THE 2022 COUNCIL ELECTION IS OVER:

 WHAT DID WE LEARN?

PUBLISHED BY TEANECK VOICES

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The 2022 Council Election is Over: What Did We Learn?

Time for a Teaneck Voices Reset!

This Week in Teaneck – the Planning Board 11/21

This Week in Teaneck – the Council 11/22

An Important Addition to Last Week’s Outline

  of Teaneck’s Public School Desegregation

Announcements

• Contacting Teaneck Voices

THE 2022 COUNCIL ELECTION IS OVER: 

WHAT DID WE LEARN?

Yes, all the votes have been counted. Last Thursday evening the County Clerk published what were final ballots numbers – the results will be certified today (Monday, 11/21/22).

The RISE for Teaneck slate of four accomplished professional women swept the top three spots among the top vote-getters in Teaneck’s first ever November election for Teaneck’s 7-member Council. 

In the end, Elie Y Katz outpaced RISE candidate Chondra Young by 109 votes to take the fourth and final open seat and will return to Council when it reorganizes on January 4, 2023.

First, Congratulations again to the RISE winners – Belcher, Gee, and Goldberg – and to Teaneck residents, all of whom will benefit from these 3 outstanding new Councilmembers.

Teaneck voters clearly recognized that it was time for a significant change in its leadership and the three RISE winners (Belcher, Gee, and Goldberg) will add skill sets and professional experience to the Council which should allow it to make far-more competent decisions. We hope that the new Council will find a key place for the skills of the very-near miss candidate, Chondra Young.

The Manager’s departmental budget meetings which took place in the 3 business days following election revealed to Teaneck Voices just how challenging the early months of 2023 will be in the Town’s fiscal governance. As the departmental requests were added up it had become clear to all that, as one of the official participants put it:

• “There are no more rabbits to pull out of the hat. Teaneck’s 2023 municipal budget will require higher taxes” 

But before we turn to the struggle to determine whether the new Council will, in fact, be able to move toward more open, inclusive, competent and responsive governance, let’s take a minute to assess what we have learned through this election:

Already Learned: Without any question, the decision by the Town’s voters in 2021 to move the municipal council elections to November has resulted in significantly greater voter participation in local government. And there have been NO even anecdotal incidents of takeovers by “partisan party bosses” as threatened by several of our officials who opposed the changed Council voting date. 

But did the change importantly improve local democracy? Many factors make it difficult to show just how much participation grew. A two-election comparison (2020 & 2022) is flawed because Council elections shift between electing 3 and then 4 Council members (making total votes for Council an inherently fluctuating statistic). To that fact must be added the anomalies created by the fact that the May 2020 election was – for the first and last time – conducted almost entirely by mail-in-ballot due to the pandemic.

Hence, we need to review a broader set of elections with simple and readily interpretable data to see Council vote totals that tell or dispel the “November attracts more voters and thus improves local democracy” mantra. The image below is Teaneck Voices way of depicting election result totals over several elections to discern a more reliable judgment on this question.  Reader, judge for yourself. 

More Information Needed. Was this election also a fairer one? Were there factors at play in the 2022 Council election process that may have inappropriately influenced the results.

No “election process fairness” discussion ever leaves out the issue of “Money in Politics” and the inevitable counter aphorism, “But you must protect first amendment rights”

Before we consider remedial alternatives to this paradox, let’s first seek the local facts:

Without any question whatsoever, the amounts spent in local municipal campaigns in Teaneck have exploded – and appear to have grown with each passing election cycle.  Teaneck Voices looked in on that question for 2022 in its 11/6 edition story “An Early Report on Campaign Spending” (Click Here) 

The figures available from 2022 mid-campaign reports to the Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC) showed not only 1) the totals were unprecedentedly large, but also

2) the sizes of individual contributor contributions were huge, 3) the proportion of donations from contributors who reside outside Teaneck was, for at least the second election in a row, astonishing; and,

4) there was preliminarily a major discrepancy between the financial resources available/used by some candidates not available to others.

The information currently available on all 4 of these issues: (total campaign revenue/expenditure, contribution size, geography of contribution source and distribution among candidates) remains preliminary. Within the next two weeks information on all four of these issues should be available from ELEC and Teaneck Voices will seek a way to make reporting of this data available and understandable.

