By Co-Editor Barbara Ley Toffler. Ph.D.
I’m about to turn 83. Like many women my age across this country I am devastated by the results of our presidential election. Fifty or so years ago, like many women my age, I began a career of being the first or only in so many professional arenas of my life. And again, like so many women my age, I was “nauseously optimistic” that I would see the first woman president in my lifetime.
But it was not to be. Early on election night, I experienced a prescient moment: We were at a local potluck watch party of politically progressive guests. I was in the kitchen reheating our offering when a male guest, clearly meaning to be charmingly complimentary, said, “I really enjoy your husband’s newsletter.” It seemed like it wasn’t going to be a good night for women!
So now, early November 2024, as Teaneck Voices newsletter rolls into the second quarter of its fifth publication year, let’s take a look at our history – and also think about going forward.
History of Teaneck Voices
In January 2020, shortly before the Covid pandemic lockdown and almost 2 years before Teaneck’s reform-minded residents decided to call for a referendum to move the municipal council election from May to the general election in November I invited a group of 8 Teaneck residents to meet in our living room with Senator Loretta Weinberg to discuss forms of municipal government in New Jersey. The key issue driving the meeting was: Should Teaneck seek to change its Council-Manager form of government?
Why had I, as a former Councilmember called this meeting? I had sat on the Council for four tumultuous years – 2008-2012 – during which time we experienced the firing of a Township Manager, the hiring of a new Manager who in a previous role had sued the Township, the instituting of a 4-day work week on the basis of a survey of 11 township residents, an anonymous letter campaign to discredit a councilmember and discourage them for running for another term, the cutting of $6.1 million from the school budget, and the attempt to install a civilian head of the police and fire departments doing away with trained chiefs.
I also had concerns as a woman about various occurrences during my tenure: There was a culture of bullying by 2 of the 4 male councilmembers of the 3 female councilmembers (who made up the minority), the firing of our first female Township Manager, the hiring of a male “inside” applicant for Manager by the male majority – denying the position to the extraordinarily competent female applicant (who was immediately hired by Tenafly), the harassment of the female Township Clerk (who also was swooped up by Tenafly), denying of the mayorship to the successful Black incumbent councilmember, Lizette Parker, who swept the 2010 election with an impressive plurality of the vote, and the murder of Joan Davis.
As a resident observer for the following 10 years, I had amassed significant concerns about both the Council elections and the resultant Council leadership. Anecdotally, I heard many similar concerns at various meetings and social events. So in January 2020, I invited 7 like-minded residents to meet with Senator Loretta Weinberg to share our concerns and discuss the various forms of New Jersey Municipal Government to see if another form might work better for Teaneck. My leading concerns were:
- The secrecy with which the Council made decisions,
- The fact that the Council was promoting urban development in Teaneck which a majority of residents seemed to oppose,
- The perception and the fact that the Council had “favorites” among the many diverse communities in Teaneck,
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And, basically, the question of whether or not representative democracy existed in Teaneck. At the end of that first meeting, the group decided to further investigate alternative forms of government. We held one or two more in-person meetings in February with 25 or more in attendance to refine our concerns. Just as the 2020 municipal election (then still held in May) was gearing up, days after the kick-off party of the Belcher, Gerszberg, Walser slate, the lockdown struck.
We turned to Zoom.
At the first Zoom meeting, the group invited Professor Mark Pfeiffer from the Bloustein School of Public Policy at Rutgers, to speak to us, via Zoom, about the pros and cons of the various forms of New Jersey municipal governments under the Faulkner Act. Professor Pfeiffer gave us a bounty of information and answered our questions long into the evening.
The group briefly considered a ward plus at-large members structure of government (to seek greater representation for diverse groups) but decided after members of the group researched the topic, that our present Council-Manager form of government was the best (or least worst!) of all the forms of government under the Faulkner Act.
It became evident that the change needed was in the make-up of the elected council membership. The question was: HOW TO ACHIEVE THAT?
