The question rightly to be posed about the 2024 Master Plan draft is this: Does this Master Plan have sufficient specificity and clarity of detail and purpose that would enable the Planning Board to have said, "No, this facility in this location is not consistent with our new Master Plan"?
If the current 2024 MP draft fails that test, then it is not yet ready for prime time. AND IT FAILS IN SIGNIFICANT WAYS:
What about the 2024 draft's discussion of AINRs?
In a special section of the glossary on p. 15 there is a discussion of the NJ state statute's redevelopment process, the establishment of Areas in Need of Redevelopment (AINRs) created to deal with real urban blight. AINRs (to deal with real blight) are allowed to disregard established zoning to impose whatever the governing body deems will deal with a devastated urban site. The process that wipes out any established zoning allows the governing body to do essentially whatever it wants and largely in closed-session consultation with unnamed developers who are not selected by any competitive process.
Unfortunately, for the past 6 years, Teaneck’s Council, without ever passing an ordinance, has adopted AINRs as a primary mechanism to implement development and thus disregards established zoning in Teaneck. As our readers know, Teaneck Voices has reported our and our readers’ concerns about Areas in Need of Redevelopment (AINRs).
We searched and found what this Draft Master Plan has to say about AINRs. First, the aforementioned Glossary provides no hint that ever since the June 14, 2023, first MP Kick-off meeting, residents have actively complained about the Town's and Council's misuse of AINRs. (See Click Here). To add insult to injury, on page 41 through 3 lines on page 43, this draft devotes minimal space to this draconian effort to erase zoning in 9 specific areas of Teaneck. Ironically, these AINR projects are treated as though they are just another type of zoning - when, in fact, AINR's ALL dispense with existing zoning in the Areas in Need of Redevelopment identified.
The most insidious thing about including AINRs as a type of zoning is that, in the future, ANY AINR LIKELY WILL BE FOUND CONSISTENT WITH THE MASTER PLAN!!!
Not only does the Draft Master Plan include this devious device under the Zoning section of the Plan, but, more importantly as we have said, IT SAYS NOTHING ABOUT THE ONGOING AND ALMOST UNIVERSAL OBJECTION OF TOWN RESIDENTS TO THE WHOLE CONCEPT AS EXPRESSED IN THE COMMUNITY MEETINGS, COUNCIL AND PLANNING BOARD GOOD & WELFARE SESSIONS, AND RESPONSES TO SURVEY QUESTIONS.
We ask Town Residents to carefully review these 3 pages of AINR coverage in order to comment on and evaluate the Planning Board answers at the meeting on August 19.
Deficiency -- the USER-FRIENDLINESS of the draft
Here are our recommendations
- Add an Executive Summary(ES) – The reader should be able to read the ES and understand the key elements of the Master Plan,
- Add a brief description of present-day Teaneck (mature suburb, almost fully developed, towering trees, few open spaces, etc.),
- Rewrite the Vision statement to provide a Vision for the Teaneck described. The Vision statement on Page 11 is generic and could apply to any municipality,
- Write a brief statement of the methodology used to infer from community meetings, surveys, etc. to the goals and objectives,
- Provide a discrete List of Goals with 1-2 sentence Objectives for each (see 2007 Teaneck Master Plan for example), and include a part of the Executive Summary,
- Place Acknowledgements and Glossaries at the back of the Document,
- Re-paginate the document: remove all Roman numerals and begin the first page as Page #1. This will allow easy selective printing.
- Caption all photos and provide the relevance of each. Remove all photos that do not have a specific purpose. (E. g. Do we need so many large pictures of the October 2023 meeting attended by fewer than 40 residents?)
Voices assumes that by the end of the Monday night meeting, the general outline of what is needed to revise the current draft will have emerged.
The public should assume that it will likely be at least a month for the Planning Board to work to produce a revised draft 2024 Master Plan. When that work is done, and the new draft posted on the new town website, we all will look forward to a rescheduled public hearing.
Please contact us, at teaneckvoices@gmail.com with any thoughts, comments, or suggestions Voices can provide to the Planning Board as this process moves forward.
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