Irrespective of the more complete information, what can be done about any of it?  This is an issue on which Teaneck Voices believes there is something important to be done. 

It is critically important to get the voting public timely and accurate information about the mid-campaign status of campaign financial resources so that discrepancies or anomalies between and among candidates and even within candidate slates are known as they make their final voting judgments.

All this points to what can be short-term remedies that do not raise the Money/First Amendment paradox. The reporting dates and timely public availability of information about enforcement of reporting deadlines and rules need review. This kind of campaign finance information available to inform voters is an issue about which we believe the public needs to be in dialogue with ELEC. And Teaneck Voices promises to keep informing its readership of what it learns.  

TIME FOR A TEANECK VOICES RESET!

In January 2020, shortly before the Covid pandemic lockdown and long before Teaneck’s reform-minded residents had decided to :

1) call for a referendum to move the municipal council election from May to the general election in November, and

2) also seek a referendum to form a coalition to seek to use town-wide renewable energy sources,

a group of 8 Teaneck residents met in a living room with Senator Loretta Weinberg to discuss forms of municipal government in New Jersey. The key issue was: Should Teaneck seek to change its Council-Manager form of government?

The group was concerned about

·       The secrecy with which the Council made decisions,

·    The fact that the Council was promoting urban development in

Teaneck which it seemed a majority of residents opposed, and

·       Basically, the question of whether or not representative

democracy existed in Teaneck (i.e. Taxation without Representation!)

The group held one more in-person meeting (with at least double the participants) before the lockdown, and then made the rapid switch to Zoom meetings.

At the first Zoom meeting, the group invited Professor Mark Pfeiffer from the Bloustein School of Public Policy at Rutgers, to speak to us about the pros and cons of the various forms of New Jersey municipal governments under the Faulkner Act.

The group briefly considered a Ward plus At-Large members government (to seek greater representation for diverse groups) but decided our present Council-Manager form of government was the best (or least worse!) of all the NJ forms.

CLEARLY THE CHANGE NEEDED WAS IN THE ELECTED MEMBERSHIP OF THE COUNCIL! THE QUESTION WAS, HOW TO ACHIEVE THAT?

So – the decision was made to organize our group, quickly and unanimously named Teaneck Voices, and to focus on educating and communicating with the residents of Teaneck about

·       What a Council-Manager form of government is and how it should operate

·       The present concerns – with demonstrated evidence – with the present Council in regard to the form of government they were elected under; and

·       Ideas for possible solutions to the problems and concerns cited.

The group came up with a fledgling idea to publish a newsletter and distribute it to residents from our own email lists. We called it Teaneck Voices and we explicitly took on the task of cultivating a source of information that could bring vitality and accuracy into the new information desert that was in-part created when the Suburbanite ceased to provide effective local coverage .

Our first issue in August 2020 went to less than 100 residents!

Over the past 2 years Teaneck Voices has built a remarkable clientele whose readership is nourished with information not only by its newsletter, sent free as a weekly email to a subscriber base of more than 6.5K separate email addresses, but reaches perhaps a similar number of additional readers through subscribers sending the newsletter to their contacts, or through the Voices Facebook page or the Voices website.

Through the 2022 election process we provided all of these readers with information available nowhere else. From many sources we have learned that our data – and perspective – have usefully informed Teaneck residents about their government --its strength and foibles.

Now with 3 new members sitting on a 7-member Council who share Voices views about what Teaneck is and needs and should become, we are doing a reset. We go back to our original mission – weekly providing information organized in ways that serves a broad resident public that has proven at the ballot box that it wants a better, more inclusive and informed Teaneck. With this edition, we begin that reset!



If you are not already a newsletter subscriber, contact us through our email: [email protected] and we will add you to the list. 

This Week in Teaneck - 11/21 – Planning Board

With Thanksgiving coming, there are but 2 meetings this week one of which (the PB one) is in-person only.

Planning Board (PB)– Monday 11/21 at 7:00 pm – in person only (no zoom) at 7 pm in Gym 2 on the first floor of the Rodda Center (and repeated on Monday 11/28 – same time and place) Click Here for Very brief Agenda.:

Note: that the agenda is Holy Name’s requested special meeting to consider two site plan proposals that would implement pieces of the hospital zone expansion that is concurrently in litigation due to myriad alleged errors in that ordinance’s adoption process.

