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COUNCIL CANDIDATE FORUM PROVES REVELATORY
PUBLISHED BY TEANECK VOICES
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Contents
Council Candidate Forum Proves Revelatory
In the Words of "Moving Forward Together ", Never Remember
Get to Know Your Future Leaders
Listen Again to Our 4 Endorsed Candidates for the 4 Open Council Seats
Preparing to Vote with Additional Independent Information - 10/26
NETBPA'S Board of Education candidate forum - now at the High School
Upcoming Municipal Meetings
Council Meeting - In-Person Only Planning Board on HNMC
Events at the Library
Announcements
- NETBPA''S BOE Election Candidates Forum - 10/26 7 pm - THS 3rd Floor
- How to Vote by Mail in 2022 General Election - LWV
- Prayers and Support for Ukrainian People
- Contacting Teaneck Voices
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COUNCIL CANDIDATE FORUM PROVES REVELATORY
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Teaneck Voices encourages all of its readers to carve out a 2 hour time to watch/listen to the entire NETBA Council candidates Forum which took place at the Rodda Center on Wednesday evening, October 19. One candidate, Anthony Bruno did not appear and Candidate Danielle Gee had to leave part way through in order to get to her BOE meeting. But the entire session with its 15 questions may well be your best opportunity to assess for whom you should vote
Click Here and after a slow rolling slide introduction, settle in - preferably in front of a larger than phone screen.
However, if you want to see how the candidates handled just some of the questions, make sure that you roll the screen down to have access to the cursor Here are the questions and the location for the beginning of each question.
Opening Statements (all) 1min 51sec
Question: Paying for increased cost of litigation -13min43sec
Question (non-incumbents) agree with designating Areas in Need of Redevelopment? - 24min45sec
Question about AINRs (incumbents) - 33min38sec
Question about urbanization of Teaneck – 39min30sec
How to ensure adequate public safety & infrastructure resources as population grows - 47min55sec
Transparency – position on all minutes etc.& public advisory bds. – 57min55sec
View of Council’s BLM approval process (allowing no Pannell name) - 1h8min37sec
Term Limits, specifically of Town boards? - 1hr19 min52 sec
Should Advisory Boards be open to public? - hr25min25sec
How to bring the Town together – 1 hr33min
Workshop Meetings? – 1hr42min
Explain why Teaneck Streetscape failed to generate retail–
( incumbents) – 1hr50min
What Improvements at the Recyle Center - 1hr54min18sec
A New Chickens Ordinance? 2hr1min30sec
Final statements – 2hr9min46sec
Teaneck Voices has a few general comments to make about this illuminating Forum session. Since the participants have recently divided themselves into 2 slates it is noteworthy that the Rise for Teaneck slate (Belcher, Gee, Goldberg & Young) were able to answer almost every question with both basic policy agreement but without repeatedly saying the same thing as their slate mates. One had the clear sense that were Rise for Teaneck to succeed in getting all four members elected, that group of women, fully trained and educated in several relevant professions, would be ready to step into office with a common vision of what needs doing to improve Teaneck governance.
By contrast, the other four candidates (Kaplan, Katz, Garcia and Ramos-Reiner) clearly had diverse views about some of the major governance issues, most notably the question of whether to open advisory boards to the public, whether development should continue to rely on big multi-unit facilities, when to have Council workshops and related transparency-central issues. (These 4 candidates who had first called themselves Moving Forward Together but have recently formed a financial slate Friends of the Teaneck Block Associations)
What Else We Learned from the Forum?
Board Term Limits: The NETBPA Moderator asked all candidates if they believed there should be Board term limits. Since the membership of most town Boards – both statutory and advisory – are largely selected by Council vote, the Moderator was clearly referring to term limits for those Boards rather than the fact that if elected in 2022, Deputy Mayor Katz will have been elected to a 6th straight term. Incumbents Katz and Kaplan rejected any Council policy about term limits suggesting that the electorate would in every election best decide whether such limits should be reflected in for whom the Town votes. The Rise for Teaneck candidates answered the question actually asked by noting that many board members, and specifically the land use board chairs, have been reappointed for very many terms, depriving our development decision making of new ideas.
