Ridgewood's Community ACCESS Committee
Meeting Minutes May 20, 2021
The ZOOM meeting opened at 7:34 pm.
Present: Ines Bunza, Robin Ritter, Deanna Schablik, Jan Philips, Jesse Schwarzman and Lisa Gardner
Item 1: Welcome
Ines welcomed everyone to the meeting. Minutes from the April meeting were approved with minor spelling changes. Motion by Robin Ritter, Second by Lisa and motion carried.
Item 2: Housing
Ines heard from Jack Dean. Jack reported that applications for the Ridgewood apartments are available on the Bergen County United Way website. Jack said that BCUW is surprised that there are a small number of applications. The application deadline for the 6 independent living apartments and 2 group homes is June 17th • If anyone has questions, email BCUW: housing@bergenunitedwav.org
Item 3: Treasurer's report
Nothing new to report
Item 4: ACCESS Weekend
Nothing new to report
Item 5: New Business
A. Deanna continued to discuss the LEAP Grant (Learning and Exploring through Adapted Programming). For ages 12-24. Each month a different topic!
May-December
B. Deanna reported that the Children's Sensory Garden at the Stable will have an open house on Tuesday, June 8 4-6pm (rain date June 9). The program will include a ribbon cutting celebration and feature performances by Kristen Plumley, Lynn Needle, Jake Rubenstein, Harry Linker and Izzy Monplasir
There will be good Covid precautions.
Age differences don't really matter in this group.
It would be nice to have a dance again!
C. Jan Philips followed up with Mayor Knudsen's mention of employment in the Village for our special population. Jan suggested we think "outside the box" and instead of a thrift shop, we consider employment similar to the Prospector Theater (Ridgefield, CT.) a non-profit movie theater with a mission of meaningful employment for people with disabilities as documented in the Film, "25 Prospect Street." It was suggested that we might want to include a viewing during Access weekend.
Jan also mentioned that there should be captioning and/or signing, for all Village Sponsored events, and residents with special needs be sought out and considered for participation in
Village Committees, I.E.: Fields Committee, Green Ridgewood, Citizen Safety Advisory, Historic Preservation, Kasschau Shell, Parks & Recs, Project Pride, Shade and (of course) ACCESS. Meeting ended at 8:23 pm.
The next meeting will be June 17, 2021 at 7:30 p.m. via Zoom.
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