Why the unusual date and logistics? It appears that whenever PB Chair Bodner wants limited public attendance at a meeting involving controversial content, he schedules it for Mondays (not the PB’s regular Thursdays) either immediately before or after a holiday and changes the start time from the regular 8:00 pm to 7:00 pm.

There are several issues that will be played out in the PB meeting on Monday evening: First, it is unclear from what starting point the 11/21 hearing on the two site plans will begin – since it is unclear what is the status of the original hearing in light of the absence of a transcript or recording (see Voices story about this meeting on its website – Click Here).

The agenda calls for BOTH site plans to be covered on 11/21– but only a single witness (the HN architect witness) was heard on what is currently labeled the 2^nd site plan (to approve a day care center on the western side of the expanded hospital zone ). There are indications that the original hearing with the architect’s testimony will be declared void and the entire HN site plans process will be started as if de novo.

And of course, the entire site plan process HN is pursuing could be completely overturned depending on developments in the litigation challenging the underlying ordinance 22-2022 (the hospital zone expansion ordinance) Click Here for Voices earlier website story on this litigation.



Apparently, some of the chaos of the prior meeting will NOT occur on Monday. Voices has been assured by both the Clerk’s Office and the Manager that the Town will have secured outside professional contractor support for both the audio and video of Monday’s 11/21 meeting – and that the meeting video will be placed on the Town website. But note: No Zoom!

This Week in Teaneck – Council 11/22/2022

MARK YOUR CALENDARS: There are 2 more council meetings in 2022:

·       This week on Tuesday, 11/22//22 at 8pm. This will be both in-person in the council Chambers  and on zoom (Click Here for zoom then passcode 834446 ). Click Here for Agenda.

·       Tuesday, 12/13/22 at 8pm

On Wednesday, 1/4/2023, The new Council will hold its Reorganization, installing the 3 successful “RISE for Teaneck” candidates as Councilmembers for 4-year terms each, and electing a mayor and one or two deputy mayors.

Since the present council is a “lame duck” council, the public should expect that 4 agenda items will, if approved, further implement aspects of the Areas in Need of Redevelopment (AINR) redevelopment program that the top 3 vote-getters among the incoming Council members aggressively reject.

To see how strongly Belcher, Gee and Goldberg, [and Young, too] disapprove of AINRs as the way to do development, take a moment to review their statements at the NETPBA Forum on 10/19/22. Click Here and go to 24 min &42sec. That 8 minutes of forum video presents a devastating and accurate critique of how and why an AINR development program is completely wrong for Teaneck.  

In their critique, these 3 Council winners described elements of the long-running Teaneck Voices critique of the secrecy, inefficiencies, serious financial mistakes and degradation by blight that are fostered by the current Council’s adoption of the AINR redevelopment regime. For access to these prior Voices stories Click Here, and Click Here, and Click Here

IT IS CRITICALLY IMPORTANT THAT RESIDENTS SPEAK OUT ABOUT THESE FOUR ISSUES AT ORDINANCE HEARINGS AND G & W AT THE FINAL TWO 2022 COUNCIL MEETINGS

Let’s take each of the 4 new 11/22 Council AINR agenda items separately:

1)      359 Alfred Avenue AINR: The first agenda item to be addressed on 11/22 is one where the 2^nd AINR property of Alfred Avenue has asked for – and the Town is prepared to give - totally unexplained and presumably colossal give aways of future tax income by approving tax-exempt PILOT status to the proposed AINR developer.  Teaneck has already approved as “AINR-worthy” this second Alfred Avenue property where a 277-unit 6-story apartment building is to be constructed.

Now, based on the only (scant) data we have, Council is poised to give a luxury-development developer (chosen in-secret and not competitively) what Teaneck Voices has calculated to be a $450-500K annual reduction of payments in lieu of taxes (PILOT) for each of 30 years when those payments are compared to what Teaneck is receiving for the similar-sized Avalon development on Windsor Road.

In 2022 dollars, that means this agenda item will deliver to that developer a $15M gift that Teaneck taxpayers will pay for. How else will Teaneck lose? The Township and BOE will over 30 years be providing services to the residents of that new facility which cost it far more (again, likely $15M more) than this developer pays to Teaneck.    

Is it any wonder that Council, at its previous pre-election meeting on 10/25 very quietly decided (without explanation) to table this ordinance until after the election?

