Definition of Terms: A Review

Open Space and Recreation Plan: Reasons for 4-year Delay

Planning Board Adopts Master Plan Amendment for Holy Name Hospital Expansion

What is happening at the Teaneck Post Office?

-CHICO MARX in DUCK SOUP

Several Weeks ago, Teaneck Voices first posed the question of whether the Stop & Shop on American Legion Drive was going to be demolished.

We provided a transcript of Town Planner Richard Preiss recommending to the Planning Board that some properties along American Legion Drive be designated an Area in Need of Redevelopment (AINR), based primarily on an investigation of the supermarket that found Stop & Shop to be blighted. Town Planner Preiss testified "only through, essentially, demolition and rebuilding could those [conditions] be corrected, it's not something that can be just repaired..." because it is an area "...detrimental to the safety, health, morals and welfare of the community."

Teaneck Voices subsequently reported that Stop & Shop was suing Council and Planning Board with the demand that Council's resolution designating the AINR be rescinded, based on its substance, procedures, and conflicts-of-interest. We provided our readers a summary of Stop & Shop's arguments as well as a link to the full Complaint filed in court.

Teaneck Voices believes that the supermarket and the Town are now discussing a possible settlement of the dispute prior to a formal hearing of the court case, which is still pending.

At the December 14th Council meeting this past Tuesday, Council announced that it wanted Stop & Shop to stay in Teaneck and thrive, (despite its continued designation of the supermarket and surrounding properties as an Area in Need of Redevelopment based on conditions of blight found at Stop & Shop).

Several members of Council, including the Mayor, accused unnamed media of false reporting and rumor-mongering.

Teaneck Voices is delighted to hear that Council has walked away from the advice of its Town Planner on which it based its Resolution, and we are pleased that our coverage of this story may have helped them reassess the situation.

See 12/5 and 12/12 issues for full definitions

Green Acres is a Program of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. Among its regulatory responsibilities, Green Acres requires each municipality to adopt an Open Space & Recreation Plan (OSRP) every 10 years. Green Acres maintains a database of protected properties in New Jersey which includes all local ROSI properties.

OSRP is a municipality’s Open Space and Recreation Plan expressing the Town’s vision of open space and recreation. It is a part of a Town’s Master Plan to guide development. It provides a detailed inventory of existing open spaces and recreation areas and a list of potential areas for acquisition as a guide for implementation.

ROSI is a municipality’s Recreation and Open Space Inventory. It lists those municipal properties that the Town has identified as being protected in perpetuity to be used only for conservation or recreational purposes. The municipality's ROSI must match Green Acres' in order to be eligible for Green Acres' funding. An OSRP must incorporate the ROSI listing of properties.

The Greenbelt is a protected area alongside Route 4 in Teaneck serving as a buffer for homes along its length from the Englewood border to Teaneck’s River Road. It was established by Teaneck’s first Master Plan in 1933. Many properties included in the Greenbelt are protected in perpetuity and belong in the ROSI.

Almost anyone driving along Route 4 is uncomfortably aware of congested traffic caused by the narrowing of the state highway to two lanes as it passes through Teaneck.

But hold onto your road rage. Widening the highway is a challenge. Both NJ State and Bergen County are aware that many Teaneck Greenbelt properties are protected in perpetuity, and that they provide a beautiful stand of trees as a buffer for homes along the highway.

Their challenge is to figure out how to ease congestion while continuing to protect the residences and conserve the inventory of properties in the ROSI.

At the same time, the stone bridge over Rte 4 that supports Garrison Avenue's connection to Sussex Road, will have to be rebuilt to accommodate a widened highway. How will residents get around Teaneck during construction?

And similar problems will arise where the highway bridges Windsor Road, the railroad, Palisades Avenue and Queen Anne Road.

It seems likely that parts of the Greenbelt will have to be thinned or narrowed.

Whenever a protected property must be removed from the Town’s ROSI, it must be paid for, and the money must be used to acquire an equivalent replacement property for recreation or conservation. (This is exactly what Teaneck must arrange to allow PSE&G to string wires across parts of Votee and Windsor parks. See Manager Kazinci's explanation here)

It is Teaneck’s responsibility and challenge and to find and acquire new replacement properties. With denser, more urban-like development occurring at an increasing pace in Teaneck, the residential character of Teaneck articulated in its Master Plan is attenuated. And it becomes increasingly difficult for Teaneck to find replacement properties for its ROSI.

State and County officials have been aware of the Rte 4 congestion problem for many years, but have not had the money to address it. With the passage this year of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal, Teaneck may finally see concrete plans emerge to address this thorny problem.

Last week Teaneck Voices discussed the relation between the Town’s Open Space Recreation Plan (OSRP) and its Recreation and Open Space Inventory (ROSI). (See 12/12 issue.)

This week we focus on what lies behind the long four-year delay in adoption of Teaneck's OSRP by the Planning Board: a long-running dispute between the Town and the State's Green Acres Program about what Teaneck properties are listed in the ROSI as protected properties.