Accuracy about Recent Governance Issues: At min 23:50 of the NETBPA Forum Candidate Ramos-Reiner stated the Fair Share Housing Center’s original concern with the Holuba townhouse project was about the number of affordable units being provided by the project.
That is mistaken. The first and only Housing Center involvement & statement about Holuba was made at the 12/9/20 Planning Board meeting by Elorm Ocansey who began by identifying himself as an Housing Center employee. His statement’s first and only concern was specifically that KRE’s original design for the Holuba townhouse project failed, as was required by a March 2019 affordable housing ordinance, to integrate the affordable with the market-rate units (Click Here and go to minute 10:20 of the town’s video of the December 12, 2020 meeting.) Following Mr. Ocansey’s statement to the Board Ms. Ramos- Reiner did, as did her PB colleagues, vote to memorialize the approval of the Holuba project with the affordable units in a separate facility from the market-rate ones. That design, following litigation led by both Teaneck Residents and the Housing Center – as approved in 2021 under court order – fully integrates Holuba’s affordable with market-rate units. That design modification had been declared to be impossible by Councilman Kaplan (Click Here) -
Whether Designation of Blighted Areas Should Continue to be the Way Teaneck Governs Development. Candidate Latisha Garcia, in addressing the question whether she favored Areas in Need of Redevelopment focused on a single project – the replacement of the Verizon Building by the new multi-unit rental facility at 1500 Teaneck Road (go to 28min of the Forum). She cited the old, run down decrepit state of the Verizon building and lauds the fact that “the current Council” utilized the AINR development scheme to obtain the new facility. Only one problem with that: The process used by Council and the Planning Board to approve that project and see it implemented followed the traditional development process: following the Master Plan, seeking regular land use board approvals, etc. No, Teaneck did not need – and did not use - AINRs to achieve that development. If those mechanisms worked for 1500 Teaneck Road, why HAS Council now switched to the blight designations and AINR mechanisms which largely ignore the Master Plan? Ms. Garcia’s example of 1500 Teaneck Road inadvertently proved the opposite point.
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"In the Words of “Moving Forward Together”: Never Remember!”
An Opinion by Barbara Ley Toffler
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The North East Teaneck Block Presidents’ Association (NETBPA)’s Council Candidates Forum on Wednesday evening, October 19 was excellent, as usual. But more than that It was an awakening – an awakening to a truth that every voter in Teaneck must recognize:
For the council candidates running under the slogan “Moving Forward Together” (MFT) Latisha Garcia, Elie Y. Katz, Keith Kaplan, Desiree Ramos Reiner (in alphabetical order), their slogan means one thing: MOVE FORWARD TOGETHER TO FORGET THE PAST! WIPE OUT TEANECK’S HISTORY, NEVER REMEMBER!
Keith Kaplan reminded us that “this isn’t 1948” as if we should forget whatever went on way back then. But why forget it? Why not remember 1948 as the year in which Teaneck built such a fine municipal government, outstanding for serving its people, that the following year the United States Army chose Teaneck out of 10,000 municipalities in our country to serve as the Model Town to educate the occupied countries following World War II about good government? Why would we want to forget that?
When the question of placing Phillipp Pannell’s name on the Black Lives Matter Mural was raised, all four MFT candidates expressed the same thought: “It’s time to forget that admittedly tragic incident and to move forward; that shooting happened over 30 years ago – we must let go of it and move on.”
I am a Jewish woman. I was born at the start of the United States involvement in WWII – 10 days after Pearl Harbor was bombed. It was a frightening time to be Jewish. My 21-year-old uncle was killed on his first bombing mission over Germany; my friends’ families couldn’t reach their relatives in Eastern Europe. The Holocaust was happening.