When can you challenge Council on this? There will be a public hearing prior to the Council vote on this ordinance early in the 11/22 Council meeting -and you will have 3 minutes to present your views!

Here are the basics and how you can access that “give-away” agenda item:

Ordinance No. 47-2022 APPROVING LONG TERM TAX EXEMPTION AND AUTHORIZING EXECUTION OF FINANCIAL AGREEMENT BETWEEN TOWNSHIP OF TEANECK AND TEANECK URBAN RENEWAL PHASE II, LLC REGARDING THE 359 ALFRED AVENUE (BLOCK 6002, LOT 3) SIX STORY 247 UNIT RESIDENTIAL BUILDING REDEVELOPMENT PROJECT BE IT RESOLVED by the Township Council of the Township of Teaneck that Ordinance #47-2022 pass upon second and final reading and that the Township Clerk is hereby authorized and directed to advertise the same according to law and to provide the appropriate notices in accordance with law.

Or Click Here http://teanecktownnj.iqm2.com/Citizens/Detail_LegiFile.aspx?ID=7465

(Of special note is the following, for which the Township has provided no information whatsoever.)

• WHEREAS, the Entity has made request to the Township for a long term tax exemption pursuant to the Long Term Tax Exemption Law and has presented a revenue projection for the Project which sets forth the anticipated revenue to be received by the entity from the operation of the Project as estimated by the Entity, and the Township having reviewed same and found it acceptable and of benefit to the Township.

2)       89 The Plaza AINR: In that same time frame, Council will hold a required public hearing prior to its vote to approve Ordinance 50-2022, a redevelopment plan for the AINR designated property at 89 The Plaza.

In fact, substantively this lot’s redevelopment plan is reasonable – a 6-story facility that is virtually identical to the one the Board of Adjustment approved in 2020.   

If essentially the same plan was already approved by one land use board, why is this property listed as part of the State Street AINR. What made it suddenly blighted? There is no other logical explanation except the following:

Every time an AINR redevelopment plan is approved in Teaneck it is followed by a developer’s request that the property be given the special tax break we have just discussed - a PILOT. And thus far under the AINR program that has always meant that projects which would normally be taxed at rates comparable to those that all the rest of us pay will get a huge a tax break deal. And thus far, each of those AINR tax break deals has resulted in the town receiving from the AINR-designated developer, for decades, a rate far less than we voter property owners pay – and, in fact, less than what it will cost the town to provide services to the residents of each AINR development for at least the next 30 years.

Here is the reference to introduced Ordinance 50-2022 that will put this same special deal process in motion for the as yet unnamed developer of the 89 The Plaza project: http://teanecktownnj.iqm2.com/Citizens/Detail_LegiFile.aspx?ID=7468

• Ordinance No. 50-2022 ADOPTING A REDEVELOPMENT PLAN FOR 189 THE PLAZA (BLOCK 5005, LOT 1.01), TOWNSHIP OF TEANECK, NEW JERSEY, PURSUANT TO N.J.S.A. 40A:12A-7 BE IT RESOLVED by the Township Council of the Township of Teaneck that Ordinance #50-2022 pass upon second and final reading and that the Township Clerk is hereby authorized and directed to advertise the same according to law and to provide the appropriate notices in accordance with law."
• Or Click Here:

http://teanecktownnj.iqm2.com/Citizens/Detail_LegiFile.aspx?ID=7468

During Good and Welfare there will be an opportunity for residents to comment on the other two AINR action items.

3)      140 State Street AINR. This AINR item (Ord 49-2022) would introduce a redevelopment plan for the property at the north-east corner of State Street and Queen Anne. The same concerns about tax breaks for AINR properties will likely apply to this State Street property after the redevelopment plan is approved.

However, research to address concerns about this ordinance and its strange timing can await full public scrutiny until January 10 when this ordinance is scheduled t be proposed for adoption.

One concern is why the redevelopment plan has not been reviewed to-date by the Planning Board despite the Town planner originally  having assigned this redevelopment plan to the PB in September. The original introduction of this ordinance had been placed on the agenda in September, and then withdrawn without explanation. Teaneck Voices will seek clarification in the coming weeks.

