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As Margaret Baker Predicted -

An Accident Certain to Happen


PUBLISHED BY TEANECK VOICES

9/19/2023

Contents:


As Margaret Baker Predicted -

An Accident Certain to Happen


Are Auxiliary Dwelling Units (ADU's) An Answer


Finally Some Light on What the Zoning Subcommittee is Discussing


This Week in Teaneck - September 19 to 24, 2023


Six Candidates Competing for Three 3-year seats

    on Teaneck’s Board of Education (BOE)


Waiting - 17 Months But No Board of Adjustment Minutes


Announcements


Resident's Master Plan Survey Flyer - now


Meet & Greet Superintendent Spencer - September 28


LWV Election Forum for BOE Candidates - October 2


NETBPA Election Forum for BOE Candidates - October 10



Contacting Teaneck Voices

As Margaret Baker Predicted -

An Accident Certain to Happen

For several decades, Teaneck resident Margaret Baker has been calling attention to inadequate traffic controls in front of her home on Decatur and Alfred, and the block north on Decatur at Tietjen. Anyone who has recently gone to see her knew precisely what she was talking about when during G&W on 9/5 she called Council - again pleading for better traffic management to protect her & her neighbors. Listen for 3 minutes because the town zoom only projected her audio.


Less than 36 hours after her call, two cars doing

precisely what she had described did what Ms.

Baker had feared – crashing into each other and

through the fence & into the massive AINR rental

building being constructed without required zoning

set backs directly across from Ms. Baker’s neighborhood. 


Not only is Margaret Baker the Township’s most determined truth-teller – it turns out she is also an accurate seer & soothsayer.


ARE AUXILARY DWELLING UNITS (ADU'S)

AN ANSWER?

Summary: There is a quick and effective option to address the populations for which Teaneck’s current housing stock does not provide an answer. That answer may be Auxiliary Dwelling Units (ADUs). Happily, this week the new Council is, exploring this option with a presentation by AARP at the Council meeting on Tuesday, September 19.

-----------------------------

Virtually all of Teaneck’s elected politicians have long been consistent in rhetorically claiming that they seek (via some radically diverse development approaches) to find real housing options for some or all of the following:

·       Those current residents who simply need more affordable options than the current housing stock provides

·       Seniors who want/need to leave single family residences but want to continue to live in Teaneck

·       Newly-adult Teaneck children who cannot yet afford dwellings from among the current housing stock

·       Couples or small families who – as their current apartment’s rates shoot up – can no longer afford them


But those diverse options - most recently, reliance on Areas in Need of Redevelopment (AINRs) – have never delivered what any of the groups just cited need – and none that would provide answers, if any, for at least 5 years. 


As reported by Town Planner Hughes, perhaps the dominant finding from the well-attended Town forum to Kick-off Master Plan planning was the need for the housing type we have almost none of: Low-rise moderately - priced housing. (Click Here to look again at that report, “Planners' Summary of Public Responses at Master Plan Kick-Off Meeting.” It is also now found on the Town website at Click Here)


What is an ADU? An Accessory Dwelling Unit, usually just called an ADU, is a secondary housing unit on a single-family residential lot. ADUs come in a variety of forms: detached new construction, garage conversion, bump-out, basement conversion, and more.


Several NJ municipalities, including Princeton and Montclair have already adopted zoning policies that permit ADU’s – and the state legislature is currently considering additional legislation. Princeton has also discovered a way to have ADU’s that house persons eligible for affordable housing count toward that municipality’s COAH obligations. (Voices is researching how that is being done!)


We urge our readers to listen/watch Tuesday 9/19’s Council meeting for the AARP presentation on ADU’s very carefully. Could well-defined ADU regulations help Teaneck provide what residents so strongly believe we need to do about our housing supply? 


If you have not already filled out the new resident’s Master Plan survey, go find it in our Announcement section at the conclusion of this Voices edition.

You deserve a seat at the table – and need to help Council understand what development decisions and timetables would best reflect your views. 

Finally – Some light on what our

Zoning Subcommittee is discussing

Late last week there appeared on our Town website a brand new item in the list of Town entities whose agendas and minutes are tracked. 


It is the 2023 minutes of our Council Zoning Subcommittee (ZSC). Seven of them appear, beginning with the January 2023 meeting and continuing through the August 25, 2023 meeting. They are all currently found if you Click Here and then at Group click Zoning Subcommitee.


Voices strongly encourages its readers to read each and every one of them as they display a wide variety of development projects which this group   including 3 regular (and one alternate) Council members are considering. The projects are typically presented by a developer (rarely identified by name). This Zoning Subcommittee group to whom these projects are presented has the following characteristics:


1) No more than 3 Council members at any one time, else the ZSC would have to open its meetings to the public and follow other procedural steps required by the Open Public Meetings Act that our subcommittees do not follow.


2) A shifting cast of other attendees that seems now to include the town attorney and the new redevelopment attorney, the Town planner’s firm and a variety of administration officials (the Manager, the Deputy Manager, the Zoning Official [Mr. Melfi], the Construction Official [Mr. Boccino] and perhaps others. It may also sometimes include land use boards members.