As I grew up in the ‘40’s, ‘50’s, ‘60’s I saw the many weary-looking people with the blue-tattooed numbers on their inner forearms: Mr. and Mrs. Kessler who ran the laundromat on 2nd Ave., Mr. Friedman who owned the tiny grocery store across the street, so many of my grandma’s friends at the senior activities at the Teaneck Jewish Community Center. I remember my mother’s terror at the thought of my wearing a Star of David on a delicate gold chain around my neck – a sign of my vulnerability.
Most of all, I remember the pledge of every Jew: NEVER FORGET! NEVER AGAIN! NEVER FORGET! We even hold a Holocaust Remembrance Day to reinforce the memory.
Yet, Ms. Garcia, DM Katz, C. Kaplan, and Ms. Ramos Reiner would have us forget the killing of 15-year-old Phillipp Pannell – itself a symbol of the millions bowed or destroyed by slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, back of the bus, no room at the inn or the swimming pool or the drinking fountain.
WHY?
Is one child’s death, however symbolic, just not as important as 6 million?
The poet John Donne wrote, “Any man’s death diminishes me. Because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
It would be easy to offer the quote that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it (George Santayana, 1905; Winston Churchill, 1948).
Maybe. But that is not the critical point for the voters of Teaneck. Teaneck, NJ, founded in 1895, has a remarkable history – extraordinary good and grim tragedy. But our history has been – and is – a beacon by which we ourselves and many in our nation rise to find our better selves.
We all learned on Wednesday evening, October 19, 2022, that 4 of our would-be leaders want to banish our greatest hope.
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GET TO KNOW YOUR FUTURE LEADERS:
LISTEN AGAIN TO OUR 4 ENDORSED CANDIDATES
FOR 4 OPEN COUNCIL SEATS
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AS WE REMEMBER WHAT THEY TOLD US ABOUT
HOW THEIR HISTORIES INFLUENCED WHO THEY ARE TODAY
In our October 3, 2022 issue of Teaneck Voices, we endorsed the Rise for Teaneck candidate slate for the four open seats on the Teaneck Township Council to be elected on November 8th: Denise Belcher, Danielle Gee, Hillary Goldberg, and Chondra Young.
On the 10th and the 17th we presented “snapshots” of each candidate, to let our readers know more about them than the standard flyer or postcard or forum allows. On the 10th each talked about a special learning from their families. On the 17th they each talked about how they became activists.
In this issue about the critical importance of remembering our own and our town’s history, we remind you of the power of their histories that make Denise Belcher, Danielle Gee, Hillary Goldberg, and Chondra Young Teaneck’s leaders for the future.
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Denise Stanford Belcher
Denise Belcher, Broker/Owner of XCEED Realty LLP and Director of the School of Real Estate Studies of Teaneck never forgot an early lesson from her mother: “Mommy, why does that car park by the trees every night?” a very young Denise Belcher asked after seeing the same car parked on their Englewood block night after night. “That woman doesn’t have a home. She has two children to care for and protect, so they live in their car and park here because it’s safe.”
That memory guided her to build a real estate career to help people to have safe and comfortable places to live. Remembering the mentoring of her mother, Denise committed herself to helping young people to have fulfilling lives through self-determination and economic empowerment.”
Denise’s memories also include being her mother’s “civil rights baby.” As a toddler, Denise’s mother took her to meetings with former freedom rider, then-Assemblymember (later state senator) Byron Baer. Learning at her mother’s knee, Denise absorbed the spirit and struggle of the civil rights activists and a commitment to Equality and Equity of opportunity and outcome and the power of Voters’ Rights.
“I am inspired by the histories of the many who have come before me on whose shoulders that I stand. They are my rocket fuel that propels me to believe that nothing is impossible”.
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Danielle Gee
Danielle Gee, former manager of institutional clients at UBS Investment Bank and Chief of Staff at the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society has spent the last year as a Fellow of the CEO Action Fellowship for Racial Equity. She is returning to LLS as the Vice President of Diversity, Inclusion and Equity.