4)        Amended Conditional Designation of Crossroad Companies as the developer of various lots and areas within the American Legion AINR area. When residents questioned the scope of the Stop & Shop litigation settlement as having stipulated many additional agreements concerning the two AINR’s that sandwich the Cedar Lane retail district, they were told (Click Here for Voices story) – and Voices quoted them – that nothing about those AINR’s had been decided. But, in fact, the original resolution designating Crossroads Companies was part of the consent agendas in September. So, what has now occasioned this “amended” version of the Crossroads designation which calls for significant reshuffling of what will and will not be owned by Crossroads in the redeveloped AINR and what are its responsibilities as designated developer of the AINR? Residents deserve to get a full explanation.

Here is where and how to review this Crossroads resolution Click Here

278-2022 AMENDING RESOLUTION 249-2022 CONDITIONALLY DESIGNATING CROSSROAD COMPANIES, INC. AS THE REDEVELOPER FOR BLOCK 819, LOTS 1, 13, 14, 16 & 17; BLOCK 705, LOT 4.01; AND BLOCK 707, LOTS 1, 2 & AND A PORTION OF BLOCK 707, LOT 5

Residents will want to press Council and/or Township Counsel for clarification of Crossroads Company’s roles. Resident apprehension about being misled about what is happening with this AINR has not lessened as the mysteries grow!

Attorneys Fees: Additionally, residents concerned with litigation costs incurred by the Township attorney may want to note that this month’s Attorney’s firm billing showed $55+K in hourly costs on top of the $20+K for the monthly retainer.

And the resolution to approve the one settlement brought to Council this month (Res 287 Click Here) failed (again) to include how much we tax payers incurred to cover the costs of the settlement and the long-running and extensive Town attorneys’ fees billed in order to reach that settlement.

In sum, Voices hopes that whether by in-person attendance or zoom participation, the successful public who voted in November will join us in careful observation of all that Council does before the new Councilmembers take office – and in supporting them thereafter! 

An Important Addition to Last Week’s Outline

of Teaneck’s Public School Desegregation

To See prior Voices story, Click Here

When Teaneck residents and the general public talk about the nationally recognized desegregation of the Teaneck Public Schools by vote in 1964, almost all forget one of the most outstanding corrective decisions made – 4 years later – to truly desegregate and equitably integrate those schools. It is important to remember the school segregation was the result of the realtors of Teaneck “block-busting” and “red-lining” creating a segregated community in the Northeast part of Teaneck. Called “de facto” segregation, it resulted in the Bryant Elementary School located in Northeast Teaneck becoming a school with primarily Black students.



Teaneck Voices readers first learned of the flaw in the 1964 decision and the remedy applied in 1968 in the Notable Women of Teaneck profile of Allison Davis:

            Allison was going into 6^th grade when Bryant became a central 6^th grade in 1965. She remembers the town and the national media celebrating the 6th graders who were  bused from all parts of town to Bryant as “heroes”

           Allison says, “We sixth graders were not the heroes. The heroes were the little kids from Bryant K-5 who got on one of 7 buses and were driven away to parts of town where they were not allowed to live and which their families didn’t know.” The heroes included the mothers, many of whom, like her mother, didn’t drive and didn’t know where their small children were going. Allison’s younger brother was bused to Lowell School. His friend next door was bused to Longfellow. “As far as my mother knew, he could have been taken to Alabama!” If the school nurse called home because her brother was sick or injured, her mother didn’t know where to go, and had no way to get there even if she had known. “So,” she says, “the burden still fell on the Black Community

According to Our Public Schools, a reference book prepared by the Teaneck League of Women Voters in June, 1978, there was recognition by the town in 1968 that racial imbalance in neighborhoods still existed and that the 1964 form of integration was not equitable.

So in 1968, the Washington Irving School, also in the Northeast, was established as a central kindergarten, with Bryant remaining as a central 6^th grade, and children in grades 1-5 distributed among the other schools. Consequently most children, Black and white, were riding buses to elementary school. School cafeterias and invitations home for lunch to friends by the few children who remained in a neighborhood school were a key part of integration. As Notable Woman Gervonn Romney Rice said in her Teaneck Voices profile:

“As a child I lived the dream that Teaneck was supposed to be forever. I was bused to Whittier for elementary school,” Gervonn laughs recalling the differences she remembered between students in her day: Cafeteria (bused) kids and home lunch (neighborhood) kids. Except that many like Gervonn, bused but friendly with so many neighborhood kids that they were invited home for lunch almost every day.”

Contacting Teaneck Voices

By Email: [email protected]

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