels something needs to be improved about the democratic government in his town, state, or nation, he is free as a citizen in a democracy to work toward whatever reforms he desires. In the last Fair Lawn election, for example, the voters rose up in a decisive majority to select new leadership for Fair Lawn. There is nothing wrong with democracy that democracy can’t fix. The problem with the kind of dictatorial rule favored by Mr. Wall is that it offers no method by which even an overwhelming majority can work towards reform.

6. Mr. Wall alleges that, under Radburn’s current system, “Candidates run strictly on qualifications.” This is true, but the most important qualification actually considered is that the candidates picked to run must agree on all crucial issues with the eight Trustees that pick the candidates. Thus, all chance for fresh approaches on issues is deliberately excluded from the process.

7. Mr. Wall assumes, without argument, that there’s something bad about open and candid discussion of community issues by the community. What is wrong with a community discussing how to resolve the issues that impact that community and deciding, as a community, how it wants those matters addressed? Is this not the principle for which Americans shed their blood at Yorktown, Gettysburg, and Normandy? Do we honor America’s veterans by turning our backs on the system of self-government for which they fought?

It is no good pretending that Radburn will never have issues that need to be decided. Such issues will, in fact, come up, and it is the community that should decide them, not a self-appointed clique. Government of the people should be by the people and for the people. Mr. Wall feels that there’s something wrong with someone who “proposes a point of view.” Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, however, saw nothing wrong with people proposing various points of view and allowing the voters to make a choice among those points of view. Which has been more stable since 1776, our American democracy, or the countless ephemeral dictatorships that have bloodied the history of the human race?

8. Mr. Wall incorrectly states that no issue of “competence” has been raised with regard to the current group of self-appointed Trustees. On the contrary, a dozen specific issues concerning how Radburn is governed have been brought to the attention of the Trustees by majority votes of the Radburn Citizens’ Association, and the Trustees have refused to deal with any of these issues. Why, to mention just the most egregious example, does Radburn spend many times more on legal fees than any other comparable community?

9. Mr. Wall incorrectly refers to the process by which June Meyerson was elected President of the Radburn Citizens’ Association. To hear Mr. Wall tell the story, we might suppose that about thirty people (armed “with an axe to grind”) suddenly took the Citizens’ Association “hostage” and elected Ms. Meyerson. As we all know, an unprecedented 400 people – about a third of all eligible voters – took part in the 2004 election, and Ms. Meyerson received three out of four votes. In other words, 300 people voted for her, not 30. In any case, all meetings of the Citizens’ Association are open to all residents. These meetings cannot be taken “hostage” by anyone. It is the meetings of the Board of Trustees that are (illegally) closed. It is the Radburn Association that has been taken “hostage,” not the Radburn Citizens’ Association.

10. Mr. Wall misdescribes the required process of democratic reform as being “lengthy, costly, and tedious.” Actually, all it would take to make Radburn self-governing is for five sitting Trustees to vote for a one-page amendment to Article III, Section I of the Radburn By-laws. This could be done immediately, for free, and without boring anyone, at any meeting of the Radburn Trustees. Let’s not pretend that simple things are hard, as an excuse to delay compliance with the law.

Mr. Wall closes his letter by restating that that “The trustees rightly feel they are perpetuators of a legacy decided by legends in city planning.” If this is what the Trustees feel, they are ignoring page 181 of Daniel Schaffer’s uncontested history. The current Trustees are not fulfilling the plans of the Radburn founders. They are continuing to betray the plans of the founders, as well as the basic ideals of American democracy. Nothing could be sillier than for someone to point at Eleanor Roosevelt and say, “It’s not my fault. She’s the one. She’s making me be a dictator.” That’s not the Eleanor Roosevelt that all America remembers as a tireless advocate for democracy and equality. She would be appalled to learn from Mr. Wall that a self-appointed clique believes dictatorship to be her permanent “legacy” to Radburn.

Sincerely,

Robert Gulack, Chair, Legal Committee, Radburn Citizens’ Association