Danielle’s life history guided her as she devoted herself to constant hard work and committed herself to achieving equity and fairness in every area in which she acted.
Her role model was her mother, born in Haiti, learning English only as an adult, who worked by day and attended school at night to become a Registered Nurse. From her mother Danielle saw education as her way of advancing herself. Seeing her mother’s extended hours, Danielle threw herself into the incredibly arduous Prep for Prep program – an intensive educational program from 5th through 12th grades intended to take bright minority students and prepare them for first-rate colleges.
Likewise, Danielle still thrives on the childhood lesson about fairness and equity she learned from her father. In Teaneck Voices October 10 issue, Danielle recounted the family story about her sister cutting a melon in unequal pieces and then taking the larger piece after insisting both pieces were the same size. Danielle’s father taught his daughters a lesson about equity and fairness when he had Danielle (who had not cut the melon) choose the piece she wanted.
Danielle, her dad, and her sister probably were unaware that dad was teaching a principle established by the philosopher John Rawls in his theory of Distributive Justice. For them it is simply part of their family history, long remembered and lived by.
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Hillary Goldberg
Hillary Goldberg has a B.A. in Law and Society and an MPA in Criminal Justice Management. Her career has been in corporate business administration and entrepreneurship.
In our October 10th issue, Hillary Goldberg’s words spoke the power of family and community history. We reprint them here:
“When my grandparents, Howard and Marilyn Reinert, moved to Teaneck in 1954, they had no idea the deep roots they were planting in their house at 711 Camperdown Rd. nor of the legacy they would leave, especially to me, their granddaughter. My childhood was spent surrounded by the leaders of the Jewish Community. In addition to my grandparents, there were Julie and Lola Edelman, and Matty Feldman, who, while Teaneck was fortunate enough to have them as leaders, I was fortunate to be able to call them family.
No one ever directly told me ‘Listen and learn – you have a legacy to use for the good of your community.’ But I did listen and learn – about my grandparents’ roles in the Jewish Center of Teaneck, their involvement in the Jewish community’s support of the desegregation of the Teaneck public schools, as one of the founding families of Solomon Schechter Day School of Bergen County. From my earliest years they were my heroes.”
Hillary’s love for Teaneck and her desire to serve its residents as a Councilmember is a direct result of building on the history of her grandparents, and her mother Abbe Reinert Rosner.
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CHONDRA YOUNG
Chondra Young is a Financial Accountant and Compliance Analyst with a Masters in Government Accounting.
Chondra told us that October is a tough month for her family. In October, 2011, her grandma and mother-in-law died, and her mother was dying of breast cancer. The day she and her husband brought her mother home for Hospice care was also the day she was supposed to graduate from the Leadership Teaneck course – the 10-week program that Teaneck offered to teach residents about our town’s history and government.
“My mother was lying in the bed and urged me to go to the graduation. ‘You worked so hard and did so well. You must go.’
I said, ‘But, mommy, what if something happens to you while I’m gone?’ Mommy smiled, ‘No matter what, I’ll be so proud.’”
Chondra went to the graduation and returned home to her proud mother. The emotions ran high as Chondra was losing her living history, but also celebrating, with her mother, the gaining of knowledge about the town which she hoped to serve in the future.
She told us about day, during the 2011 election season, she attended a cottage party at the D’Onofrio’s for the re-election of BOE candidate Ardie Walser. “What a day it turned out to be! I met Ardie and Clara Williams who was also running for BOE. But I also met trailblazers in building a better Teaneck – Gloria Wilson, Laverne Lightburn, Gwen Acree, Ron Costello, Chuck Powers, Barbara Toffler, Ray Moore, James Kinloch.
I made it a point to get to know all of them, find out about every gathering, and shepherd my daughters (with their homework) to every meeting I could find. I listened and learned, met so many homegrown community activists. I wanted to be part of that world!”
