For the past several months’ a significant percentage of Good & Welfare speakers – virtually all with cannabis business interests - have pressed Council to consider changing its August 2021 Ordinance that provided conditional use approval for all state-approved types of cannabis facilities, but limited them to the Alfred Avenue area. That Ordinance 29-2021 can be found by Clicking Here.
These G&W speakers have claimed that there exist no actual opportunities to locate any cannabis facilities on Alfred Avenue and that Council should take action to expand where cannabis facilities can be located. Some G&W speakers have opposed cannabis facilities being located there or anywhere.
All the actual work on cannabis in Teaneck has been led, to-date, by a 3-member Council subcommittee made up of Council members Kaplan, Orgen and Pagan. That subcommittee has had two persistent hallmarks:
1) The subcommittee has claimed that the fact that the Township voters had, in 2020, voted nearly 3 to 1 in favor of a state referendum which dramatically increased in what forms and how cannabis is legalized in the state meant that Teaneck voters had, simultaneously, signaled their agreement that these facilities should be authorized to be located in the Township. Others doubt that. (It might be noted that Council’s only prior formal action on cannabis in Teaneck was an introduced ordinance (20-2018 Click Here) that would have prohibited cannabis facilities of any kind within the Township. It was twice tabled and never made part of a public hearing or Council vote.
2) The cannabis subcommittee beginning with its formation in March 2021 has met in closed sessions and never provided notes or minutes or explained with whom it has met nor what decisions had led to the approving 29-2021 ordinance the subcommittee had authored. Those subcommittee records have been promised since 8/2021 but never delivered.
Now more than a year later the Council has – through recent informal Council member statements - indicated that the Council subcommittee has recently met with these cannabis business interests and has now made recommendations to the Council’s zoning subcommittee that cannabis facilities (type unspecified) be allowed elsewhere, including, specifically, on Cedar Lane. (Click Here and moved the cursor to 3hrs &03 mins &50 secs. for a video of one such statement.)
Urgency for new Council action has been included in these statements by representatives of cannabis business organizations who say that they have obtained conditional licenses from the state which will expire if those businesses have not secured cannabis locations in allowed areas in the Township. The Council zoning subcommittee (which also meets in closed sessions) is expected to introduce a draft zoning ordinance in its Council agenda as early as at its next regular meeting – on September 20.
At the August 9 Council meeting, one G&W speaker who said he represented landlord interests on Alfred Avenue claimed that the reason the cannabis businesses cannot find an Alfred Avenue location is that none have been willing to commit to leases of sufficient duration to show that they intend to stay in Teaneck once their full licenses have been obtained. (Click Here and move the cursor to 2hrs.58mins.44secs. to hear that statement.) That assertion has not subsequently been either publicly corroborated or contested.
Voices sees it as obvious that when an issue such as this has been stymied and under consideration for 4 years without ever being fully aired – an issue which clearly engages the public’s concern in diverse ways– that before Council moves forward again a public town hall is needed at which public sentiment can be expressed and heard.
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