3) Developers and/or developers’ attorneys whose attendance may or may not be limited to the period of time that they advocate or describe the development they support.


Nowhere as yet is there any of :

·       The rules that govern publication of agendas for ZSC meetings,

·       The criteria for and processes by which persons are invited to or excluded from these meetings.

·       It is not clear what governs whether a subcommittee topic is sent – with or without a recommendation – to the entire Council in open or closed session. 

·       It is not clear what (and by what criteria) ZSC discussions are forwarded only to closed sessions of Council.

·       Why are we residents not invited to attend those portions of the meeting that are not privileged?

(While there are state rules that govern the matters that must be dealt with in closed session, e.g. personnel and litigation, those matters are handled in closed session before the 8PM Council meetings on Tuesdays. Many of the people who are in attendance at the ZSC meetings (as noted by the minutes) are not Council members, Managers or their attorneys and would not be allowed to attend a closed Council session!

 If they attend, why may the public not attend?


Even a cursory reading of the ZSC minutes will make it clear that what is discussed and who attends should be the matter of Workshop Sessions.


What we have said about the ZSC applies in part to other Council subcommittees, as Teaneck Voices has repeatedly stated.


Voices, to be sure, welcomes the publication of these ZSC minutes. They represent a small step in the direction of transparency. We note that once we began to dig these minutes out from where they were embedded in the Council agenda packets – and placed them on our Voices website - someone finally decided they also belonged on the Town website. However, their presence there was not publicized until now.


Transparency – and discerning what should be public and what should not be public - is a persistent challenge in a democracy. But it is a topic which should concern us all since it assuredly affects us all.

P.S. Teaneck Voices will continue to copy the minutes that the Town publishes and place them on our website (Click Here) Who knows when they will disappear as do old resolutions and ordinances? 

This Week in Teaneck - 9/19 to 24, 2023


As is too often the case, information about several Town meetings is again this week spotty and incomplete. If Voices locates additional access, agenda and minutes information about these public meetings during the week, that information will be placed on the teaneckvoices.com website at (Click Here)


This Week in Teaneck - September 19-24, 2023

 

Council Regular -Tuesday September 19, 2023 at 8:00 pm Hybrid in-person in Council Chambers and by zoom Click Here and use passcode 943473. The Agenda Packet is found at Click Here.


·       As of the day before meeting, there is relatively little of great interest on this meeting's agenda. There is Hearing and vote on ordinance to change criteria for hiring police. Presentation by AARP on Auxiliary Dwelling Units (see related article in this edition). Council will confirm some advisory board appointments after they were nominated through s process that several CM's questioned - asnd likely will again.


Teaneck Historic Preservation Commission (THPC) – Tuesday September 19, 2023 at 7:00 pm by zoom only Click Here and use passcode 527058; for Agenda Click Here.


Youth Advisory Board Kick-off Meeting – Wednesday, September 20, 2023 at 7:00 pm virtual - see Virtual Meerting image. below

Environmental Commission (EC) – Wednesday September 20, 2023 at 7:30 pm by zoom –Click Here but as usual, no agenda information is available.


Senior Citizen’s Advisory Board (SCAB) -Thursday September 21, 2023 at 1:30 pm in the Game Room of the Rodda Center – no agenda information available.


Board of Adjustment (B of A) – Website currently erroneously calls for a Thursday, September 21, 2023 meeting at 7:00 pm. There is no meeting


Six Candidates Competing for Three 3-year seats

    on Teaneck’s Board of Education (BOE)

Before they vote in this year’s general election, Teaneck voters will again have two opportunities to hear the views of the 6 candidates competing this Fall for three 3-year seats on Teaneck’s Board of Education.

 There are two electoral forums taking place in the 3rd Floor Student Center at Teaneck High School.


The first forum, sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Teaneck, will take place at 7:30 pm on Monday October 2.


The second forum, sponsored by the Northeast Teaneck Block President’s Association and will occur a week and a day later, on Tuesday October 10 and will begin at 7:00 pm.


The 6 BOE candidates have divided into 2 slates and all will appear on the ballot with their slate-mates.


For more information about each forum, our readers are urged to review the flyers for each forum in the Announcement section of this Voices edition. Voices will be outlining voting procedures and options for this year’s general election in subsequent editions.

Still Waiting: Board of Adjustment Mtg. Minutes

The Township's website needs a major redesign - and the Clerk says the Town administration is finally about to select a contractor.


But in the meantime we depend on it for information we can obtain nowhere else.


Case in Point: We have not had meeting minutes for Board of Adjustment meetings posted on the website since April 7, 2022 - 17month ago!


During that 17-month period the Board of Adjustment has made MANY KEY DECISIONS. But the public has no way of knowing what they are and what is upcoming.


Voices has pressed both the Building Department and the Clerk's office to get this issue addressed. We have repeatedly been told it is for them - as it is for us - a priority.


But we are STILL WAITING!

ANNOUNCEMENTS


Click Here

August 2023 Master Plan Community Input Survey Flyer; or


Responda a la encuesta de opinión comunitaria del Plan 


Contacting Teaneck Voices


Co-Editors: Dr. Barbara Ley Toffler and Dr. Chuck Powers

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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