Chondra Young is the only Council candidate (ever) to have graduated from Leadership Teaneck – the only course in the county that prepares a citizen to be a municipal leader.
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PREPARING TO VOTE WITH ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
NETBPA'S BOARD OF EDUCATION CANDIDATE FORUM
NOW AT THE HIGH SCHOOL - 10/26 AT 7 PM
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This important Board of Education Candidate Forum
has been moved
from the Rodda Center to the Cheryl Porter Student Center on the 3rd Floor of THS.
Same time: 7 pm on Wednesday October 26
12 Candidates competing for 5 BOE seats
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UPCOMING MUNICIPAL EVENTS | |
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Upcoming Public Meetings – 10/23-30, 2022
Teaneck Council Regular Meeting - October 25, 2022 at 8:00 pm Click Here for access and add passcode 591348 and Click Here for the agenda. This meeting is both in-person and by zoom
- Many key issues to be addressed. The public hearing and vote on Ordinance 47-2022 would formalize the gift to the developer of the 359 Alfred Avenue building of the same tye of tax breaks the Council is handling out to most AINR developers. Again, no public information available to evaluate the financial consequences of this ordinance.
- In G&W, residents will want to focus attention on the Resolution 261 which will authorize the Town Planner organization to flesh out the redevelopment plan for the Stop&Shop area which has aroused broad opposition on both the substance and process of what that redevelopment plan will apparently include as outlined in the Stop&Shop settlement approved in September. Local opposition to that plan has exploded in recent days.
- Resolution 266-2022 AGAIN CHANGES THE ENTIRE AGREEMENT that the Town has in selling its property at 1425 Teaneck Road. It had in April 2022 changed the arrangement from a lease to a sale. Residents deserve to what weaknesses or problems have been encountered - in securing financing or whatever reason - for the failure to achieve the construction of a town-owned property that it had begun designating as an AINR in November 2018 - 4 years ago. What is going on? In the meantime the neighorhood contiguous to 1425 Teaneck Road continues to have to "live with" a municipally-owned property in derelict and worse condition. Let alone why the Town keeps promising a 40-unt senior affordable housing project that it is not delivering. Why? Fess up, Teaneck.
Teaneck Environmental Commission Meeting – October 26. 2022 at 7:30 pm. Zoom Access and agenda information currently posted is Click Here
Teaneck Historical Preservation Commission - Wednesday October 26 at 7:30. For Zoom Access and Agenda Click Here
Shade Tree Advisory Board (STAB)–Thursday – October 20, 2022 at 7:00 pm.
- Public access and opportunity for input limited by the Advisory
Board ordinance (*See ordinance below)
Planning Board Meeting - October 27, 2022 at 8:00 pm IN THE 2ND GYM OF THE RODDA CENTER - IN-PERSON ONLY, NO ZOOM ACCESS.
Expect some procedural fireworks around whether the site plans proposed by HNMC will be heard in a public hearing. Complete discussion of this issue is again found on the Teaneck Voices website at Click Here AND Click Here
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*Quote from Ordinance 15-2020 on Advisory Boards adopted by Council on August 11, 2020:
“Council’s advisory Board meetings are closed to the public. The public can submit items for discussion to the Council’s advisory board chair and council liaison for review and potential for inclusion on their meeting agenda. If the item is placed on the agenda, the chair, with approval of their Council’s advisory board, may invite the member of the public to come and speak to them about the specific issue they want to have discussed”.
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TEANECK VOICES CONTINUES TO OFFER ITS
PRAYERS AND STRONG SUPPORT
TO THE BRAVE UKRAINIAN PEOPLE FIGHTING FOR THEIR FREEDOM
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Contacting Teaneck Voices
By Email: teaneckvoices@gmail.com
By Phone: 201-214-4937
By USPS Mail: Teaneck Voices, PO Box 873. at 1673 Palisade Ave., 07666
Teaneck Voices' Website is www.teaneckvoices.com
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