Teaneck's ROSI Inventory is significantly different from the one established by Green Acres. Green Acres lists several Teaneck properties as protected parkland which the Planning Board does not acknowledge and which Teaneck did not list in its most recent (2015) ROSI Declaration to the State.

Many of these disputed properties are located on the Greenbelt, the buffer strip along Route 4. Protecting those properties as parkland poses an obstacle to widening eastbound Rte 4 to 3 lanes.

If the town complies with the Green Acres' expectation of accurate accounting for the Greenbelt parkland, the widening of the Teaneck Route 4 roadway becomes a challenge. How can it be widened while maintaining the Greenbelt buffer?

Unfortunately, our Planning Board has confused the idea of volunteering potential parkland properties (which they don’t believe are really parkland, e.g. much of the Greenbelt), with correcting the incomplete ROSI inventories erroneously submitted (likely by inadvertence) in the past. Correcting the Teaneck ROSI is necessary before Teaneck can again be eligible for Green Acres funds.

The confusion is evident in this Planning Board video:

Through most of 2010, Teaneck and Green Acres engaged in an intense and combative correspondence about what should be included on Teaneck’s Recreation and Open Space Inventory. By that November, the two sides had tired of their “ROSI” struggle.

The Town’s leadership - then as now - sought to restrict the number and scope of such protected properties. Its staff and attorneys continuously contested Green Acres' assertion that prior Teaneck Councils had agreed to protect the disputed properties when the Town accepted donations of property with “park only” deed restrictions, or signed agreements with Green Acres to receive partial funding to help purchase properties that the Town agreed should be protected parkland.

However, in 2010, Teaneck officials were very eager to receive the $750K Green Acres had conditionally agreed to provide for the Sportsplex only if the two sides could agree on the ROSI list.

On November 3, 2010, two Green Acres staff with ROSI decision authority traveled up from Trenton to Teaneck to visit some of the contested properties and negotiate ROSI property inclusions with then Manager Broughton, Attorney Rupp and Engineer McKearnin.

AND IT WORKED. Within three weeks of that meeting, Green Acre’s Nancy Lawrence wrote an email to the Town saying the State was ready to settle – with one important stipulation: that the Town forward to Green Acres a specific document that Teaneck staff had orally described during the 11/3 negotiation.

To quote Ms. Lawrence’s email:

However, Green Acres staff report that the needed/requested copy of the 1956 Master Plan has never arrived. It did not arrive for good reason: The cited 1956 Master Plan never existed.

In 1983, the Town’s Planning Board Clerk, Geraldine Ryan, searched for that cited Master Plan. Here is what she reported back to that Planning Board in April, 1983:

But the Votee Sportsplex was top priority. So the Township finally submitted a ROSI Declaration which Manager Broughton and PB Chair Bodner signed on 1/6/2011.

Green Acres accepted that ROSI Declaration and checks for the Sportsplex’s 2007 project request finally arrived and were publicly celebrated on 12/15/2015. (Click Here at minute 10 on Council video. That enlarged Green Acres check you see was the very last check Green Acres sent Teaneck.)

Teaneck’s 2011 ROSI Declaration included only the 4 acres of parkland on the western end of both sides of Route 4 with 3 ROSI-recognized parks at Belle Avenue.

But in 1966, the Town told the State that many, many more properties - large and small and contiguous to Route 4 – were parks.

Why the disconnect? In 1966, Teaneck’s Council and staff began extended discussions and negotiations with Green Acres staff about the status of properties along Route 4, like the wooded property that lay to the east of the law offices of Siegel & Siegel beside Route 4 East. Those negotiations resulted in an extensive list of Teaneck properties, identified by Block and Lot on the tax map of Teaneck, that dwarfs the list Teaneck has declared in its recent ROSI inventories.

Teaneck Voices investigators have reviewed Green Acres archives and seen the impressive 3-panel map which Teaneck’s Clerk sent to Green Acres on 3/17/1966. That map clearly delineates many properties on both sides of Route 4 and delineates very many more protected properties in Teaneck than Teaneck’s current ROSI identifies.

All of the 1966 documents are now reproduced in Appendix H of the revised 2019 draft OSRP found now on the Town website in the recent documents section at the bottom of Click Here.

And, as far as the staff of Green Acres is concerned, the matter is now fully resolved at their end.

And, in fact, it was specifically addressed in an email sent by the Green Acres official in charge of Bergen County Green Acres compliance, Maude Snyder, to Manager Broughton in mid-July 2017.

That email tells Teaneck that in 1966 the Teaneck Council and Mayor sent proof of having passed a May, 1966 ordinance (#1279) that protected not just a large number of Greenbelt properties and others but was followed by a December 1966 agreement wherein, in exchange for funding a new open space property, the Town promised to permanently protect all the conservation/recreation properties it has identified to Green Acres.