At that point, the group, now about 15 regularly-attending members, decided to organize, quickly and unanimously named ourselves Teaneck Voices, and decided 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
- What Boards and Commissions existed and how they operated and interacted
- The current concerns – with demonstrated evidence – about the present Council
- Ideas for possible solutions to the problems and concerns cited
Several group members developed an Organizational Purpose Statement:
ABOUT US
Teaneck Voices is a young and growing organization. It was established in 2020 by a group of Teaneck residents who shared a common interest in rectifying the perceived shortcomings of our current Council. We are working together to ensure that the ideas and opinions of residents are heard and not ignored. We are dedicated to communicating critical, fact-based information about what is happening in Teaneck and supporting actions to improve governance.
MAILING ADDRESS
Teaneck Voices
P.O. Box 873
Teaneck, NJ 07666-0873
MISSION STATEMENT
Achieve integrity, transparency, responsiveness, diversity, and social justice in Teaneck governance.
OBJECTIVES
- Elect Council members whose values are consistent with our Mission Statement
- Build the mission-supporting Voter Base and Get out the Vote.
- Monitor and Report on Key Council and Board Actions
- Weigh in on Council and Board Actions
A then-active group member, Hillary Goldberg (not yet a council member) suggested the group Teaneck Voices publish a weekly newsletter called Teaneck Voices and volunteered to be editor-in-chief. The original group of writers and editors working with her were, alphabetically, Laraine Chaberski, Gail Gordon, and me, Barbara Toffler. We planned to distribute it to our own mailing lists and seek ways to expand our readership.
As Teaneck Voices we explicitly took on the task of educating and informing the Teaneck public and cultivating sources of information that could bring vitality and accuracy into what we perceived as an information desert.
Our first issue in August 2020 went to less than 100 residents!
Over the past 4 years, Teaneck Voices has built a remarkable readership 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.
Since our first issue in August 2020, Teaneck Voices has run educational pieces (how the Council-Manager Form of Government works, how Statutory Boards and Commissions work), a review of Teaneck parks and playgrounds, and many other information pieces.
Of special pride to me is my feature on The Notable Women of Teaneck with profiles of 50 extraordinary women who through their intelligence, energy, drive, and commitment to the greater Teaneck community have created, innovated, and discovered a wealth of life-enhancing services and amenities that we enjoy in Teaneck.
Midway in Teaneck Voices tenure, Hillary Goldberg left Teaneck Voices to establish her own newsletter, and my husband, Chuck Powers, and I became Co-editors, recently joined by our IT Editor, Sarah Fisher.
With Chuck as an Investigative Reporter as well as Co-editor, Teaneck Voices has expanded into a hard-hitting investigative, fact-finding, probing, and analytic piece of communication. Which brings us to our future.
Teaneck Voices in the Future
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We will continue to attend and cover as many council, statutory boards, and commissions and provide all the information possible for residents to know and understand what our leadership is doing. We will continue to hold our leadership ACCOUNTABLE.
- We will attempt to be the transparent window into every aspect of town governance that affects our homes, our finances, and our quality of life as residents of Teaneck.
- We may try to hold and report on small group discussions where we bring opposing sides of issues like redevelopment and cannabis facilities together to listen to and hear each other.
- We have been trying to cover more of the activities of the Board of Education and the school district. We will continue to expand that coverage.
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Technologically, we are seeking the ever-elusive search capability for our website so that readers can find information on any (or most) topics we have covered in the past 4-plus years.
- Finally – we, all of us in Teaneck – are Teaneck Voices. We welcome letters, articles, and thought pieces from you. We can’t promise to publish everything, but as our regular readers know, we publish many Voices that contact us.
I began this article by referring to my frustration and upset at the result of our presidential election and its spillover onto me as a woman. Teaneck Voices, the initial organization and the newsletter which is building a reputation as the primary source of accurate information in the Township of Teaneck were founded by women. We shouldn’t have to make that point. But we do.
If you are not already a newsletter subscriber, contact us through our email: teaneckvoices@gmail.com and we will add you to the list.
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