In sum, Teaneck’s Planning Board is not now first being asked to volunteer random additional protected properties not currently found on its ROSI. Instead, there are many properties that are legally documented as already belonging on the ROSI. They must be included whenever Teaneck again seeks funding. Until that reconciliation occurs, Teaneck annually misses out on access to Green Acres funding which in 2022 is scheduled to total $200M.

The December 2021 version of the amendment (Click Here) was authored by Planner Keenan Hughes, the young Phillips, Preiss partner who took over this planning assignment when veteran planner Richard Preiss retired (after criticizing Council members for their handling of negotiations between the hospital and its neighbors.)

No less than 243 residents participated in the zoom meeting! Not all of them spoke, but it was clear that most supported the hospital neighbors who begged the Planning Board to hold off on approving the Master Plan amendment until the hospital and neighbors reached an agreement about protecting the residential neighbors from possible further expansion in the future.

For this is the crux of the problem. There does seem to be a consensus among the residential neighbors that they support and appreciate the presence of a modernizing hospital, and wish to accommodate the specific zoning changes in this amendment. But they have been looking for an agreement that limits further neighborhood disruption in the future. 

It was noted at the Thursday meeting that the final version of the amendment deleted wording of the previous version that called for a hospital/neighbors agreement to mitigate adverse impacts of further expansion. Planner Keenan Hughes, despite being the author of the revised amendment which the Board adopted, could not remember how the “agreement” reference had been struck out. (Click Here for the video on this.) Residents participating in the zoom could not sort out why the Town and the Hospital agreed to proceed with the amendment anyway. 

It was not quite a definite promise, but it does suggest that the last steps toward resolution – without litigation – may still be available. (Click Here for the video on this).

In late March-early April of 2020, at the onset of COVID, the first cases of mail theft occurred in Teaneck at some scale. Since then, checks for tens of thousands of dollars have been forged using checks stolen from envelopes mailed in Teaneck.

The Record reported in late October (with an online 11/1/21 update) that

Councilman Michael Pagan confirmed this at the October 26th Council meeting, reading the following into the record:

Mayor Dunleavy said that this is a global problem, not a Teaneck-specific problem.

But then, this month, on December 10th, it was reported that the problem persists. (See Teaneck Residents Feeling ‘Absolutely Violated’ After Numerous Checks Stolen From Mail)

So uncertainty remains.

Residents would like to know:

Teaneck Voices hopes that the Town Manager will publicly announce the history and current status of problems with Teaneck mail.

In the meantime, Representative Gottheimer is apprised of the situation and will be speaking to the Postmaster Inspector General again this coming week. Hopefully, Teaneck Voices will soon be able to answer some of the worrisome questions.

Residents: If you have your checks stolen or forged or your bank accounts hacked, you should report the matter to the police as well as your bank. And notify postal inspectors of "theft" at 877-876-2455.

March is Women’s History Month. Women’s History Month is a celebration of women’s contributions to history, culture and society and has been observed annually in the month of March in the United States since 1987.

International Women's Day, marked annually on March 8th, is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day, first celebrated in 1911, also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity. Significant activity is witnessed worldwide as groups come together to celebrate women's achievements or rally for women's equality.

It is possible that you are unaware of Women’s History Month or International Women’s Day. Maybe you are unaware because the Teaneck Township Leadership has never mentioned either of them, never mind celebrating them.

Of course, there are many celebratory days, weeks and months that remain unrecognized except by those who specifically identify with the honoree, like International Day of Forests on March 21 and World Braille Day on January 4.

However, in Teaneck, Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day are noteworthy because, despite the large number of energetic, highly educated, skilled, talented women living here, for the last 15 years women are rarely seen and barely heard in any leadership role in the Township of Teaneck. Even more distressing is the number of women who have been removed or pressured out of positions on our Council and Statutory Boards. In the last 15 years, few women of Teaneck have been shown the respect and recognition they deserve.

Teaneck Voices recognized these facts and acknowledged that women should be elected or appointed to leadership positions in our diverse town. We decided to honor them and to introduce them to the residents of Teaneck.

It is the hope of Teaneck Voices that several of our Notable Women of Teaneck will stand for election or appointment to town leadership and that the residents of Teaneck will recognize that we have a truly gifted resource in the too-often ignored women of our town.

Next Sunday, December 26, 2021, Teaneck Voices will honor Notable Woman the Reverend Marilyn Harris of First Baptist Church of Teaneck.

Do you know a woman Teaneck Voices should honor? Please email your suggestions to teaneckvoices@gmail.com.

When will the Planning Board act on the OSRP?

Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 7:00pm

by Zoom Link and passcode 773617.

Happily this THPC meeting agenda is already up on the Town website Click Here. It includes a report by Theodora Lacey on the MOST Committee meeting she just attended. You won’t find that info anywhere else!

Congratulations to the THPC for caring about how Teaneck residents can follow the work of this Commission. Its care to get zoom info and agendas out is in sharp contrast to the practices of most other Teaneck Boards, Commissions and Advisory Committee

Events at the Library: Click here